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User Guide

This guide walks you through using Flow3R to set up and run a recording session.

Overview

Flow3R is organised around three concepts:

Concept What it is
Source A single input device or file (webcam, microphone, video file, …)
Recording group A named collection of sources that are recorded together
Pipeline A processing step attached to a group (record video, analyse pose, …)

A typical workflow:

  1. Add and configure sources
  2. Create a recording group and assign sources to it
  3. Attach one or more pipelines to the group
  4. Set placeholder values (animal ID, experiment name, …)
  5. Press Record

Adding sources

Documentation coming soon — add screenshots here.

Recording groups

Explicit groups

Explicit groups are created by the user in the Groups panel. Each group has its own recording controls, file path settings, and pipeline list.

Implicit groups

Any source that is not assigned to an explicit group appears in an automatically managed implicit group. Implicit groups cannot be renamed or deleted — assign the source to an explicit group to take full control.

Pipelines

A pipeline defines what happens to the data from a group's sources during a recording session. Multiple pipelines can be attached to one group and they all run simultaneously.

Built-in pipeline types:

Pipeline Description
Record Video Encodes video from a video source to a file
Record Audio Records audio from an audio source to a file
Record Video with Audio Records synchronised video+audio to a single container

Additional pipelines (pose estimation, grimace scale, …) are provided by optional plugins.

Placeholders

Placeholders are named template variables that you define once and reuse in file paths and metadata. They appear as {variable_name} in path templates.

Persistence Meaning
session Value is forgotten when the application restarts
project Value is saved in the .f3r project file
recording Value is reset automatically after each recording

Global placeholders (e.g. {experimenter}) are shared across all groups. Group-scoped placeholders (e.g. {animal_id}) belong to a single group.

Saving and loading projects

Use File → Save Project to write the full configuration (sources, groups, pipelines, placeholder definitions) to a .f3r YAML file. Open it again with File → Open Project.

Backwards compatibility: .f3r files from older versions are automatically migrated when loaded. See CHANGELOG for schema changes between versions.