This package contains a DeepLabCut inference pipeline for real-time applications that has minimal (software) dependencies. Thus, it is as easy to install as possible (in particular, on atypical systems like NVIDIA Jetson boards).

If you've used DeepLabCut-Live with TensorFlow models and want to try the PyTorch version, take a look at Switching from TensorFlow to PyTorch

Performance of TensorFlow models: If you would like to see estimates on how your model should perform given different video sizes, neural network type, and hardware, please see: deeplabcut.github.io/DLC-inferencespeed-benchmark/ . We're working on getting these benchmarks for PyTorch architectures as well.

If you have different hardware, please consider submitting your results too!

What this SDK provides: This package provides a DLCLive class which enables pose estimation online to provide feedback. This object loads and prepares a DeepLabCut network for inference, and will return the predicted pose for single images.

To perform processing on poses (such as predicting the future pose of an animal given its current pose, or to trigger external hardware like send TTL pulses to a laser for optogenetic stimulation), this object takes in a Processor object. Processor objects must contain two methods: process and save.

• The process method takes in a pose, performs some processing, and returns processed pose.
• The save method saves any valuable data created by or used by the processor

For more details and examples, see documentation here.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Note :: alone, this object does not record video or capture images from a camera. This must be done separately, i.e. see our DeepLabCut-live GUI.🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

• WIP 2025: DeepLabCut-Live is implemented for models trained with the PyTorch engine!
• March 2022: DeepLabCut-Live! 1.0.2 supports poetry installation poetry install deeplabcut-live, thanks to PR #60.
• March 2021: DeepLabCut-Live! version 1.0 is released, with support for tensorflow 1 and tensorflow 2!
• Feb 2021: DeepLabCut-Live! was featured in Nature Methods: "Real-time behavioral analysis"
• Jan 2021: full eLife paper is published: "Real-time, low-latency closed-loop feedback using markerless posture tracking"
• Dec 2020: we talked to RTS Suisse Radio about DLC-Live!: "Capture animal movements in real time"

Please see our instruction manual to install on a Windows or Linux machine or on a NVIDIA Jetson Development Board. Note, this code works with PyTorch, TensorFlow 1 or TensorFlow 2 models, but whatever engine you exported your model with, you must import with the same version (i.e., export a PyTorch model, then install PyTorch, export with TF1.13, then use TF1.13 with DlC-Live; export with TF2.3, then use TF2.3 with DLC-live).

• available on pypi as: pip install deeplabcut-live

Note, you can then test your installation by running:

dlc-live-test

If installed properly, this script will i) create a temporary folder ii) download the full_dog model from the DeepLabCut Model Zoo, iii) download a short video clip of a dog, and iv) run inference while displaying keypoints. v) remove the temporary folder.

PyTorch and TensorFlow can be installed as extras with deeplabcut-live - though be careful with the versions you install!

# Install deeplabcut-live and PyTorch
`pip install deeplabcut-live[pytorch]`

# Install deeplabcut-live and TensorFlow
`pip install deeplabcut-live[tf]`

1. Initialize Processor (if desired)
2. Initialize the DLCLive object
3. Perform pose estimation!

from dlclive import DLCLive, Processor
dlc_proc = Processor()
dlc_live = DLCLive(<path to exported model directory>, processor=dlc_proc)
dlc_live.init_inference(<your image>)
dlc_live.get_pose(<your image>)

DLCLive parameters:

• path = string; full path to the exported DLC model directory
• model_type = string; the type of model to use for inference. Types include:
  • pytorch = the base PyTorch DeepLabCut model
  • base = the base TensorFlow DeepLabCut model
  • tensorrt = apply tensor-rt optimizations to model
  • tflite = use tensorflow lite inference (in progress...)
• cropping = list of int, optional; cropping parameters in pixel number: [x1, x2, y1, y2]
• dynamic = tuple, optional; defines parameters for dynamic cropping of images
  • index 0 = use dynamic cropping, bool
  • index 1 = detection threshold, float
  • index 2 = margin (in pixels) around identified points, int
• resize = float, optional; factor by which to resize image (resize=0.5 downsizes both width and height of image by half). Can be used to downsize large images for faster inference
• processor = dlc pose processor object, optional
• display = bool, optional; display processed image with DeepLabCut points? Can be used to troubleshoot cropping and resizing parameters, but is very slow

DLCLive inputs:

• <path to exported model> =
  • For TensorFlow models: path to the folder that has the .pb files that you acquire after running deeplabcut.export_model
  • For PyTorch models: path to the .pt file that is generated after running deeplabcut.export_model
• <your image> = is a numpy array of each frame

This guide is for users who trained a model with the PyTorch engine with DeepLabCut 3.0.

Once you've trained your model in DeepLabCut and you are happy with its performance, you can export the model to be used for live inference with DLCLive!

This section is for users who have already used DeepLabCut-Live with TensorFlow models (through DeepLabCut 1.X or 2.X) and want to switch to using the PyTorch Engine. Some quick notes:

• You may need to adapt your code slightly when creating the DLCLive instance.
• Processors that were created for TensorFlow models will function the same way with PyTorch models. As multi-animal models can be used with PyTorch, the shape of the pose array given to the processor may be (num_individuals, num_keypoints, 3). Just call DLCLive(..., single_animal=True) and it will work.

DeepLabCut-live offers some analysis tools that allow users to perform the following operations on videos, from python or from the command line:

Downsizing images can be done by specifying the resize or pixels parameter. Using the pixels parameter will resize images to the desired number of pixels, without changing the aspect ratio. Results will be saved (along with system info) to a pickle file if you specify an output directory.

Inside a python shell or script, you can run:

dlclive.benchmark_videos(
    "/path/to/exported/model", 
    ["/path/to/video1", "/path/to/video2"],
    output="/path/to/output",
    resize=[1.0, 0.75, '0.5'],
)

From the command line, you can run:

dlc-live-benchmark /path/to/exported/model /path/to/video1 /path/to/video2 -o /path/to/output -r 1.0 0.75 0.5

Inside a python shell or script, you can run:

dlclive.benchmark_videos(
    "/path/to/exported/model", 
    "/path/to/video",
    resize=0.5,
    display=True,
    pcutoff=0.5,
    display_radius=4,
    cmap='bmy'
)

From the command line, you can run:

dlc-live-benchmark /path/to/exported/model /path/to/video -r 0.5 --display --pcutoff 0.5 --display-radius 4 --cmap bmy

This option functions similar to deeplabcut.benchmark_videos and deeplabcut.create_labeled_video (note, this is slow and only for testing purposes).

Inside a python shell or script, you can run:

dlclive.benchmark_videos(
    "/path/to/exported/model",
    "/path/to/video",
    resize=[1.0, 0.75, 0.5],
    pcutoff=0.5,
    display_radius=4,
    cmap='bmy',
    save_poses=True,
    save_video=True,
)

From the command line, you can run:

dlc-live-benchmark /path/to/exported/model /path/to/video -r 0.5 --pcutoff 0.5 --display-radius 4 --cmap bmy --save-poses --save-video

This project is licensed under the GNU AGPLv3. Note that the software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied. If you use the code or data, we ask that you please cite us! This software is available for licensing via the EPFL Technology Transfer Office (https://tto.epfl.ch/, [email protected]).

This is an actively developed package, and we welcome community development and involvement.

• If you want to contribute to the code, please read our guide here, which is provided at the main repository of DeepLabCut.
• We are a community partner on the . Please post help and support questions on the forum with the tag DeepLabCut. Check out their mission statement Scientific Community Image Forum: A discussion forum for scientific image software.
• If you encounter a previously unreported bug/code issue, please post here (we encourage you to search issues first): github.com/DeepLabCut/DeepLabCut-live/issues
• For quick discussions here:

If you utilize our tool, please cite Kane et al, eLife 2020. The preprint is available here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.04.236422v2

@Article{Kane2020dlclive,
  author    = {Kane, Gary and Lopes, Gonçalo and Sanders, Jonny and Mathis, Alexander and Mathis, Mackenzie},
  title     = {Real-time, low-latency closed-loop feedback using markerless posture tracking},
  journal   = {eLife},
  year      = {2020},
}