VoTT Tutorial

Tutorial for annotation with VoTT v2.2.0

microsoft/VoTT - GitHub

Visual Object Tagging Tool: An electron app for building end to end Object Detection Models from Images and Videos.

Download VoTT

Go to releases page and check the latest version.

Install to macOS

export VOTT_VERSION="2.2.0"
wget "https://github.com/microsoft/VoTT/releases/download/v${VOTT_VERSION}/vott-${VOTT_VERSION}-darwin.dmg"
hdiutil mount "vott-${VOTT_VERSION}-darwin.dmg"
cp -r "/Volumes/vott ${VOTT_VERSION}/vott.app" /Applications/
hdiutil detach "/Volumes/vott ${VOTT_VERSION}"
open -a vott.app

Install to Linux

export VOTT_VERSION="2.2.0"
wget "https://github.com/microsoft/VoTT/releases/download/v${VOTT_VERSION}/vott-${VOTT_VERSION}-linux.snap"
sudo snap install --dangerous "./vott-${VOTT_VERSION}-linux.snap"

Install to Windows

TBW.

Setup a new project

You can use sample_project for your tutorial.

The following is a project structure. Put your images in a source directory.

sample_project
├── source
│   ├── car_1.jpg
│   ├── car_2.jpg
│   └── car_3.jpg
└── target

1. Open VoTT app
2. Click New Project
3. Fill Display Name

Source Connection

1. Click Add Connection
2. Fill Display Name
3. Provider
4. Select Local File System
5. Select your source folder
6. Click Save Connection
7. Set the connection to Source Connection

Target Connection

1. Click Add Connection
2. Fill Display Name
3. Provider
4. Select Local File System
5. Select your target folder
6. Click Save Connection
7. Set the connection to Target Connection

Finally, click Save Project

Annotation

You can also view the video that shows a manner of annotation (sample.mp4).

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut key	Command
W or ArrowUp	Previous Asset
S or ArrowDown	Next Asset
Ctrl + Arrowkey	Move Region
Ctrl + Alt + Arrowkey	Shrink Region
Ctrl + Shift + Arrowkey	Expand Region

Mouse Controls

Mode	Command
Two-point mode	Hold down Ctrl while creating a region
Square mode	Hold down Shift while creating a region
Multi-select mode	Hold down Shift while selecting regions
Exclusive Tracking mode	Ctrl + N to block frame UI allowing a user to create a region on top of existing regions

Tag ordering

Hotkeys of 1 through 0 are assigned to the first ten tags. These can be reordered by using the up/down arrow icons in in the tag editor pane.

Tag locking

A tag can be locked for repeated tagging using the lock icon at the top of the tag editor pane. Tags can also be locked by combining Ctrl or Cmd and the tag hotkey, i.e. Ctrl + 2 would lock the second tag in the list.

Check your progress

Export dataset

1. Go to Export Settings and set your exporting format.
2. Click Save Export Settings.
3. Click Export button on the tags editor.

The following is a project structure after exporting.

sample_project
├── source
│   ├── car_1.jpg
│   ├── car_2.jpg
│   └── car_3.jpg
└── target
    ├── 32db62ab992c250ba2312fdc3babc444-asset.json
    ├── 41e0a9f85a8d20040692c8390317d3ce-asset.json
    ├── 7ce54d9571515f858d958f3a20cd3ff7-asset.json
    ├── sample_project-TFRecords-export
    │   ├── car_1.tfrecord
    │   ├── car_2.tfrecord
    │   ├── car_3.tfrecord
    │   └── tf_label_map.pbtxt
    └── sample_project.vott

Open existing project

You can use sample_existing_project as an example for opening local project.

1. Click Open Local Project
2. Select VoTT project file (e.g. sample_project.vott)