ELAN Converter™ generates log files listing every activity. Virtually everything that happens to your files is logged into an XML-like format. Although you can see the log file for yourself by opening it with a text editor, it is only recommended for the advanced users. The log is very big and it is close to impossible to see if something went wrong. Therefore we recommend that you view the log file from inside ELAN Converter™, which is able to analyze the log file and display any error messages in a human readable format.

To open the Log Browser, choose File | View Log, or click on the View Log button:

The Log View dialog box will pop up, which is essentially a log file browser:

On the left of the screen is the list of the available log files. Each log file is named after the date and time of the processing. For example, the same log above was processed on 1/12/2009 at 9:19pm. On the right of the screen is a report created from the log. The report tells exactly what type of conversion it was (batch or watch). If everything went fine, you only see an OK message. However, if there were any warnings or errors during conversion, you can see them itemized - including the exact file name and page number where it happened. For example, if there is a power outage and your computer goes down during conversion, the report will display exactly what file failed, and you can reprocess that one and all files after that. Sometimes the error applies only to one file and you only need to reprocess that one. Also, if ELAN Converter™ is unable to open an input image, you will get an error log entry about that.

Notes for the advanced users: ELAN Converter™ keeps the log files in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ELAN GMK\Converter\Logs under Windows 2000 and XP. We always create two logs at a time, a binary file with a binlog extension, and an XML file with a log extension. The .log file is human readable, but ELAN Converter™ can analyze the .binlog files 3 times faster than the .log files. Logging is based on a very simple principle. The opening XML tags are streamed to the log file before an operation begins, and the closing tags are streamed right after that. If there was a failure in between them, the XML tag will be corrupt, and the log analyzer detects that condition. This way we can identify the exact place where the conversion crashed. ELAN Converter™ has an XML parser built in that is able to parse broken XML files, and based on the location of the broken tag, determine the exact spot of failure.