Behavior Analysis camera.gif (38819 bytes)

Figure 1 depicts the Behavior Analysis program. A movie file is loaded into the program by navigating the drive, then double-clicking on the file to analyze. Beneath the file window, you can press the Collect X-Y Position button to switch to the position mode. Beneath that, the current frame and time is depicted. Changing either and then pressing the FSeek or TSeek button will bring you to the desired frame or time. Beneath the video, the Play/Pause button will play or pause the video. The play speed can also be adjusted (1 is normal, 2 is twice as fast, 0.5 is half as fast).  Backstep and Step + step the video frame-by-frame either back or forward. Step -X and Step +X buttons allow you to step forward or back at the desired Frame Step (here, set for 10). Begin and End take you to the beginning or end of the video clip. If the Auto Frame Step check box is selected, the program will automatically step to the next frame when you either click on an X-Y position in the video or enter a behavior via the keyboard. The Start Keyboard button allows you to use the keyboard to enter one letter (or number) codes for the behavior currently on the screen. Any printable character can be used as a code and upper/lowercase letters are processed differently. The X-Y or behavioral data are copied to the yellow "note pad". The data in the note pad can be copied to the clipboard, then pasted into Word or Excel by pressing the Copy to Clipboard button. Please note: If you copy data to the clipboard, you must exit and re-start the program. Failure to do so will result in the program crashing. Do not save your file as uncompressed full frames. The video routines don't like that.

Collecting X-Y Data: This collection method would most likely be used to follow the movements of an animal in an arena.

  1. Click on the Collect X-Y Position Data button. The headings for the yellow note pad change to Time, X, Y  Set the frame step to 1 to collect X-Y data for each frame.
  2. Assume that we need to follow his left thumb. Click on it and the coordinates are transferred to the note pad, along with the time. Figure 2 shows the results after several clicks.
  3. Click on Copy to Clipboard when finished. The note pad is then cleared and the data can be pasted into Excel (Fig 3).
  4. Hint: If the actual distances moved is important, then an object of known size (and at the same depth as the movements of interest) can be used to calibrate the X-Y coordinates. Simply click on each end of the object at the end of the run, then use the distance between those coordinates to calibrate the rest of the data set. The formula for computing the distance between two X-Y coordinate pairs is:

Distance = Sqr[(X1 - X2)2 + (Y1 - Y2)2]
Distance = Distance / RealDistance

Collecting a Behavioral Sequence:

  1. Load the movie file, set the frame step size, and click on the Start Keyboard button.
  2. Use any of the printable keyboard keys as a code for the displayed behavior. Run slow might be represented by "r" while run fast is "R". The numbers 1 through 5 might represent different levels of aggression. The space bar or 0 might represent no behavior. If the auto frame step check box is selected, then the video will automatically step to the next frame and will record the behavior and time (in sec) in the yellow note pad.
  3. When you've reached the end of the video sequence, click the Copy to Clipboard button.
  4. The data can be pasted into Excel for later analysis and/or saved as an MS-DOS text file saved with a DTA extension. Text. DTA files can be analyzed by the timeline program. Information on using timeline is here. You can download timeline here.