1 Topic by Golfer

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I have researched and shopped for golf video swing analysis software and can find nothing for under $1,000 that compares to Kinovea.  With a few tweaks, I think that Kinovea will be better than the $5,000 packages.  Here are my thoughts on how this might be achieved:

1.  I would like to build a push button panel that emulates keyboard shortcuts.  This would allow me to practice in front of the camera without having to run back to the computer after each swing to watch the video.  To do this, there will need to be keyboard shortcuts that switch from capture to replay, a feature that is not currently available.  I think that most ofl the other keyboard shortcuts (slow motion, step by step, etc) I need are in the software the now. This is not an original idea. Golf-Tec uses a push button panel like this on its golf teaching software/hardware package.

For anyone who may be interested, the Hagstrom Electronics KE-USB36 keyboard emulator along with 2 inch push buttons that are available on Amazon would allow the keyboard shortcuts to be run by pushing the buttons with the butt end of the golf club.

2.  It would be nice if a captured video would move instantly to the replay screen so that there would be no need to go through the steps of selecting and  opening the video file to replay it.  Using the push buttons described above, you would push one button to record the swing.  Then you could push a different button to switch to replay and the video would be there ready to go, thereby eliminating the need to run back to the computer to do this.

3.  Having one button to replay two screens (front and back views) would be icing on the cake.

4.  The Sony PS3 Eyecams are ideal for the golf swing - they are extremely cheap and capture 75 fps, which is good enough to eliminate blur.  CodeLaboratories makes a driver that runs these cameras on Windows.  The driver for one camera is free, and it costs $20 to buy two camera support.  Kinovea supports the PS3 Eye but the dual camera support is not quite right.  You have to load one PS3 Eye before plugging in the second one; otherwise the software thinks there is only one camera.

5.  A swing "trigger" would be ideal.  Foresight sells a swing trigger, but it costs $4,000.  It is a box that starts the video when you begin your backswing and stops the video when the swing ends.  There must be a way to achieve this through software, but I don't have a clue how.

I am a tinkerer and am illiterate on software coding.  So please accept these thoughts in that spirit.  Thanks in advance for any thoughts that anyone is able to offer.

2 Reply by joan

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Hi,
Great points.

Have you tried the delay slider ? If you don't care about saving each swing it may be enough.

Ideas about capture-replay scenarios have been floating around.
My fear is that a function only available through a keyboard shortcut will be virtually non-existant to 90% of users.

Barring a unique "most popular" replay scenario, what would be needed is to turn this into a mini macro "language" so you can create a macro command by picking actions like "close capture screen", "open playback screen", "launch last captured file", "close playback screen", "open capture on last used camera", etc.
Obviously this is a different beast altogether, if only to make sure the list of commands is coherent.

Golfer wrote:

5.  A swing "trigger" would be ideal.  Foresight sells a swing trigger, but it costs $4,000.  It is a box that starts the video when you begin your backswing and stops the video when the swing ends.

Implementing trigger by microphone level would be feasible.
Combined with the delay feature and a new function to specify a preset duration for recording, it could be used to record the full swing by hearing when the ball is hit, without touching the computer…

3 Reply by Golfer

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Thanks for your prompt response and the outstanding ideas it contained.  I wish that I could be more helpful on the programming side, but that is well beyond my skill sets.  If there is something else I can do to help, please don't hesitate to let me know.  In the meantime, I will keep tinkering with this project and will update the post if and as I make further progress.  Kinovea works fine now for basic two-camera golf swing analysis, as long as I have a second person with me who is willing to operate the mouse and keyboard.  Eliminating the need for a second person is my primary goal.

4 Reply by bchinn

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I was curious if any advancements have been made towards allowing this feature?  Ideally I'd love to have the video buffered, and when audio levels break a threshold (ball impact), the program would load and save the video for say a preset time before impact and for a preset time after impact.  As an added bonus it would be cool if it could after capture loop that video for a preset number of times before going back to capture mode.  So say you make a swing review the loop, then make another swing.

Just adding more ideas and hoping maybe I can spur on some motivation for such an added feature.

Otherwise, love the product!

Brian

5 Reply by scott84golf

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I would love something like this as well.

Another thing I see a lot of golf analysis software doing is integrating data from launch monitors(Flightscope, Trackman etc) into their software. Would something like that be possible with Kinovea?