MATCH: Music Alignment Tool CHest

Author: Simon Dixon <simon.dixon@elec.qmul.ac.uk>

Original Release Date: 5 October 2005

Current Version: 0.9.4 (March 2010)

This software performs alignment of audio files using the on-line time warping (OLTW) algorithm. For details of the implementation see:

System requirements

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Installation

No installation is required. The program should run as is.

Command line arguments

The graphical user interface does not provide access to all functions of the software, particularly if you wish to specify non-default values for parameters. In this case, you can run MATCH from the command line using:
	java <java-args> at.ofai.music.match.PerformanceMatcher <match-args>
where <java-args> are arguments to the Java virtual machine (see Java documentation for more details), and <match-args> are arguments to MATCH.

JVM arguments

Unless MATCH is specified in the CLASSPATH variable, you will normally need to specify the location of the software. For example, change to the directory where match-0.9.4.jar is stored and use:
	java -cp match-0.9.4.jar at.ofai.music.match.PerformanceMatcher ...
If you get an out of memory (heap space) exception, you will need to set a platform-specific option. For example, on Linux, use the following to allow the system to use up to 1000MB of memory:
	java -Xmx1000m at.ofai.music.match.PerformanceMatcher ...

MATCH arguments

The following arguments are available, but not all are useful, functional or sufficiently documented. Note that a number of arguments assume that exactly 2 input files are also specified on the command line.

Shortcut Keys

Most of the GUI functions are also available via shortcut keys. There are also a number of keys which provide functions which are not available directly from the GUI. Most of these are briefly explained in the help window (use the 'h' key to open the help window).  One day these should be built into menus.

File Format

The format for storing and loading session information, including alignments, marks, and corrections to the alignment path ("fixed points") is described here.  Warning: no guarantee is made that future versions of MATCH will be compatible with this file format.

All information is stored in a single text file, containing a block for each file in order. Each file description block contains the following lines:

Links


Updated 23 July 2010