Fast Track Formant tracking method

[HenryNomeland]

Added a formant tracking method to the get_formant_tracks.m file. The tools, utils, and settings directories all support the fast track functionality/implementation. get_fast_tracks.praat is analogous to get_formant_tracks.praat.

UPDATES (WED 5/1/24)

Here are some logistic details:

Fast track doesn't work on the version of Praat currently installed on most of the Waisman computers. A quick solution is locally installing a user installation of Praat 6.4 and changing the path in the get_formant_tracks.m fast track function to the path of this local installation. A longer term fix is updating the Public installation of Praat used on the computers.

Fast Track is calculating different formant tracks for many different maximum frequency measurements. This is the parameter that it is controlling, and selecting the best formants from. We can supply it with different numbers of coefficients to use, which can be set manually in the get_fast_tracks.praat file under "coefficients." We can also adjust how many steps and the size of steps for which it calculates formants. Fast track will always use the number of coefficients that we provide it for every one of its formant calculations.

More about how fast track selects which formant track to use and how it loops through different maximum frequency measurements can be found here - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RP0Lxj6PzCxaPsMQ53QXI0Kk-SwwETUl/view?usp=sharing

[cwnaber]

I got the Fast Track script in get_fast_tracks.praat working directly in Praat by:

1. Installing new version of Praat
2. Downloading Fast Track from Santiago Barreda's github repo: https://github.com/santiagobarreda/FastTrack/wiki/Installation
3. Running setup script for Fast Track as referenced in above Installation instructions
4. Moving the Praat .exe and the Fast Track folders around into this config:

• Top level "praat" folder, which contains
  • "settings" folder from Fast Track
  • "Praat and more" folder that contains
    • Praat.exe
    • the full contents of the "functions" Fast Track folder, specifically: "folder", "modeling", "tools" and "utils" folders, and various files including "file_1_trackAutoselect.praat", etc.

5. Editing line 10 of get_fast_tracks.praat to reference ../../../../Users/Public/Documents/software/wave_viewer, since that is the path on my computer from Praat.exe to the test_wav generated by wave_viewer
6. Loading in the test_wav.wav file in Praat
7. Manually copying the code in get_fast_tracks.praat into a Praat script and hitting "run"

So, I know Fast Track is "installed," since it can generate output.

But I still get the error 'Something went wrong in Praat analysis' from line 229 of get_formant_tracks.m if I try to run the Praat command from MATLAB.