Support for Annotation Files

Bento loads annotation files via the parent function loadAnyAnnot, which calls one or more format-specific helper functions. Annotation formats currently supported are as follows:

• .txt files can be loaded if they are in one of the following formats:
  • Caltech Behavior Annotator files
  • Ethovision annotation files, limited support. Code was developed for a particular experiment format in the Anderson lab, and has not yet been generalized.
• .annot files are annotations created within Bento; they are saved in text files with the .annot extension.

Bento allows you to link multiple annotation files per trial, by separating filenames with semicolons in the Experiment Manager. Files need not be in the same format, eg file_1.annot; file_2.annot; file_3.txt is a valid format.

Users are welcome to contribute support for other annotation formats.

See Using Annotation Structs for information on how annotations are formatted after they've been loaded into Matlab.