Unable to import custom annotations into SimBA: ‘no annotations exist’ despite matching video names

[DouAlice]

Hi SimBA team,

I’m running into an issue when trying to import annotations, and I suspect it’s because my data format doesn’t match the expected SimBA/BORIS structure.

Instead of annotating directly in BORIS or a SimBA-supported tool, I generated my own annotations programmatically (frame-based labels). I then attempted to convert these into a BORIS-like CSV format (Time,Media file path,FPS,Subject,Behavior,Status), following the example provided in the documentation.

However, when I try to import these into SimBA, I consistently get the error:

“SIMBA NO DATA ERROR: Your SimBA project has a feature file named [video_name], however no annotations exist for this file in the [subject_by_video directory].”

The video names in my annotation file match the feature file names exactly, and the START/STOP events appear correctly paired, so I suspect the issue is with how SimBA parses my custom BORIS-style CSV.

My questions is: Is there a recommended way to convert custom/frame-based annotations into a SimBA-compatible format? How could I check why the error is happening?

Any guidance or example of a minimal working annotation file would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[sronilsson]

Hey @DouAlice

There is an expected BORIS format HERE annd HERE. The first, newer, one is more common nowadays, but the second, older versions should also work.

A little bit of background on what process SimBA tasks when appending BORIS annotations, and why this may be happening.

SimBA first looks in your BORIS annotation directory, and appends all CSV files in this directory to a single big dataframe in memory. SimBA then looks in the Media file name column (if you are using the new BORIS version) for the video name, and then starts pairing the video names in this column with your file names in the project_folder/csv/features_extracted directory. If these don't match up, you would see this error.

E.g., if I only this is my BORIS data below, but my file in the ``project_folder/csv/features_extracteddirectory is called video11.csv orVIDEO11.mp4`, I could bump into this error.

Let me know if that makes sense or possibly relevant. Also happy to take a look at your annotation files if you zip them up and share them here if you think it would help.