13.7.2 Use

HINIT is invoked via the command line

   HInit [options] hmm trainFiles ...

This causes the means and variances of the given hmm to be estimated repeatedly using the data in trainFiles until either a maximum iteration limit is reached or the estimation converges. The HMM definition can be contained within one or more macro files loaded via the standard -H option. Otherwise, the definition will be read from a file called hmm. The list of train files can be stored in a script file if required.

The detailed operation of HINIT is controlled by the following command line options

-e f
This sets the convergence factor to the real value f. The convergence factor is the relative change between successive values of computed as a by-product of the Viterbi alignment stage (default value 0.0001).

-i N
This sets the maximum number of estimation cycles to N (default value 20).

-l s
The string s must be the name of a segment label. When this option is used, HINIT searches through all of the training files and cuts out all segments with the given label. When this option is not used, HINIT assumes that each training file is a single token.

-m N
This sets the minimum number of training examples so that if fewer than N examples are supplied an error is reported (default value 3).

-n
This flag suppresses the initial uniform segmentation performed by HINIT allowing it to be used to update the parameters of an existing model.

-o s
The string s is used as the name of the output HMM in place of the source name. This is provided in HINIT since it is often used to initialise a model from a prototype input definition. The default is to use the source name.

-u flags
By default, HINIT updates all of the HMM parameters, that is, means, variances, mixture weights and transition probabilities. This option causes just the parameters indicated by the flags argument to be updated, this argument is a string containing one or more of the letters m (mean), v (variance), t (transition) and w (mixture weight). The presence of a letter enables the updating of the corresponding parameter set.

-v f
This sets the minimum variance (i.e. diagonal element of the covariance matrix) to the real value f The default value is 0.0.

-w f
Any mixture weight or discrete observation probability which falls below the global constant MINMIX is treated as being zero. When this parameter is set, all mixture weights are floored to f * MINMIX.

-B
Output HMM definition files in binary format.
-F fmt
Set the source data format to fmt.
-G fmt
Set the label file format to fmt.
-H mmf
Load HMM macro model file mmf. This option may be repeated to load multiple MMFs.
-I mlf
This loads the master label file mlf. This option may be repeated to load several MLFs.
-L dir
Search directory dir for label files (default is to search current directory).
-M dir
Store output HMM macro model files in the directory dir. If this option is not given, the new HMM definition will overwrite the existing one.
-X ext
Set label file extension to ext (default is lab).

HINIT also supports the standard options -A, -C, -D, -S, -T, and -V as described in section 4.4.