# Plan your trials

Aim

▪To prepare the list of experimental trials in detail and in advance, so that fewer actions have to be taken during their execution.

▪Planning trials in the Trial List also allows you to run a batch acquisition. Select video files for all the trials in your trial list. For each trial you can optionally select separate Arena Settings, Trial Control Settings, and Detection settings. Then you can automatically acquire all trials.

note If you do not predefine a trial list, it is built up automatically as you acquire new trials.

example Define the independent variables ID and Dose and fill in the list of trials with the ID of the subjects to be tested, and the drug amount planned for each trial. When you start data acquisition, EthoVision XT informs you that for Trial 1 you need to prepare subject A21034 which has to be injected with 1.0 mg/kg apomorphine.

To define the list of trials

1.Choose Setup > Trial List, or in the Experiment Explorer click Trial List.

2.To add trials, do one of the following:

If you track live or from videos, click the Add Trials button on the toolbar, then enter the number of new trials you want to add.

If you track from videos, you can add trials automatically based on the video files you select. Each video will be associated with one trial. Click the Add Videos button on the toolbar, and select your videos. See also Automatically add video files to the Trial List.

3.A number of rows appear in the lower half of the Trial List. Each row represents a trial, that is, an acquisition session to be carried out in one or more arenas. If your setup is made of multiple arenas, each trial is divided in multiple rows, each one representing a track, that is, data of one individual subject tracked in a single trial.

4.For each trial, enter the value of the independent variables in the corresponding cells, when required.

5.For each trial, select the Arena Settings, the Trial Control Settings and the Detection Settings you want to use.

Notes

▪tip If you do not see the columns Arena Settings, Trial Control Settings and Detection Settings, click the Show/Hide button on the toolbar, select Variables and under System select the items you want to view.

▪You can also edit the Trial List before, during or after acquisition. See Edit the Trial List

▪If trials are already present in the table, the trials you add are appended.