ANVIL is a free video annotation tool. It offers multi-layered annotation based on a user-defined coding scheme. During coding the user can see color-coded elements on multiple tracks in time-alignment. Some special features are cross-level links, non-temporal objects, timepoint tracks, coding agreement analysis and a project tool for managing whole corpora of annotation files. Originally developed for gesture research in 2000, ANVIL is now being used in many research areas including human-computer interaction, linguistics, ethology, anthropology, psychotherapy, embodied agents, computer animation and oceanography.