Annotate FAQ

Login

I see an error when I try to log in to the application. How can I fix this?

• Ensure you are using the Chrome browser, and that it is up-to-date.
• Try clearing your browser’s cache, refresh the page and try again.
• If you are still stuck, contact [e-mail] so can help you resolve this issue.

How do I reset my password?

1. Click Forgot password on the Encord login page.

2. Enter the email address you used to sign up to Encord.

3. Click Reset password. An email containing a secure link for resetting your password is sent to the email address you provided.

4. Open your email inbox and open the email with the subject Reset your Encord password sent by [e-mail].

5. Click the Reset my password button in the email. A new page opens in your browser.

6. Enter a new password for your Encord account. Re-enter the password to confirm your new password.

7. Click Submit.

You can now log into your Encord account using your new password.

Projects

How do I manage teams, or create user groups?

You can create user groups within your organization. These can be added to specific Projects as teams.

• Our documentation on user groups can be found here.

• For information on how to create teams for a given Project see the Team Management section in our documentation.

What does the 'This is being edited' pop-up in the label editor mean

Don’t worry, no data has been lost! This is a warning from our system (known as the “editor lock”) it occurs when:

• Two different people are editing a task at the same time.
• Or, that one individual has the task open in two different tabs, or browser windows.

In both cases we recommend to click ‘cancel’ to prevent any unexpected data overwrites.

See our documentation here for more details.

Why is there a warning sign next to my Project where it's listed

A warning symbol is displayed when a project is too large - meaning it contains too much data. When selecting the project you should encounter the following message:

⚠️ “This project has exceeded the recommended number of tasks. To avoid performance issues, you need Admin access to manage and reduce the amount of data in this project”.

The diagram below illustrates the steps you should take to fix the issue.

Learn how to resize your videos here.

Datasets

What's the difference between image groups, and image sequences?

Both image groups and image sequences are file types you can create in Encord to make labeling your images easier and more efficient. Both are created by taking multiple single images as an input, and compressing these into a single data unit. The difference lies in the resulting data unit.

• Image groups can contain images of varying orientations and are best thought of as a collection of images.
• Image sequences can only contain images of the same orientation - which allows them to be treated the same way that videos are in which each input image constitutes a single frame of the resulting image sequence.

See our documentation here for more details.

How do I upload DICOM data?

How to upload you DICOM data depends on whether you plan on using files stored in a private cloud, or locally.

• Local files can be dragged-and-dropped when creating a new Dataset.
• Files from your private cloud are uploaded using JSON files. We do not support upload via the CSV file format.

For information on uploading your DICOM files using the Encord SDK, see the relevant documentation here.

How do I update client metadata?

Client metadata can be updated by including the upsert_metadata: true flag in the upload JSON file. An example JSON file is provided here.

If I have duplicate Datasets, how can I find out which one is which?

1. Navigate to Datasets on our platform.
2. Re-name both datasets to make them distinguishable.
3. Open up both cases in the editor, and see which one is which (e.g. which one is annotated and which is not).

For information on how to delete a dataset see our documentation here.

How do I make sure my videos load quickly?

1. An annotator’s download speed from private cloud storage has to be at least 3-4 times the video bitrate.
2. Make sure the videos have enough keyframes for smooth frame-by-frame navigation (roughly every 50 frames for high-resolution videos).

How do I re-encode videos?

Re-encoding is only available to Enterprise customers. Contact [e-mail] for more information.

• Customers not using Files can re-encode videos on our platform when uploading the data to a Dataset.
• Customers using Files can re-encode videos in the Files section of the platform by right-clicking the video and selecting Re-encode.
• You are notified if we detect your files need re-encoding.

See the re-encoding data section in our documentation for more information.

What video formats are supported?

We support the following formats and codecs:

• .mp4 file with h.265.
• .mp4 withvp9.

Please visit our documentation on compatibility for more information on data compatibility.

I am getting an error when I try to display video or DICOM files. How can I fix this?

This could be browser issue. To resolve:

1. Ensure you are using the Chrome browser.
2. Turn hardware acceleration off.
3. If you are still stuck, contact [e-mail] for assistance.

Annotate

Why can't I see all classifications/annotations when reviewing?

Check the sampling rate.

It’s possible that you are seeing a different number of classifications/annotations than expected because you have the sampling rate set too high/low.

What is causing the error I'm seeing in the Label Editor?

There might be several possible causes if you see a “Something Went Wrong” error message in the Label Editor:

1. CORS issues - when rendering an image or video from remote storage solutions (AWS S3, GCP, Azure) it is important to set up a valid Cross-Origin Request Sharing (CORS) Policy and failure to do so will result in errors when trying to load that remote content in the Encord application.

To resolve these, check that a valid CORS policy is applied to the remote storage bucket, which allows Encord’s domains. This varies between providers. For AWS the corresponding JSON looks like this:

[
    {
        "AllowedHeaders": [
            "*"
        ],
        "AllowedMethods": [
            "GET",
            "PUT"
        ],
        "AllowedOrigins": [
            "https://app.encord.com",
            "https://api.encord.com",
            "https://dicom.encord.com"
        ],
        "ExposeHeaders": []
    }
]

2. Connectivity issues - Check that your local connection is fast and performant. We also recommend that, when configuring your remote storage, you choose a location geographically proximate to your annotators to ensure the smoothest loading experience.
3. Occasionally, you might notice an error loading from remote storage if the remote storage bucket itself is newly provisioned. This is because the cloud provider sometimes provisions in any region first (to improve provisioning speed) then moves it to the requested region afterwards. If the issue is not resolver after ~1hr, contact Encord support.

Why is the Label Editor crashing, and what can I do about it?

If the Label Editor crashes after attempting to load your cloud data file, it is likely that the signed URL is expiring. Refreshing the Label Editor re-signs the URL.

We recommend increasing the expiration time for signed URLs on your integration.

Ontologies

Can I re-order an Ontology?

Re-ordering an Ontology is only possible using the SDK. We are looking to add a more user-friendly version of this functionality into our UI in the future.

The following example is used to re-order the first two elements in an existing Ontology using the SDK:

---

1. Authenticate the user client via the SDK using by defining the get_user_client function and invoking the EncordUserClient method if you haven’t already:

def get_user_client() -> EncordUserClient:
    ssh_key = os.environ.get("SSH_KEY")

    return EncordUserClient.create_with_ssh_private_key(
        ssh_key,
        domain=USED_DOMAIN,
        requests_settings=REQUESTS_SETTINGS,
    )

2. Pass the ONTOLOGY_RESOURCE_ID into the user_client’s get_ontology method, perform the relevant changes, and call ontology.save() to commit the changes:

user_client = get_user_client()
    ontology = user_client.get_ontology(ONTOLOGY_RESOURCE_ID)

    first_object = ontology.structure.objects[0]
    second_object = ontology.structure.objects[1]

    ontology.structure.objects[0] = second_object
    ontology.structure.objects[1] = first_object

    ontology.save()

Cloud Integrations

How do I set up an integration with Azure?

There are two methods to set up an Azure integration.

1. By generating an account-level shared access signature (SAS).
2. By using a service principal. Your user needs to be the admin of your Azure tenants for this method.

Both methods are described in detail in our documentation here

Can I use special characters in AWS S3 object names when importing data?

The use of special characters in object names should generally be avoided.

See the AWS docs here for more information.

Can I set up download via internet URLs?

In the interest of keeping your data secure we do not offer downloading via internet URLs.

Why does my video buffer when I skip to a cached frame?

A video needing to fetch data even though it has buffered implies that your AWS objects do not have caching enabled.

When setting up a permission policy for your AWS bucket ensure that all AWS objects used in Encord have the ‘S3 standard’ storage class.

Buffering issues

How can I fix buffering issues in the editor?

See our documentation here on tips to fixing buffering issues.

Why does my video buffer when I skip to a cached frame?

A video needing to fetch data even though it has buffered implies that your AWS objects do not have caching enabled.

When setting up a permission policy for your AWS bucket ensure that all AWS objects used in Encord have the ‘S3 standard’ storage class.

API and SDK

How do I use the SDK to read, create, and update labels?

Find instructions for uploading the labels here in our documentation. We support JSON and COCO formats.

How do I export metadata using Encord's SDK?

The review metadata will be exported in the JSON format. The ‘status’ will allow you to see what was reviewed and what wasn’t.

See our documentation here for more information.

How do I avoid hitting the timeout when using the get_project() method on the API?

Increase the timeout of your Encord client, given the size of the project this is a long-running query.

Can I pre-select frames to label for a video using the SDK?

Yes, you can!

To do so, add an extra feature in the Ontology naming it, for example: Selected -> Yes.

Share the ontology tree with Encord Support [e-mail] to allow us to match the import script with the feature uuid (featureNodeHash).

Can I import models and model predictions?

You can’t upload your own model - but you are able to import your model predictions via the SDK.

How can I import labels via CVAT importer?

See our CVAT documentation here.

What are Object Hashes?

The object hash provides an efficient and convenient mechanism to store and retrieve data with ease. Each has serves as a unique lookup key within the platform.