1 Topic by petecrowe

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I am using Kinovea to analyze the hitting motion of softball players. In every hit, there are 11 different points that can be enumerated, starting from Stance, and ending in Finish.

Rather than go through the laborious process of manually setting every keyframe, and naming it, I had the idea of saving an annotations file with all the keyframes already set in, but at set time positions. Obviously, every hitter will have a different timing. This didn't work as the numbers displayed on the keyframes are just text and have no connection to the actual video placement.

If this isn't in kinovea already, I'll add it to the features request forum. It would seem to me this would assist analysis in a host of different sports (especially those where someone is swinging or throwing something such as a javelin or swinging a golf club).

I'm imagining clicking on a keyframe, being able to type in the exact time of occurrence for that keyframe (i.e., "Contact" for when the bat connects with the ball), and the marker would jump to that point.

Thanks in advance

2 Reply by joan

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petecrowe wrote:

I'm imagining clicking on a keyframe, being able to type in the exact time of occurrence for that keyframe (i.e., "Contact" for when the bat connects with the ball), and the marker would jump to that point.

This part I didn't quite get. If I understand correctly you would have a prepared file with 11 keyframes in it, and you want to redistribute these keyframes in time to match the tempo of the current video. Is this correct?

You can change the name/title of the keyframe by editing it directly under the thumbnail or going into the keyframe edition and changing it there.

At the moment you can't change a keyframe time coordinate. I agree this is an unfortunate limitation. I'm not sure how it could be exposed. Maybe a new context menu to "move keyframe here" or drag and dropping the thumbnail on the timeline… Or maybe just changing the time manually from the keyframe dialog. This last option would probably be the easiest to code but maybe not very user friendly.

3 Reply by petecrowe

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Thanks Joan and sorry for not being clear. I think you've got it right. Yes, the keyframe markers would be editable (in relation to the time coordinate) and would move the marker to the new time typed in. I don't see the need to having the time be editable as just text, though others may have that need. I would just need to be able to type in a title for the marker (Stance, Contact, Follow-thru etc.) with another editable field being the time coordinates. While I'm on this topic, when I edit text with the pop-up, there is no "Apply" or "Ok" button which I can tab around to with my hands on the keyboard. I have to remove one hand to mouse over to the X to close the window. Adding some sort of button would make it easier.

Your initial ideas are perfect for how to handle making the keyframe time coordinate. Dragging and dropping would also be very, very handy, though with a mouse, it may be tricky putting that splice into the exact spot, but I like the drag and drop idea. I'd also suggest, a key combination such as Cmd (Ctrl) + clicking on the green keyframe timeline marker would open up that editing window.

Thanks for listening.

4 Reply by helenbayne

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I absolutely support this suggestion! The ability to load a template of keyframes that have saved all of the formatting features and then drag them to the appropriate time in the new clip would be a huge time saver.

5 Reply by joan

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Update on this topic.

I added a menu on the keyframes to "Move to current time".

Then I implemented the drag and drop into the timeline (and actually into the whole bottom part since it was not very usable when it only received the drop in the small timeline control).
 
While I was testing this I realized there was a possible issue if you drag and drop from one screen to the other, so in the end I added support for that as well. I think it's relevant to your use-case because now you can just keep the reference annotations in a dedicated video and drag the keyframes from there into the current one. I think it's a good solution to the "template" idea. The video updates itself during the dragging operation so it's relatively easy to get to the right frame. I still need to test it a lot more though.

6 Reply by JamesWild

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Hi Joan. Does the menu option on the keyframes "Move to current time" exist at the moment? This would be hugely valuable, but I can't see where this option is.

7 Reply by joan

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No unfortunately I still haven't had time to wrap up the next version. I had a list of things I absolutely wanted to have in it and I think I'll have to cut it short… I've been busy at work and couldn't find the time to implement all the things I wanted. I think I'll post the current state of things in the forum asap to get things rolling again.

8 Reply by JamesWild

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Thanks for getting back to me