Using Ubersense to Analyze Rowing in Motion Videos
Ubersense is an App for video motion analysis. It allows you to import videos from your device’s camera roll. After pre-processing the video, Ubersense allows you to replay the video in slow motion. It uses a frame interpolation technology to give you very smooth slow motion replays. We love it!
Analyzing Motion Sequences with Ubersense
Ok, so now let’s go and dissect the following Rowing in Motion sample video.
The best part about ubersense is that you can easily draw and measure angles on the recorded video. While this is not a scientific exact method, it can give you a good indication about certain important motion sequence characteristics.
A very good use case for Ubersense is to compare the motion sequence of effective and ineffective strokes. In the first image, we see suboptimal acceleration after the catch, indicated by a less steep rise in the acceleration graph. By comparing it to a more effective stroke, we can conclude that the slow pick-up of boat acceleration was caused by lifting the upper body too early:
Pros, Cons and Tips
Ubersense is great if you want smooth slow motion videos and compare motion sequences. Here’s what we like:
- Clean and easy user interface
- Currently free on the App Store
- Allows you to share videos directly on youtube
- Importing the videos is quite slow – even on an iPad3. Coach’s Eye (another SlowMo video player, but without the great measure functionality) is way faster.
- Video quality suffers considerably. I would love to keep my material in HD.
- Unfortunately, it’s impractical for us to keep the camera aligned perfectly with the boat. Best approach is to measure angles on stills and take screenshots (press Home and Power-Button at the same time to do that)
- Best used with a stylus/touch pen so you can position the measurement points more accurately
Impressions
Thanks to Paul Thompson (Chief Coach Women & Lightweights GB Rowing) who was first to tell us about Ubersense!
What program did you use to embed the rowing stroke graph on to the video?
The videos have been recorded with the rowing in motion Coach App. You can find out more about on this site, it’s all about this App 🙂
The videos have been recorded with the rowing in motion Coach App. You can find out more about on this site, it’s all about this App 🙂