Request: adding keyframe timeline so its easier to edit already created

[timmermansjoy]

My actions before raising this issue

• Read/searched the docs
• Searched past issues

When reviewing a video clip that has been created with tracks, its hard to see where keyframes are created.

Expected Behaviour

Having the ability to see a timeline with all the keyframes that have been made over time. So editing and merging annotations are easier. As seen in an example here:

Current Behaviour

only see a timeline that shows the frame count

Possible Solution

Adding a timeline like shown in the example image.

Context

When overviewing a labeling task it is hard to see where keyframes have been made when you want to edit a keyframe that has been made in the past

[dschoerk]

suggestion for a video annotation interface for video annotation. it displays one object per row, along with attributes and meta data. keyframes are indicated by white dots. green/red indicators where tracking algorithms finished tracking or where tracking is still running.

image taken from https://library.imaging.org/ei/articles/32/16/art00017
disclaimer: i'm a co-author of this paper

[titarch]

Any news on whether this could be considered? This would be an awesome feature to easily track and navigate annotations.

[zhiltsov-max]

Duplicate of #1228, #1796

[titarch]

Another suggestion: a basic implementation I made using d3 that can show labels or attributes. The timeline is zoomable and pannable and has a draggable frame cursor.

[potipot]

@titarch would you be able to share some more information on how you created such timeline view? It would be super useful for my use case where attribute changes over time

[Stijnp]

Also interested in a feature like this. The open source VGG Image Annotator has something that could potentially be used as a starting point. https://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~vgg/software/via/demo/via_video_annotator.html

[bparsy-odin]

@potipot Here are some details about the feature:

The job timeline is an interactive component meant for viewing, navigat-
ing and editing the annotations of a job. It is similar in functionality to the
timeline of a video editing or animation software. In the context of CVAT:
• The x-axis represents the frame number
• On the y-axis, each track is represented by a line
• In the middle we added low resolution thumbnails of the frames (we have added this later, it is not part of the screenshot I shared)
• Normal tracks (i.e. not tags) are above the thumbnails
• Tag tracks (image attributes) are below the thumbnails (depends on issue #5716)
• The timeline is zoomable and pannable using the mouse wheel and mouse drag respectively
• Holding ctrl sticks the timeline cursor to the mouse and clicking on two frames creates a new track between them using the selected label in timeline controls
• The timeline shows the buffered and saved frames at the bottom

Regarding implementation, most of it is contained in a (relatively simple) single component using a d3 chart to draw from the directly annotation's data and metadata.

[potipot]

@bparsy-odin Thank you for the provided details. They will be very helpful