Annotations are text notes you can overlay on the video at any time. They aren’t really for data, but for marking one-off events you might want to revisit such as “cool fin display by fish 5” or “beaver swam in front of the camera,” or noting disturbances, or marking the beginning and end of your planned analysis.
To create an annotation while on the Annotations tab, just click anywhere on the video and a box will pop up prompting you to type in the annotation text. Most of their properties are self-explanatory.
One noteworthy option is the “Appends timer” checkbox, which will add a timecode to the end of the text you type in, with the timer starting at the frame on which you create the annotation. This is useful, for example, if you want to begin analysis at some particular point and have a timer consistently visible on-screen showing the current time relative to the beginning of your analysis, as opposed the main timecode measured from the beginning of the video.
New annotations are only created on the video clip you clicked, but sometimes you might want to see the same annotation (e.g., an analysis timer) on every clip. In those cases, just select an annotation from the table and click “Mirror Selected Annotation.”
You can right-click near annotation on the screen, while on the annotations tab, to select it and move it around.
Annotations are exported in VidSync’s XML output along with your measurement data and calibration information. If you’re writing XML import code, it’s easy to write something to import all your annotations across multiple VidSync files and display a nice table reminding you which videos had which interesting shots.