Here's a page of my serve practice.
The first thing that stands out is that pretty much all my serves are registered as forehands. It doesn't bother me in this instance, because I know that those are supposed to be serves. But it would bother me if I filmed myself play a set rather than have serve practice. So Qlipp should look into this matter. Now with this problem duly noted, let's move forward to what I really like about the Qlipp video mode.
COACH YOURSELF
I've been a Talk Tennis junkie for a long time. I watch the pro tennis religiously, own most DVD instructions and watch a whole lot of instruction videos on Youtube. I know good technique when I see it, and I can easily tell from film if there's a deficiency in technique. But I've always been super lazy about filming myself. I always knew that there would be a huge discrepancy between how I think I play and how I actually play. Perhaps I did not want to find out how bad I'd look on camera. Whatever the reason, I never got around to filming myself until I got Qlipp and finally ordered the cellphone mount for the tripod.
Seeing myself on the screen, I could immediately see the glaring mistakes I was making. Just to share a couple, I noticed that at impact, I was bent too far forward at the hip with my upper body collapsing. Now I know that in subsequent practice, I need to try to keep my body more upright. Another thing: I always try to keep the elbow of my hitting arm up in line with both shoulders as I move into "trophy pose." But I noticed that immediately before I bring the racquet head down, I lowered my elbow, bringing it close to my ribs and taking it out of alignment with the two shoulders, and creating a hitch.
Now that I see the mistakes I make, I can work toward correcting myself. Seeing is so much better than hoping you've been doing things right.
SEE YOURSELF EASILY, REPEATEDLY, EVEN SLOWLY, WITH PERTINENT DATA
The Qlipp allows you to play the video in several ways.
First, you simply watch it from the beginning to the end. You can pay attention to your technique, perhaps even show it to a better player or coach for some feedback. But you're not simply looking at a video. As the video progresses, Qlipp will highlight the data according to the index to show that this particular portion of the video matches this particular shot in the log and you can see the speed, type of spin, spin level, and the sweet-spot accuracy. Awesome!
Now I have noticed that Qlipp can miss out on some shots and not record data on every shot. This is easy to tell, because if you play back the video, you'll notice shots on video that have not been recorded in the indices of the log. For example, let's say you've hit 20 serves, all of which you can clearly see on video, but Qlipp's log may only have 15 shots analyzed. Qlipp should look into this matter as well.
Second (and this is a really fabulous function!), if you don't want to watch it from the beginning to the end, you can simply click a particular shot indexed in the log. For example, you might say, "Wow, look at this one. Let's see how I hit a 110 mph serve!" You click on that line, and the video will immediately cue to that section and show it to you. No need to rewind or fast forward. It's instant, and you can see it over and over. Or you might say, "Wow, how did I hit that lousy 20-mph serve? I've got to see this." And Qlipp will show you that video instantly as well, and you can see exactly what you've done wrong.
Third, you can watch it in SLOW MODE. Let's say you think you've caught a glimpse of a technical flaw and want to take a closer look. Press "Slow-Mo" button and choose how slowly you want it played back. Then you get to see for yourself exactly what you did wrong.
