If you are running ELAN Converter™ in Watch Mode, you do not have an option to do a batch conversion. First you have to add at least one directory to the Selection List, then double click on it and configure at least the following setting:

We would not like to discuss more details about the options, because this is very complicated and we have an entire chapter called Settings, documenting nothing but the configuration of ELAN Converter™. Right now we just want to get you started with the minimum effort on configuration.

If ELAN Converter™ finds a problem with your settings, it will report it for you. If everything looks valid, you will see the following window popping up:

The eye moves occasionally, indicating that the program is monitoring your folder(s). You can stop monitoring by pressing the Stop button. Note that the directory watch stops immediately after this window is closed. You can switch tasks in Windows without any problem, but can not close ELAN Converter™ if you want the directory watch to be running.

Once a trigger condition occurs, ELAN Converter™ goes into Batch Mode automatically and starts processing files in your watch folder. During this time all directory monitoring stops. Directory watch resumes after the conversion is finished. During batch conversion you can see the same progress indicator as you would see during batch conversion.

Note that you can let ELAN Converter™ watch a network directory, in which case you can run the program on a dedicated computer and copy files to the watch folder from another computer. In this case we recommend that you make the watch folder a local drive on the computer where ELAN Converter™ is running, because the conversion is much faster on a local drive. For the copying it does not matter, because you would have to copy files to a network drive anyway. However, the conversion runs significantly faster and more reliably (just think about losing network connection) on a local directory than on a network drive. Let be the network drive a local drive on the computer where ELAN Converter™ is running! (This is not a requirement just a recommendation.)