A protocol and calibration method for accurate multi-camera field videography

Margrit Betke's accompanying web page for the article: http://www.cs.bu.edu/fac/betke/jeb/ (verified 2014-05-06). This item will contain the article referenced once that article is available after the publication process. In the meantime, we make available the software accompanying the article. Here is the content of the main README.txt file accompanying the software. This archive contains the software packages described in "A method for accurate multi-camera field videography" from Theriault et al. and is currently Supplemental Material file S1 for that project. See the contents of each directory for further documentation and sample data. easyCamera A MATLAB based planning and error-analysis tool with a graphical interface for large volume stereo videography projects such as those described in the manuscript. easyWand A MATLAB based camera calibration tool with graphical interface, suitable for large volume stereo videography calibrations conducted following the field protocol described in the manuscript. Contains easySBA, a MATLAB mex implementation of the sparse bundle adjustment (SBA) routines from Lourakis and Argyros, as described in the manuscript. python A python interface to the SBA routines used by easyWand. For the advanced user with prior experience in python and in compiling open-source software packages.Stereo videography is a powerful technique for quantifying the kinematics and behavior of animals, but it can be challenging to use in an outdoor field setting. We here present a workflow and associated software for performing calibration of cameras placed in a field setting and estimating the accuracy of the resulting stereoscopic reconstructions. We demonstrate the workflow through example stereoscopic reconstructions of bat and bird flight. We provide software tools for planning experiments and processing the resulting calibrations that other researchers may use to calibrate their own cameras. Our field protocol can be deployed in a single afternoon, requiring only short video clips of light, portable calibration objects