Swing Vision AI line calls and Analysis

Cailean24 said:
I’ve used the free version some and seriously considering upgrading. I had some questions about functionality, and was wondering if there’s a tutorial/manual.

some things I haven’t figured out how to do:
- “Share” individual strokes rather than all strokes in a single session.

- I see the session statistics (average speed, depth percentagebut can you adjust it to differentiate between forehand/backhand, topspin/slice?

- the in/out and speed seems to be off, especially for serves. I’ve manually adjusted a stroke (not sure if that improves the AI for other strokes that I didn’t adjust), but that automatically adjusts the speed, which is crazy wrong for serves.

- how do you adjust the video using Apple Watch + iPhone. (I’ve figured this out now!!!)

I like the app, it’s just been tough trying to learn it.
Click to expand...
I believe there are tutorial videos for getting started, they should be in the app.
As far as sharing individual strokes I have not found a way to do this, only individual points. Though this seems like a feature that might be coming?
Seeing which strokes are forehand, backhand, etc can be toggled on and off in the premium version. Though it won't separate them out to just either forehand, backhand, etc. It just gives you the same map but with different icons to differentiate between strokes. This is the same for serves as well.

In my opinion if you're playing multiple matches a month and really want to get the most out of it then you should upgrade.

That's all I can help with, Swupnil will have to answer the rest.
 
derick232 said:
I believe there are tutorial videos for getting started, they should be in the app.
As far as sharing individual strokes I have not found a way to do this, only individual points. Though this seems like a feature that might be coming?
Seeing which strokes are forehand, backhand, etc can be toggled on and off in the premium version. Though it won't separate them out to just either forehand, backhand, etc. It just gives you the same map but with different icons to differentiate between strokes. This is the same for serves as well.

In my opinion if you're playing multiple matches a month and really want to get the most out of it then you should upgrade.

That's all I can help with, Swupnil will have to answer the rest.
Click to expand...
Right now I use it mostly for practice and play 5-6 times a week (4 practice, 2 match). I have a spinfire ball machine and like to see my form with the app. It’s been great, but sometimes I want to export just a few shots to my coach rather than an hour’s (700 balls) ball machine practice or an hour of serve practice.
 
Cailean24 said:
Right now I use it mostly for practice and play 5-6 times a week (4 practice, 2 match). I have a spinfire ball machine and like to see my form with the app. It’s been great, but sometimes I want to export just a few shots to my coach rather than an hour’s (700 balls) ball machine practice or an hour of serve practice.
Click to expand...

I just checked and here is the way to do this.

1) Load the session.
2) Mark which shots you want to export as "favorites"
3) Filter the video to only show the "favorites"
4) Export that video and it'll only include the shots marked as "favorites"
 
jwalk said:
I just checked and here is the way to do this.

1) Load the session.
2) Mark which shots you want to export as "favorites"
3) Filter the video to only show the "favorites"
4) Export that video and it'll only include the shots marked as "favorites"
Click to expand...
This would work if you're using the ball machine since it will cut each shot instead of a whole point. I don't think this would work for match play though because it will take the whole point not each shot individually.
 
derick232 said:
This would work if you're using the ball machine since it will cut each shot instead of a whole point. I don't think this would work for match play though because it will take the whole point not each shot individually.
Click to expand...
In ball machine mode it doesn’t seem to allow to select as favorite. I’m my rally mode I have the “favorite” option.
 
Cailean24 said:
In ball machine mode it doesn’t seem to allow to select as favorite. I’m my rally mode I have the “favorite” option.
Click to expand...
If you use rally mode with the ball machine does it cut each shot since it sees the point as being over after your hit or does it just confuse the AI?
 
after I upload and process the video on my iPhone, the smart insights tab is always empty. I have to close the app then reload it for it to come up with the data.

It was also showing up my weekly goals until I quit and reload app. Must be a bug. App says shots won’t count towards weekly goal unless you record with the app


i tried the swing vision on app recording last night along with the score tracking on my Apple Watch. Score tracking was easy to use. BUT Once you end a match recording on the Apple Watch, you cannot start another recording UNLESS you take down the iPhone and open the swingvision app again. This is highly inconvenient on a night where I play several matches against different people. Please make it easier
 
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@Cailean24 sorry about that! There isn't a good way to export just individual shots yet. Perhaps we should add a way to favorite shots and export only those for ball machine/serve practice! I'll let the team know.

To view your speed, depth, etc. by a particular stroke type, you can swipe over to the Shot Placement heatmap and then deselect the filters the for the stroke types you don't want. The stats below should then update to reflect that. We're working on redesigning this so that it's more easily accessible right from the Shot Stats section (i.e. without needing to view the heatmap or interact with the filters).

And yes in/out and speed are still very much a work in progress. We've been working on a massive update that will allow the A.I. to process the video at 60fps, which will result in massively better speeds and shot placement. It's almost ready but just tweaking a few more things as we know this has been the biggest gripe with the app.

@naruto83 We are working on adding back-to-back recording support later this year! It's a bit tricky since we need you to tag the player pictures at the end of the recording before you can start another one, but with a bit of refactoring things we should be able to let you tag this stuff later on so that you can start another recording right away. I personally really want this one too :)

I'll mention the smart insights and weekly goals issues to our team. That's a bit surprising but should be an easy fix.
 
swupnil said:
@Cailean24 sorry about that! There isn't a good way to export just individual shots yet. Perhaps we should add a way to favorite shots and export only those for ball machine/serve practice! I'll let the team know.
Click to expand...

This would be very useful for isolating a few keys strokes or serves if you want to show a coach some examples during lessons. Maybe in the future with high frame rates supported slow motion could be implemented for review.
 
@markch it works with both the front and rear cameras, whichever you choose. Some people find setting up the camera easier when using the selfie camera, but the rear cameras will generally give you better accuracy since the lens quality is better.

@jwalk makes sense. By the way we already have slowmo in the video playback. You can tap the “1x” button in the top right of the nav bar to adjust the playback speed :)
 
I just started a 14 day trial of the premium version and recorded a singles match tonight. I decided not to fiddle with the scoring options on my Apple Watch and just treated it like a hitting session instead. One thing I noticed was that the estimated serve speed seemed to be impacted by which side of the net the server is on. Estimates for the same player were often much lower when serving on the far side of the net from the camera.

Also, I thought it was interesting that it labeled most of my spin serves as kick serves, although I rarely hit a true topspin kicker. There is always a decent amount of sidespin even if I come partially over the top of the ball.

What is the video retention policy? I notice my session is 2.65 Gb and it’s stored in the cloud. Obviously if I recorded all of my sessions the storage would add up fast.

So far I’m enjoying the app. Next time I play a friend, I might start fiddling with the Apple Watch scoring stuff. I just didn’t want to get too distracted / distracting since I didn’t know my opponent very well.
 
@time_fly thanks for trying it out :) Yep serve speeds are very much a work in progress but we almost have an update ready that gets this way way more accurate. It’s looking really good in our testing, just a few more edge cases to handle and we’ll have it out in the next few weeks.

Serve spins have been tricky too but if you can go into the video and correct these (tap the pencil icon in the top left during video playback) that will help the A.I. learn better for future updates!

Lastly, you have unlimited cloud storage for life :)
 
@swupnil I‘ve just installed the latest version (8.6.4 11.12) to use next Monday (when the UK starts coming out of lockdown!) and the watch app won’t install, when I select Install from the iphone watch app it basically crashes and does nothing.

I’ve restarted the watch and other apps install ok.
 
@russellg congrats on getting out of lockdown! You guys are crushing the vaccine distribution, so well deserved :)

Typically whenever there’s watch-phone synchronization issues, I like to recommend the following:

1. Power off both phone and watch for at least 30 seconds.
2. Power both on and ping the phone from the watch (tap the little phone icon in the watch’s control center, which is accessed by swiping up from the bottom of your watch face).
3. Try the thing that didn’t work before (in your case, installing the app), and it should magically work!
 
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@swupnil thanks for the quick reply. I followed the instructions but still have the same problem.

The app had been installed on the watch and was working albeit that I couldn’t get the video from the phone showing on the watch hence I deleted the app from the watch to reinstall in the hope that it would solve that problem.

in between I downloaded the latest version of the app to the phone.
 
@russellg hmm that's quite strange. I'm not sure what else to try beyond that as we don't have much control over the app install/update process. My suggestion would then be to delete the app on the iPhone, turn off bluetooth for both devices, power off for 30 seconds, turn on bluetooth, and try installing again. Please only delete/reinstall if all of your videos are showing a cloud icon with checkmark below them (indicating that they're backed up on our servers).
 
@swupnil , I might have asked this question before but don't ever remember getting answer. Would it be possible to do a ball toss overlay to see how consistent your sever toss is? I think this would be a super helpful feature for people working on serves.
 
@derick232 thats certainly something we could do eventually. Right now still focusing on getting the shot placement and ball speed as accurate as possible, but yes serve toss trajectory would be pretty straightforward for us to do actually :)
 
Another feedback. I noticed the app used up almost 80gb of my iPhone storage even though I had every single session deleted from the apps local storage. Optimising the data storage didn’t fix the problem. I had to delete the app to remove it.
 
Is it possible to pause recording? I plan to do a ball machine session later and I’d like to gather some stats, but I don’t need to record all of the dead time while I pick up balls between rounds. In addition to wasting resources, recording while picking up also increases the chances of it mis-detecting hits if I push balls around or if there is activity on the neighboring court.
 
@time_fly we hope to add a pause feature eventually, yes! But it’s going to take some time to get it right as that is a pretty substantial change to how the app records and stores videos.
 
I recorded another friendly set today. This time I tried to use the Apple Watch to score the points. In the metrics at the end, I think I ended up with fewer double faults than I really had; I perhaps gave the point to the other person rather than tagging the serves properly. I wish I could adjust that. This leads me to two more requests / pieces of feedback:

1. It would be nice to be able to do the "tagging" of point outcomes afterwards during the video review as well as doing it in real time on the watch.

2. I think returns of serve should be its own shot category for which statistics are available. ROS is such an important part of the game that it needs to be analyzed separately from other ground strokes IMO.
 
just upgraded to pro and have a few observations.

For singles match, why is the preferred mounting location not in the dead center, but rather on either side of center (the green areas)?

In great weather and a high mounting position, the tracking system for ball placement works fairly well. The issue I consistently run into is with net play, and additionally I have the occasional point that bleeds into the next point. When the weather is not good (sun shining into camera) and /or mounting position is poor, then there will be very poor tracking.

I just purchased one of the Swing recommended fence mounts (the pole that hooks on top). I’m hoping it will improve the tracking vs my Ubeesize, where Im limited by the height I can mount it (2m).
 
In singles you spend the vast majority of your time standing on the center hash. If the camera was directly behind the hash you'd be blocking it's view most of the time. Especially on serve, you need the camera to be offset just a bit so it can see the ground without you blocking it.
 
@time_fly (1) Yep, working on an entire interface dedicating to tagging/editing point details after the recording is over! (2) Yes, totally! We're working on an interface to separate these stats out. It's going to be awesome! In the shorter term we'll also add filters to the video playback so that you can watch only your returns, for example.

@Cailean24 yea as Demented mentioned, it's to just prevent the ball from being occluded by the near player. This tends to happen extremely often when you go up to the net. The fence mount should improve this for you drastically!
 
I wouldn’t use a tripod either. Unless you place it behind the fence and hook it against the fence so it doesn’t fall over.

Tried my iPhone 12 Pro Max with the app For the first time. So fast compare to the iPhone X. Omg. I guess the 2k was worth it. Hahaha. I noticed that when I was point scoring with my Apple Watch, sometimes the points were already showing up. Is this done by AI Or was I scrolling the crown accidentally? I was focusing on the tennis so I couldn’t figure it out on the go
 
~5 matches now with the pro version.

Still lots of issues with tracking regarding net play. Outside of net play, near side court tracking is very good, usually only need minor correction. Far side is marginalneeding correction on 1 in 3 balls. I play on clay courts where “out” and “in” are the same court color (orange clay) and the lines are partially obscured by clay.

The AI gets occasionally confused by the neighboring court, but this is infrequent.

The app stopped tracking during one of my matches, leaving me with the video and score (via my Apple Watch) with nothing else. Not sure what happened. Lasted until the end of the match (8 games or so).

After the match ends and you identify players, the double tap to override AI is finicky requiring multiple attempts.

Couldnt the AI use some of the user ball corrections to recalculate the entire match? This is hazardous for a few corrections due to player blocking camera view or net play, but on 30 where it’s obvious the AI doesn’t have a good knowledge of the court layout... (I mainly correct shot placement)

I spent the last 5 paragraphs highlighting the issues I’ve experienced , but don’t let that takeaway from the positives of this app. If you play tennis a lot, 2+ times a week, then this app is absolutely worth the pro version money. It makes your matches enjoyable to watch, as well as let’s you improve your game by showing your deficiencies in form via video and gameplay via metadata/stats.
 
Thanks for the feedback as always, everyone!

@antony We usually recommend at least 4.5 feet / 1.5 meters off the ground. We have a tripod that we recommend, as well as another option that can be mounted on the fence at a similar height, in our how-to guide here.

@naruto83 nice upgrade choice! Sadly, we don't auto-score the match... yet ;) It's probably just the digital crown, and you can disable that in the settings before you initiate the match on your watch.

@Cailean24 appreciate the thorough feedback. Net play definitely is a tough one, especially if you're not mounting the device on the fence. We have some big improvements coming this weekend though. If the app stopped tracking it's usually either due to a phone/FT call or low battery (or overheating). If the video is still there, you should be able to re-process it to get all the shot data and highlights out of it. You can expect some massive improvements to the shot placement accuracy as well in our next update. Our A.I. does learn from your corrections, but not locally on your device. Your edits get incorporated into future updates of the app. Hopefully someday we can bring this learning on device to make it more immediate and personalized!
 
swupnil said:
Thanks for the feedback as always, everyone!

@antony We usually recommend at least 4.5 feet / 1.5 meters off the ground. We have a tripod that we recommend, as well as another option that can be mounted on the fence at a similar height, in our how-to guide here.

@naruto83 nice upgrade choice! Sadly, we don't auto-score the match... yet ;) It's probably just the digital crown, and you can disable that in the settings before you initiate the match on your watch.

@Cailean24 appreciate the thorough feedback. Net play definitely is a tough one, especially if you're not mounting the device on the fence. We have some big improvements coming this weekend though. If the app stopped tracking it's usually either due to a phone/FT call or low battery (or overheating). If the video is still there, you should be able to re-process it to get all the shot data and highlights out of it. You can expect some massive improvements to the shot placement accuracy as well in our next update. Our A.I. does learn from your corrections, but not locally on your device. Your edits get incorporated into future updates of the app. Hopefully someday we can bring this learning on device to make it more immediate and personalized!
Click to expand...
Nice to have you here providing updates, receiving my QM-1 mount soon , going to try out the app. It is unfortunate that it is not running on Android yet, is there any downside to me filming as a video and importing the footage later (am i missing any features). Anyways Will post my feedback here once I get going.
 
swupnil said:
Thanks for the feedback as always, everyone!

@antony We usually recommend at least 4.5 feet / 1.5 meters off the ground. We have a tripod that we recommend, as well as another option that can be mounted on the fence at a similar height, in our how-to guide here.

@naruto83 nice upgrade choice! Sadly, we don't auto-score the match... yet ;) It's probably just the digital crown, and you can disable that in the settings before you initiate the match on your watch.

@Cailean24 appreciate the thorough feedback. Net play definitely is a tough one, especially if you're not mounting the device on the fence. We have some big improvements coming this weekend though. If the app stopped tracking it's usually either due to a phone/FT call or low battery (or overheating). If the video is still there, you should be able to re-process it to get all the shot data and highlights out of it. You can expect some massive improvements to the shot placement accuracy as well in our next update. Our A.I. does learn from your corrections, but not locally on your device. Your edits get incorporated into future updates of the app. Hopefully someday we can bring this learning on device to make it more immediate and personalized!
Click to expand...
Tracking seems much improved after this weekend’s update based on one match. Net play still problematic, but the significant improvement in far side tracking is much appreciated!
 
Jeremy Lichtman said:
Nice to have you here providing updates, receiving my QM-1 mount soon , going to try out the app. It is unfortunate that it is not running on Android yet, is there any downside to me filming as a video and importing the footage later (am i missing any features). Anyways Will post my feedback here once I get going.
Click to expand...

No issues importing videos. I use a dj osmo action and import to my macbook. Works fine. Only thing I can think of that the mac is missing at this time is the inability to export videos with the overlays. I have to do that on my ipad. Kinda janky. Devs say it's an issues with the Mac OS at this time and apple is working on a fix so who knows when that will work.
 
jwalk said:
No issues importing videos. I use a dj osmo action and import to my macbook. Works fine. Only thing I can think of that the mac is missing at this time is the inability to export videos with the overlays. I have to do that on my ipad. Kinda janky. Devs say it's an issues with the Mac OS at this time and apple is working on a fix so who knows when that will work.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I also ran into not being able to export with overlay from the Mac. So the workflow is: copy file to laptop from GoPro, import into Swingvision on laptop, export video with overlay from iPhone, then upload to Youtube using iPhone.
 
So I filmed a match using an android phone and then exported that entire mp4 to an iPhone via airdrop on a mac in order to try to import it via the app on the iPhone. It seems that even though the video is in my camera roll and i can select it the swing vision app throws an error " Alert: did not receive valid video to import"

So if I do not film the match directly on the iPhone is there no way to import it later into the app on the iPhone?
 
@Jeremy Lichtman sorry about that. I’m not sure why the video wouldn’t import.

Have you tried doing this with the native Mac app on your Mac? You can find the app by searching for “SwingVision” on the Mac App Store.

If you still have issues, can you please upload the video to Dropbox/Drive and DM me the link? I can have our team take a look to try to replicate / fix the issue.

Also to answer your original question, the main thing you miss out on if you do NOT use the iPhone is that pairing the phone with an Apple Watch elevates the experience quite a bit. You can track scores on the watch while the video is recording, and all the data gets merged together. This gives you a nice TV-quality scoreboard on your video, a ton of additional stats (such as break point conversion, 1st/2nd serves won, etc.) and additional video filters (eg “show me every break point”).
 
swupnil said:
@Jeremy Lichtman sorry about that. I’m not sure why the video wouldn’t import.

Have you tried doing this with the native Mac app on your Mac? You can find the app by searching for “SwingVision” on the Mac App Store.

If you still have issues, can you please upload the video to Dropbox/Drive and DM me the link? I can have our team take a look to try to replicate / fix the issue.

Also to answer your original question, the main thing you miss out on if you do NOT use the iPhone is that pairing the phone with an Apple Watch elevates the experience quite a bit. You can track scores on the watch while the video is recording, and all the data gets merged together. This gives you a nice TV-quality scoreboard on your video, a ton of additional stats (such as break point conversion, 1st/2nd serves won, etc.) and additional video filters (eg “show me every break point”).
Click to expand...

Hi swupnil,

To answer your question, yes I am able to import the video using the Mac app and process it, but I have a older Imac and it takes many hours to do so. So I was curious to see if the iPhone 12 could handle it better.

I mainly use android devices (samsung watch/s20) so right now seems like my only option is to download the mp4 to a mac and process after the fact there, which I am fine with, but it takes along time on the mac.

Hopefully a native android version will come soon, as I mainly focus on the data after the match itself.
 
swupnil said:
By the way, SwingVision's line calling was featured in today's Apple Keynote! You can watch our segment here. Pretty cool :)
Click to expand...
Not sure I want to use my 12.9 iPad Pro, mounted on a tripod, to record/score my matches. Do what you do tho.
(I’m buying everything listed yesterday except the iMac and iPad Pro 11)
 
@taylor15 as long as you record in 60fps, it’ll work :)

@Addxyz yes but it’s a bit of work. If you DM the links to your sessions, I can reset them. You’ll need the video to be 60fps to take full advantage of the improvements though.

@Cailean24 yea same haha! I really like just setting up my phone and the integration with the watch is amazing :)
 
i tried out the new app today, the shot placements are definately more accurate on my iph 12pro max, and i only had to select 3 or 4 images of myself at the end. maybe since this is still apples flagship phone, it should be the first to enable live line calling and automated scoring? :) btw, i've been using my apple watch to keep the scores, but i've had to put a sweat band over my watch as i've already smashed one with my racquet :( and i almost smashed it again when i fell over.... but its difficult with sweat band because once it gets sweaty the watch does crazy auto scoring on its own. hahaha. so i've decided to change my sweat band after every set.
 
@naruto83 haha yea we will definitely try our best to get it working on iPhone 12. One idea I had was that even if it’s not as accurate as iPad Pro (due to processing limitations), we could still release the line calling but allow you to overrule the occasional incorrect calls from your watch? You could even see a replay of the last bounce? I guess my only concern would be how to make sure both players agree to the overrule (there would always be an incentive for one person to disagree unless you are friends and know each other well).

And yes I used to run into the racket smashing issue as well. I just wear my watch on my dominant hand now. Took a couple matches for my non-dominant hand to get used to doing swipe / tap gestures but it’s not too bad! Also you can turn off the Digital Crown scoring in the settings in your watch to avoid phantom gestures :)
 
@Nostradamus not quite yet but we’re almost there! With the ideal set up on top of the fence, the latest version of the app is doing about 95% in/out accuracy for ground strokes and 90% for serves. Still lots of room for improvement but the new iPad Pro will be able to get to 99%+ much sooner.
 
swupnil said:
@Nostradamus not quite yet but we’re almost there! With the ideal set up on top of the fence, the latest version of the app is doing about 95% in/out accuracy for ground strokes and 90% for serves. Still lots of room for improvement but the new iPad Pro will be able to get to 99%+ much sooner.
Click to expand...

Can it make calls on the opposite baseline ? It seems like that's where alot of arguments are being made ... Dodo birds that think they can clear see the ball on the opposite baseline and going crazy on the close baseline calls that is called out
 
I still think the ground stroke speed needs to be calibrated upwards to match pro speeds given on TV. The consistency of speed and accuracy of placement obviously went up by a giant leap this week but the actual numbers are still 10 to 15 mph under what gets shown on Hawkeye or Playsight. I've been feeding pro match footage into it to see the results and watching Rafa and Rodger go back and forth is interesting but the stroke speeds still say mostly 61-65 mph with winners in the low 70's.
 
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