CinePlex v3 Manual - Plexon Inc

2.7 Global Configuration Pane
The Global Configuration default position is as a tab in the upper left pane of the
CinePlex Studio window. This pane is the first an experimenter will normally use
when setting up CinePlex Studio, but perhaps not very often after that. It contains
settings that pertain to frame rate to use when recording, quality of recordings to
make, and whether the experiment involves one animal or many. There are two
slightly different versions of this pane depending on whether the video being processed
comes from cameras or files.
2.7.1 Processing Camera Video
2.7.1.1 Frame Rate
The frame rates available for selection depend on the camera(s) attached to the
system. The lowest frame rate available is normally 1 frame per second. The
highest is the maximum frame rate attainable by the system as a whole after
accounting for camera, FireWire, disk and CPU limitations. In general, if there
are two cameras installed, the achievable frame rate per camera may be less than
if there were only one camera installed.
2.7.1.2 Compression
Any new files that CinePlex Studio creates will always be encoded in MPEG format
as defined in the applicable MPEG specification document. MPEG file sizes
and quality vary with the nominal compression bit rate. The higher the bit rate,
the higher the resulting video quality, but the resulting AVI files are larger as
well. In CinePlex Studio the MPEG Quality is adjustable from 1 to 10. The larger
the value selected, the larger the resulting AVI file will be, but it will have better
resolution. Adjust this number to obtain acceptable results for the experiments.
The value defaults to 4, a value Plexon has found to be a good compromise in
most situations. For reference, the selectable values correspond to the MPEG
nominal bit rate divided by 500,000.
2.7.1.3 Local File Name
This section allows the user to specify a file naming plan for recordings that are
not controlled by Sort Client. If the ARM mode is entered, these file names are
ignored and CinePlex Studio waits for file naming information from Sort Client.
If Local Record is started, the file name will be constructed using the parameters
selected here. These parameters include File Name Prefix if desired, Date insertion,
if desired, and numbering selection. The next file name for local recording is
shown for reference.
2.7.1.4 Experiment
The only currently available experiment adjustment is a selection as to whether
the experiments involve one animal or more than one. Make the selection “Single”
or “Multiple” appropriately. The effect on CinePlex Studio is to change the
way it searches for multiple colors or LEDs when tracking is lost momentarily.
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