Exporting an Audit Trail

Premium and Ultimate Edition Only

This feature is available in the Premium and Ultimate Editions only.

In forensic work, in archival restoration and in any situation where the processing has to be defensible afterwards, it is not enough to deliver the processed audio. You also have to be able to show exactly what was done to the original recording. The audit trail is Acoustica's record of that: a document listing every editing step applied to the clip, in order, with the settings of every processor.

Exporting the Audit Trail

• Choose Export Audit Trail... from the Export sub menu in the File menu.

• Choose a name and a folder for the HTML file and confirm.

Acoustica writes the audit trail and a set of companion files into the chosen folder. Open the HTML file in a web browser to read it.

The audit trail is generated from the Edit History, so it describes the editing steps of the clip as it stands. Export it before closing the clip.

What the Audit Trail Contains

The document opens with a description of the source recording:

• The file path of the source file
• The title, copyright and description from the file properties, where present

It then contains one section per editing step, in the order the steps were applied. Each step is titled with the name of the operation as it appears in the edit history, and lists:

• Selection — the time range the step was applied to, its frequency range where the step was made in the spectral editing mode, and the selected channels by speaker name.

• Time/frequency filtering — for steps applied to a shaped spectral selection, a picture of the selection geometry. The picture links to the matching selection file, so the exact selection can be inspected or reloaded.

• Parameter Settings — every parameter of the processor that was applied, with its name and its value as it was displayed in the user interface.

• Processor state file — a link to a .acstate file holding the complete processor settings for that step.

The Companion Files

Alongside the HTML document, Acoustica writes:

• one Acoustica Selection File (.acsel) per step, named after the step, holding the selection that step was applied to; and

• one Acoustica Processor State File (.acstate) per step that involved a processor, holding its full settings.

Both are loadable back into Acoustica with Open... from the File menu, so a third party can reproduce any individual step exactly rather than having to take the document's word for it:

• Opening a .acsel file applies the stored selection to the active clip — see Exporting Selection Files.

• Opening a .acstate file opens the processor it belongs to, with the settings that were used, ready to be applied to the active clip.

Keep the companion files together with the HTML file — the links in the document are relative to it.