I found an online site for both clipping video and converting to gif. It was pretty intuitive and it didn’t take me all that long to convert (but I have a few steps for processing my photos and some people have very little so ‘not very long’ may be subjective).
When searching, add ‘online’ to the search parameters which filters out software being sold for downloading onto your computer. There are actually tons of these sites and (so far) they all work with my adblock extension (I’m on desktop) and they don’t make you jump through lots of hoops. Some had size limits of videos (I’m mostly extracting the audio from the videos I’ve taken) so I just searched again for one that didn’t and moved on.
I converted video to gif to post the actions of European Carp splashing around in the water (mating/breeding behavior) because I was afraid the still pictures I got of them (mostly submerged in the water) wouldn’t be diagnostic enough for id but I figured the gif would explain exactly how they were behaving and might help.
I could see it being useful when the type of movement might be distinctive to an organism and help with identification. I don’t think I’d use it for anything other than to aid in an ID.
[quote=“broacher, post:15, topic:32477”]
How about a portal that would let you upload short vids[/quote]
It’s a bit onerous, imo, but I do as @mamestraconfigurata suggested. I take the best screen shots i can get from a video for the inat obs, then upload the video to YouTube and link it in the description.
AFAIK, The development team is not likely to consider getting on with feature requests until after they make the dual platform mobil app. I think there are outstanding feature requests for video support; so you may want to look one up and vote for it
Also, just a note that staff have remarked that future support for gifs of video clips isn’t guaranteed. So even if you use this, be sure to have your first photo be an actual photo.
Yes, the purpose of an iNat observation is to document the presence of an organism. There are projects and annotations for extra information, but those aren’t the primary purpose of an observation.
I’m not sure if this could be integrated into the ID matrix of iNats system, but perhaps Tinbergens 4 questions on behaviour (a researchable topic for those interested) can be incorporated or adopted into an umbrella Behaviour project?
I’d definitely join into this project should it come to be, as animal behaviour is something that has fascinated me for a while now
I think we would love to support more behavioral data recording, but that stuff is often difficult to define and observe and we want to make the observation process as simple as possible (and even with the way it currently works, it’s often not simple!). There’s always going to be a trade off between the amount of data you ask people to collect per observation and the number of total observations that are posted, and in general we err on the side of greater participation.
Currently, as others have said, there are workarounds like observation fields and projects, and it would be awesome to have a more robust system for recording behavior and interactions. For what it’s worth, here’s a feature request for adding interaction data: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/add-interactions-to-species-pages/433 Wouldn’t be an easy lift, though.
Someone who’s pursued behavioral data via iNat is Greg Pauly at NHMLA. He asks people to post their observations of Elgaria mating holds and often follows up with them in real time. See this blog post.