Observation Timeline: Annotations over time
- FathomNet
- Jun 9
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 18
Portal algorithms can follow objects through time and generating annotations for a given object. The Observation Timeline allows for viewing and editing an observation annotation track.
In portal all observations made can be a single or multiple localizations. These terms are defined here, but in summary - the boxes drawn to locate a region of interest are localizations.
Tracks & Timeline view
Video are a challenging space to annotate when it comes to accurately following a region of interest over time. For example, counts on those objects will grow proportionate to the frames in a video if a box is drawn on each frame, and in contrast important information can be lost without annotating all frames. The solution: tracks.
The algorithms in Portal always produce tracks. The detections are made, and then groups to produce the Observation that is returned to the Portal. As a result, you may see something like the above in your timeline view. The Observation Timeline tab, or timeline view shows tracks in a visual way. This tab is next to the Player page tab when viewing Videos. The blue lines indicate where there are localizations, and each row is a different Observation.
Manually creating tracks
If you are making the localizations manually you can create one observation per frame and merge them. Note: The UI uses an "X" for single frames so the line is visible. You can group any of the observations in the timeline view by dragging to select. Use a right click or the tools on the left to merge them into a longer track, or split the track at the current cursor location.
Select - CTRL+Click each "X" on the timeline you want to merge. Actions - Once selected the "X" will be a lighter color gray, and the merge tool is active
If you are merging two observations with the same Label you will see this popup (which you can choose to suppress in future actions). If the labels are different you can only choose 1.
The result is a single observation with the two boxes included, as seen here:
