How-To Guide

How to film a swing or pitch for video analysis

Film from the side, perpendicular to the swing or the pitcher's stride line, with the phone on a tripod at roughly waist height and the whole body plus the bat or throwing arm in frame. Use your phone's slow-motion or high-frame-rate mode, film in bright even light, and keep the camera in the same spot every session so your numbers stay comparable.

Camera position matters more than camera quality

A modern phone has plenty of resolution. What ruins a clip is the angle. Pose-tracking and barrel-path measurement assume you are looking at the motion square-on, so a camera set off-axis systematically reads a swing as steeper or flatter than it really is, and reads an arm slot as higher or lower than it really is.

For hitting

Set the camera on the open side of the hitter, level with the hitting zone, aimed at the middle of the body and perpendicular to the direction of the swing. You want the front and back leg, the hands, and the barrel through the whole path all visible. Do not angle the camera toward home plate to "get a better look" — that tilt is exactly what corrupts an attack angle reading.

For pitching and throwing

Film from the glove side, square to the line the pitcher strides down, far enough back that the whole delivery from leg lift through release stays inside the frame. A side view is what shows arm slot, elbow height, and release point. A view from directly behind or in front of the pitcher is useful for stride direction, but it will not give you a usable arm-slot measurement.

Settings that make a real difference

Frame rate is the single most important setting. A bat travels a long way between frames at standard video rates, so contact can fall in the gap between two frames. Slow-motion modes capture many more frames per second and give any analysis tool far more to work with.

Two smaller things help as well. Wear clothing that contrasts with the background so limb positions are unambiguous — a dark shirt against a dark fence is hard for any tracker. And keep the background reasonably clear of other players moving through the frame.

Consistency is what makes the numbers mean anything

Every estimate from video depends on camera angle, lighting, frame rate, and distance. That means a change in your setup can move a number as much as a change in the swing. If you want to know whether a hitter is actually improving, film the same drill from the same spot with the same settings each time.

• Mark the tripod position with tape or a landmark you can find again.
• Compare like drills: tee work against tee work, bullpen against bullpen.
• Capture several reps per session and look at the group, not one clip.
• Note anything unusual — a different bat, a new field, a cloudy day.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Filming from the front or behind for a swing. A head-on view cannot show barrel path.
• Zooming mid-clip. It changes scale partway through the motion.
• Standing too close. Cropped hands or a bat that leaves the frame breaks the measurement and is unsafe.
• Hand-holding the phone. Camera shake adds motion the analysis has to sort out from the athlete's.
• Shooting into the sun. A silhouette hides the joint positions the whole analysis depends on.

Turning a good clip into a breakdown

Once you have a clean side view, Pitch & Swing Lab analyzes it on the phone itself. Record in the app or import a clip you already have, and it returns attack angle, swing path, and estimated bat speed for hitting, or arm slot, elbow position, release point, and estimated arm speed for pitching and throwing — plus a 0–100 mechanics score and a pose skeleton drawn over a slow-motion replay you can scrub frame by frame. Nothing is uploaded, so it works in the cage or on a field with no signal.

From there, the two guides below cover what to do with the numbers: what attack angle is telling you, and how to read a bat speed figure in context.