8 ‐ Output File Names

For complete documentation see Preprocessing on the docs site.

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Every analysis writes files, and after an afternoon of work a folder can hold dozens. The naming rules here decide what each file is called and whether a re-run replaces the old file or sits beside it—worth two minutes before your first long session, and exactly where to look when a file seems to have vanished.

Every analysis method accepts two parameters that control output file naming:

• target_name—the output file path. If None (default), a suffix is appended to the source filename in the same directory. For example, history on dance.avi gives dance_history.avi.

• overwrite—if True (default), an existing file is replaced in place, so re-running a method overwrites the previous result. With overwrite=False, the name is silently incremented instead, keeping every run: dance_history.avi → dance_history_0.avi → dance_history_1.avi.

import musicalgestures as mg

mv = mg.MgVideo('/path/to/video.avi')
mv.history(target_name='/output/my_history.avi', overwrite=False)   # keep every run