# Working with trial control

Starting data acquisition

▪Data acquisition starts depending on when the condition in the Action box Start track is met. In a default DanioVision experiment, this condition is not present, so tracking starts as soon as you start the trial.

▪If conditions to start data acquisition are never met within an arena, data are not recorded for that arena. A track file is created, but contains no track data.

▪See The Start-Stop trial rule

Stopping data acquisition

▪If you use the default Trial Control profile, data acquisition stops when you give the Stop command (by clicking the Stop button or pressing Ctrl+F6).

▪If conditions to stop data acquisition are never met within an arena, data are recorded until the video ends or (in the case of live tracking) indefinitely unless you have specified a maximum trial duration in the Trial Control.

▪See The Start-Stop trial rule

Starting and stopping data acquisition with multiple arenas

When your trial includes multiple arenas, a copy of the Trial Control rule is applied to each arena separately. This means that actual data acquisition may start and stop at different times in different arenas, depending on when the start/stop conditions are met in those arenas. See Trial control in multiple arenas

▪When starting the trial , actual data acquisition starts independently for each arena depending on when the animal is detected.

example The time indicated in each arena is the time since the start of the actual acquisition in the arena. Acquisition started first in Arena 1, 3 and 4 because the animals were already in those arenas when the trial started. In Arena 2 acquisition has not started yet, because the animal was not yet released in the cage.

▪Data acquisition stops independently for each arena unless you stop acquisition manually .

example A condition has been defined so that data recording stop when the animal is detected in its arena for 10 cumulative minutes (Cumulative duration). Data recording may stop at different elapsed times in different arena, if for example the animals have been released in the arenas at different times, and therefore the 10-minute threshold is reached at different times in the four arenas.