# Acquire a series of trials from video recorded with other programs

Aim

To carry out video tracking from a number of video files, recorded with a program other than EthoVision XT.

Prerequisites

For general recommendations, see Acquire a trial from a video file recorded with other programs.

Procedure

1.Release the animals in the arena and record video to a digital media file using the appropriate hardware and software. We recommend using MediaRecorder.

At the end of this step you should have a number of video files.

2.Make a Trial List for batch acquisition and add one video for each trial in the list. See Prepare the trial list for batch acquisition.

3.Acquire a series of trials from the video files.

(a) Choose Acquisition > Open Acquisition. In the Acquisition Settings window select Track all planned trials. The name of the first planned trial in the Trial List appears in the field next to Trial and the associated video file opens in the Video window.

(b) Make sure that the video file is positioned at its beginning or, in any case, at the point where you want to start data acquisition. Select DDS in the Playback Control window to make sure that samples are not missed.

(c) Choose Acquisition > Start Trial, or press Ctrl+F5, or click the Start series button in the Playback Control window.

Notes

▪To make sure that tracking starts and stops at the correct time point, you must define appropriate Trial Control settings.

▪If you stop batch acquisition manually, all trials acquired up to that time are saved, including the current one that was interrupted. Click the Start series button again to complete the series. If necessary, redo the trial that was interrupted. Redo a trial

▪If you wish to track data once again from that video, add a trial and follow the procedure for single trial acquisition See Acquire one trial.

▪The lighting conditions could be different between the start of subsequent trials. When using subtraction of differencing for subject detection, you can update the reference image based on the first video frame. So you keep the reference image matched with the current conditions. See Use first frame of each trial in Optimize the reference image > The reference image