On the inference speed and video-compression robustness of DeepLabCut

Pose estimation is crucial for many applications in neuroscience, biomechanics, genetics and beyond. We recently presented a highly efficient method for markerless pose estimation based on transfer learning with deep neural networks called DeepLabCut. Current experiments produce vast amounts of video data, which pose challenges for both storage and analysis. Here we improve the inference speed of DeepLabCut by up to tenfold and benchmark these updates on various CPUs and GPUs. In particular, depending on the frame size, poses can be inferred offline at up to 1200 frames per second (FPS). For instance, 278 × 278 images can be processed at 225 FPS on a GTX 1080 Ti graphics card. Furthermore, we show that DeepLabCut is highly robust to standard video compression (ffmpeg). Compression rates of greater than 1,000 only decrease accuracy by about half a pixel (for 640 × 480 frame size). DeepLabCut’s speed and robustness to compression can save both time and hardware expenses.