PoleVaultPower.com

Not sure if this belongs on equipment or sales forum, since the program itself is freeware.

I was attending a training weekend, where one of the coaches told me about a program he has been introduced to.
The program has been developed to gymnastics, but there is certainly potential for the use by T&F coaches.

The software consists of a capture program called Skillcapture, that uses a camera attached to the PC as the input source, and the analysis program is called Skillspector.
The capture program can be controlled by a RFID device, so that each athlete uses a "dogtag" to start the video capture. The program saves the individual files based on that dogtag. It can upload video to various targets, such as a USB key, a LAN drive, a ftp server or a Youtube account. The program can also be controlled manually by shortcuts, reducing the cost to a minimum.
The analysis program can, if video is calibrated, be used to determine horisontal and vertical speed of various parts of the body.

The program itself is freeware. The developer can deliver the RFID device, as well as the dogtags.

Haven't had time myself to examine closer (no camera yet, and the program won't accept the AVI's I have, since all are DIVX or XVID encoded).

http://video4coach.com/index.php

This software looks interesting although I have had several problems with it. Golfdane, you can download a few sample video files for the SkillSpector program. I have done that but once it is loaded, I have no idea where to start. When I looked for the documentation, the link that is provided on the page brings up "not available at this time."

For a while I was able to run the SkillCapture program with a little success. But one time it crashed. I tried to restart the program but it won't start. I uninstalled it, re-downloaded and re-installed the program. It still won't start. It puts out a window that says the program had trouble and asking if I want to send a report to microsoft. I have written an email to the contact address on their website. I'll see if they respond.

I would be very interested if you or anyone else would try to work with this software. It might be a very vaulable tool for all of us. I won't know until after I can play with it for a while. Let me know if you have any success.

- master

Hello PoleVaultPower Users,

There has been some problems with SkillCapture 1.4 in terms of uninstall/install. Mainly the software has been developed using windows XP and porting it directly to Vista has not been without problems. But, the new version 2.0 which has been released yesterday should take care of this. In addition the software has been made even easier to use. Hope you find some use for it.
Jan

I was not sure how useful this would be because these types of programs usually cost 2k to 5k. I down loaded the program and found a $15 USB video adapter to allow the use of a useless old VCR. USB's band width only allows for 30 frames per second the good news is thats fast enough for capturing polevaulting. I used the capture program this past weekend at the club, its great, it autostarts when an athlete comes down the runway and captures for an adjustable time period. You can view the video right then or later. You have various viewing controls fast, slow, single step forward back. I have only started learning the skillspector but I am especially interested in the ghost overlay and timing features. Just think we can measure how long it takes to get inverted, athlete to athlete or jump to jump. This is a clear cut advantage over verbal only feedback. I could bring the athlete over and immediatley show them what they did or didnt do. Quote from the users manual (The automation of movement is just as effective for inappropriate movements as for optimal) Thanks Golfdane.