ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Protocol page > The elements of a protocol > Apparatus > Video sources > Setting up a Video Source > Specifying whether the apparatus is being viewed from above or from the side

Specifying whether the apparatus is being viewed from above or from the side

In brief

Use the two buttons on the Video source's settings page to specify whether the video source shows the apparatus from the side or from above. Note that by default, ANY-maze assumes that an apparatus is being viewed from above, as this is the most common scenario.

Details

When a piece of apparatus is viewed from the side, ANY-maze makes three changes to how it works:

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The system takes into account the fact that the target animal will appear bigger and smaller as it moves towards and away from the camera. This is important, because normally (i.e. when viewed from above) the system assumes that the animal will remain generally the same size and it uses this assumption to help avoid erroneously detecting artefacts (such as reflections in a water-maze) as the animal.

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ANY-maze will automatically detect rearing by the target animal. In fact, this only works well if there is good contrast between the animal and the background of the apparatus - this is because the system analyses the animal's shape, and this is only well defined if there's good contrast.

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ANY-maze won't track the animal's head. This is because head tracking works by analysing the animal's shape and when viewed from the side the shape is different to when it is viewed from above.

Note that although rearing is automatically detected when apparatus is viewed from the side, you obviously don't have to actually use the rearing results. So if rearing is irrelevant to you (for example, you're tracking a fish or the need for good contrast is not met) then you can simply ignore this analysis.

If rearing is of interest, you may wish to have the system indicate when it considers the animal to be rearing - this is one of the options that can be specified in the What to display while testing protocol element.

ANY-maze help topic T0087