Recording & camera setup FAQ

Motion Lab shows the recommended view on the capture screen before you film. The starting points are:

• Golf: Down-the-line (behind, along the target line) or face-on — full swing in view.
• Tennis: Behind or side-on for groundstrokes; capture the bounce and contact.
• Pickleball: Diagonal or side angle that shows the paddle, feet, and the kitchen line.
• Padel: An angle that keeps the player, the contact point, and any wall rebound visible.
• Baseball: Side-on for hitting; open side / behind for throwing and pitching.
• Slow-Pitch Softball: Side-on for hitting; open side for throwing.
• Fast-Pitch Softball: Side-on for hitting; open side for the windmill pitch.

Different views reveal different parts of a motion, which is why a change of angle between two clips can look like a change in your swing when it is really the camera. If you know which view you used, set it under Advanced capture settings in Motion Lab — it improves the rotation reads.

For motion-specific setups, see down-the-line or face-on in golf, filming a tennis serve and filming padel wall shots.

There is no single distance that suits everyone: it depends on your height, the phone lens and how far the implement travels. Frame the shot instead. Stand in your stance, then check the edges of the picture at your highest and widest position.

Too close crops the feet or the implement. Too far leaves you small in the frame, so joint positions come out coarse. Driver swings, serves and overheads need the most room; chips, putts, dinks and volleys can be filmed from closer.

Keep the distance the same for a retest. Motion Lab compares how much of the frame you fill in the two clips, and a big difference marks size-sensitive reads as not directly comparable. RecordAssist, the guided recorder, tells you to move back or come closer while you set up.

Motion Lab estimates where the camera sat from the geometry of your legs. When it looks clearly high or low, the quality check says so — for example that the camera sat well above you looking down — and the posture, spine, knee and turn reads from that clip carry less weight. When the geometry cannot be read, it makes no claim either way.

A bag, a bench, a fence rail or a ledge gets the height right; you do not need a tripod for it.

Some setups deliberately go low. For a golf driver filmed from behind and for putting, RecordAssist asks for a camera near the ground and switches off its height prompt — see filming a putting stroke.

Keep the height the same for a retest. Clips filmed from noticeably different heights are flagged, because the difference partly reflects the camera rather than your swing.

A portrait clip is never turned away. When you upload one you may see a notice suggesting landscape, and you can continue anyway. Motion Lab analyses the frames upright and adds a low-priority note; the orientation on its own does not lower the capture grade.

RecordAssist picks the orientation for each motion and tells you to rotate the phone if it is the wrong way round.

Whichever you use, keep it the same for retests of that motion.

Motion Lab measures the clip's frame rate on your device when the browser allows it. Below 30 fps it notes that fast motion near contact blurs, so the strike frame is an estimate. On a fast-swing sport between 30 and 60 fps it adds a lighter note that the exact strike frame and tempo are estimated.

Other sports are not flagged at 30 fps, but a faster frame rate still sharpens any quick stroke. Look in your phone's camera settings for a 60 fps or slow-motion option.

Use the same setting for a retest: clips filmed at different frame rates make speed and timing changes not directly comparable.

Phones save slow motion in different ways. Motion Lab measures the frame rate a clip actually plays back at, so a video saved already slowed down can read as a lower frame rate than it was filmed at, and its timing is stretched. That is why the analysis tips suggest exporting slow-motion clips at normal speed when they cause trouble.

Plain 60 fps recording, where your phone has it, avoids the question entirely.

Slow motion does not rescue other problems: a dark, shaky or cropped clip stays dark, shaky or cropped.

• Too dark — the body is harder to track. Motion Lab brightens the frames on your device to recover what it can, but it cannot recover detail that was never captured.
• Washed out — filming into the sun or a bright window loses joint detail near the bright areas.
• Low contrast — dark clothes against a dark fence, or light clothes against a pale wall, blend you into the background.

Face the light rather than having it behind you, and choose a spot without people moving behind you.

An upload that looks dark or over-exposed gets a notice before analysis. You can continue anyway, but the quality check will lower confidence in the reads the lighting affects.

Handheld filming, and following the swing by panning or zooming, add shake and blur. Motion Lab checks how much the camera moved; when it moved a lot, the quality check says the tracked positions carry extra jitter, and rotation, balance and head-movement reads lose confidence.

If someone films for you, ask them to hold the phone still and let you move through the frame — no following the ball, no zooming in.

A fixed prop also makes retests easier: put it back in the same spot, at the same height, next time.

The most common loss is the feet. When they are cut off, balance, knee flex, stance width and weight-shift reads are limited for that clip. A head that leaves the top of the frame on a serve or overhead does the same to the upper body.

Before you film, step back or tilt the phone down until there is a little space under your feet and above your head at your highest point. RecordAssist calls out "Your feet are cut off" or "Your head is cut off" while you set up.

It matters for retests too: when one clip crops the lower body and the other does not, balance and leg-drive comparisons are unreliable.

The usual culprits are a driver or bat leaving the top of the frame, a racquet leaving the side on the follow-through, and a camera so close that the finish is cut off. Step back until the implement stays inside the picture at its highest and widest point.

Including the ball helps timing: golfers should keep the ball in view through impact, and tennis players the bounce through contact.

Even with everything in frame, one phone camera cannot always see a thin, fast shaft or frame clearly. When it cannot, Motion Lab shows less rather than drawing a guess — see why the path is missing.

The quality check flags extra people and lowers confidence in the rotation, sequencing and contact reads for that clip.

Ask whoever is filming or watching to stand behind the camera, wait until the space beside you is clear, or turn the camera so neighbours fall outside the picture. In doubles, frame just the player you want analysed.

RecordAssist says "Make sure only you are in the frame" when it sees a second person during setup.

Motion Lab accepts clips up to 5 minutes, but extra length does not add accuracy. It reads a limited set of frames from each clip, focused on the motion it finds, so long stretches of setup and walking around only give it more to sift through.

If the quality check says no single clear burst of motion stood out, trim the clip to just the rep — Motion Lab shows a trimmer after you choose a clip — or record a cleaner single rep.

A few reps in one short clip are fine when you want to see what repeats; see several swings in one clip.

1. Pick your sport and motion. It shows the recommended view, orientation and setup steps for that motion.
2. Frame up. A readiness score out of 100 and cues such as "Move back" or "The club may leave the frame. Step back." guide you into position.
3. Tap Record and use the spoken countdown to get set. Recording stops on its own after 20 seconds, or when you tap Stop.
4. Review the take — retake it or use it. Auto-trim finds the active part of the motion, and the clip goes to Motion Lab without being uploaded anywhere.

Spoken guidance can be set to full coaching, short cues or silent captions. If your browser cannot run live body tracking, RecordAssist falls back to manual framing guides; if it cannot record at all, you can still upload a clip. More in the RecordAssist guide.

1. Set the phone on a bag, fence, bench or tripod, in landscape unless you are filming an overhead.
2. Stand in your stance and check the edges: head, feet and the implement at its widest point all inside the picture.
3. Start recording, walk into position, make one rep or a few, then stop.
4. In Motion Lab, trim the clip to the rep if there is a lot of walking at the start.

With RecordAssist, the camera starts on the back of the phone (you can switch to the front one), and spoken cues tell you to move left, right, back or closer. After you tap Record there is a short countdown, recording stops by itself after 20 seconds, and auto-trim shows you which part of the clip it will analyse.

Confidence is capped by capture quality: a Usable clip tops out at 70%, a Limited one at 45%, a Difficult capture at 30% and one that is not defensible from its angle at 20%. Reads from the weaker grades are provisional — pointers built from what the camera could see.

Practising a fix that came from a shaky read risks a week on the wrong thing. Re-filming with the specific change the quality check names — more light, step back, steady the phone, a faster frame rate — costs far less.

It also sets up your retest. Only Excellent and Good captures are marked retest-ready, because a before-and-after is only fair when both clips can support it; see retest-ready quality.

If the clip was graded Excellent or Good and you simply disagree with the result, re-filming will not change much — see when a result seems wrong.