Camera & Behavior

GLIDER can watch your experiment through a camera, record synchronized video and data, track animals or objects on screen, and score their behavior. This section walks through each of those capabilities in the order you would normally use them.

What's in this section

• Camera & Recording

  Connect a camera, watch the live preview, and record video alongside a set of frame-aligned CSV files. Also covers calibration (pixels to millimeters) and zones (regions of interest).

• Tracking

  Detect and follow animals or objects with YOLO and ByteTrack, either live or as a batch pass over a recorded video. Requires the optional vision extra.

• Behavior Analysis

  Label short video clips, train a classifier from your labels, and apply it to new videos to produce an ethogram. Requires the optional behavior extra.

Before you start

The camera and recording features work with a standard desktop install. Two of the more advanced capabilities live behind optional dependency groups, so you only install them if you need them:

Capability	Extra	Install
Live preview + video/data recording	(included with pc)	see Installation
YOLO / pose tracking	vision	uv sync --extra vision
Behavior classification	behavior	uv sync --extra behavior

Video recording needs FFmpeg

Recording video requires FFmpeg to be installed on your system. If you followed the Installation guide you already have it. Preview, tracking, and data logging work without it.

Two different things are called 'Behavior Analysis'

GLIDER has a live, movement-based behavior classifier (built into the camera settings, described in Tracking) and a supervised machine-learning workflow (a separate window, described in Behavior Analysis). They are unrelated tools. The pages below point out which is which so you don't confuse them.