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Select the "Fast Track > Track folder..." button. You will be asked to indicate your working directory. this is where Fast Track will find the sound files to analyze, and place all output files.

Place all files you want to analyze in a subfolder called 'sounds' in the working directory. Each file should be cut so that it contains only sections meant to be tracked. As noted above, this is because the algorithm will look for smoothness across the whole sound, and so sections without formants will cause unpredictable errors. Praat uses 50 ms analysis windows so leave 25 ms on either side of the intervals that you wish to analyze when you cut audio files. Depending on the number of sound files, number of analysis steps, and computer speed, this process can potentially take hours (≈1-2 hours for 1000 files at 20 steps (analyses) per sound). Also, it can't be interrupted other than by closing Praat (see bugs).

The process is divided into three steps to be outlined below. Each steps can be run (or re-run) independently, assuming the previous step has already been run. The default is to run all three steps at once.

1. Track formants

This step creates all the candidate analyses. Outputs are:

• formants: a folder containing Praat formant pbjects representing all candidate analyses for each sound.
• infos: a folder text files containing information about the analyses being carried out.
• fileList.Strings: a Praat Strings object containing the list of audio files analyzed is also returned.

2. Autoselect winners

This step automatically selects the best track from the candidates. The default smoothness metric is the sum of the median absolute deviation across the four formants. Outputs are:

• images_comparison: a folder containing images comparing the different candidate analyses. Winners are marked with extra boxes. Analyses are arrange in images from top to bottom and left to right in terms of increasing analysis frequency.
• winners.csv: a csv file indicating the winning analysis frequency for each sound. Analysis steps are numbered in terms of increasing analysis frequency.
• More information is added to the info files in the 'infos' subfolder.

3. Get winners

The best analysis are selected and returned in the final step. Outputs are:

• formants_winners: a folder containing copies of the winning formant objects. The naming convention is 'filename_winner_', where 'filename' is the sound file name.
• csvs: a folder containing csv files. Each csv file contains information about formants, f0 and intensity for each sound.
• images_winners: a folder containing images of the winning analysis for each sound.

Fixing Mistakes (optional)

You can fix incorrect analyses by inspecting the images in the images_comparison subfolder. Further, the best analysis could be determined offline using other criteria, and then used for the final analysis. If you want to override the automatically-selected analysis, you can do this in one of two ways:

a. If some alternate analysis is better, update the value in the column marked 'winner' and the columns for F1-F4. b. If no single analysis is very good, a different analysis can be specified for each formant by putting a different number in each column. For example, analysis 10 could be used for F1, F3 and F4, while analysis 15 could be used for F2.

After changing the winners in the winners.csv file, the third step (get winners) must be run again.

You can also manually edit formant tracks. This can be done by placing copies of the winning formant objects you want to edit in the 'formants_final' subfolder. Make sure they are copies because the winning formant files will be deleted (deletion would not be a big deal as these can be renegerated easily and quickly by repeating step 3 above).

After placing copies of winning formant files into the 'formants_final' subfolder, select the "Fast Track > Finalize tracks (folder)..." button. This will loop through each file in the folder. The user has the option of accepting the track, re-tracking, or manually editing. Once the track is accepted, a final copy is saved ('filename_final'), and the 'filename_winner_' version is erased from the subfolder. Optionally, CSV files and images can also be generated at this point.