2. The Collect Ratings Window

The Collect Ratings window allows users to open and control media files while recording the position of a joystick on a configurable, two-dimensional axis. This axis has the option of displaying up to eight alphanumeric labels on its octants. During recording, the current position of the joystick will be indicated by a circle on the axis. The color of the circle changes to provide additional information.

To collect ratings, users must use the Open Multimedia File menu option and then left-click the Begin Rating button. This will trigger a three second countdown. This countdown provides users the opportunity to find the joystick indicator on the axis and prepare for the annotation task; no samples are saved during this period. Once the countdown is up, the media file will begin playing and the joystick indicator will become a red circle to indicate that the samples are being saved.

In addition to moving the joystick in two dimensions, users can also depress the joystick's "button 1" (usually a trigger near the index finger), which DARMA will record as a binary value. When this button is depressed, the joystick indicator will change colors. When the media file is not playing, the indicator will change from white to yellow, and while the media file is playing, the indicator will change from red to green.

During rating collection, users can pause DARMA by left-clicking the Pause Rating button or by pressing the spacebar on their computer keyboard. This will immediately halt the collection of ratings and pause the media file. Users can then left-click the Resume Rating button to resume their ratings after another three-second countdown.

After the multimedia file has fully played and all the ratings have been collected, users will be prompted to save their ratings to an annotation file. Annotations are exported as Comma-Separated Values (.CSV) files. CSV files are fast to create and open, simple to read, and small in size. Annotation files contain five header rows that provide information about the file itself as well as how DARMA was configured when it was collected. These files can be opened in Microsoft Excel or statistical analysis packages, such as SPSS and SAS, as well as any free text editor, such as Notepad++.

The Collect Ratings window before a media file is opened

The Collect Ratings window during rating collection

The Set Axis Labels option from the Settings menu

The Set Bin Size option from the Settings menu