Progressive tracking: a novel procedure to facilitate manual digitization of videos

Digitization of video recordings often requires the laborious procedure of manually clicking points of interest on individual video frames. Here, we present progressive tracking, a procedure that facilitates manual digitization of markerless videos. In contrast to existing software, it allows the user to follow points of interest with a cursor in the progressing video, without the need to click. To compare the performance of progressive tracking with the conventional frame-wise tracking, we quantified speed and accuracy of both methods, testing two different input devices (mouse and stylus pen). We show that progressive tracking can be twice as fast as frame-wise tracking while maintaining accuracy, given that playback speed is controlled. Using a stylus pen can increase frame-wise tracking speed. The complementary application of the progressive and frame-wise mode is exemplified on a realistic video recording. This study reveals that progressive tracking can vastly facilitate video analysis in experimental research.