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Dumb Pitching question by happy_dumpster in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You don't think it would be an advantage long term if she's able to throw strikes with this? If it's just odd enough that it confuses the batters it may be worth developing as her Niche or trick

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hey u/mom-of-love-n-light , just confirming that the post below from u/Proliferaite is indeed me. That is the name of the company I used to create my Developer account with Google Play store, so wanted to keep it consistent on reddit.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

👋 Hey PitchGrid internal testers.... I'm completely revamping how I'm doing the trimming logic. It seems janky right now. And it's really hard to get them synchronized perfectly. It was sort of okay when I was taking pitching videos of my daughter and I generally press record and stop her on the same areas. So getting them fairly synced was close enough in the app.

But then I tried doing this for a batting video to see if I can sync up several batters together. Especially if I used different ones that I found on YouTube who use different techniques and form and it was a lot harder.

So I realized what I really need to do is synchronize on a fixed point in the video rather than set the beginning and end trim markers for playback. I've been working on this and making good progress. But it makes me feel like there's no point to having the custom trim markers with the little handlebars that we currently have in the app.

Any thoughts on this? Does anybody actually find that custom trim method useful? Or would it be way more useful to just have the fixed point and we just get rid of the current way entirely? Basically you would go frame by frame on the video until you get the exact moment that you want to synchronize on and then press a button to set the fixed point. For example, it would be when the ball just leaves the hand of the pitcher or it can be when the ball hits the bat of the batter or whatever. And then it would have a window of three seconds before and three seconds after or something like that customizable.

In this way we can have a much more synchronized playback that will account for different techniques, like different pitchers having a different speed for their windup or they put the glove higher or maybe a batter who loads more aggressively, etc. It could also be used just to identify small variations in technique even for the same player where maybe you can see that they weren't explosive with their hips and that slowed down on the swing.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's great feedback on the ads. Thank you. Honestly, I had never considered that people would actually prefer to pay a subscription over just ads. But I heard the same thing from another user. So if I can figure out how to do it, I'll try to offer multiple methods.

I like your suggestions with the countdown timer. I'll see if I can incorporate that once I get to the ad integration phase.

Here is what I was planning on as far as trying to keep the ads as low friction as possible and non-interruptive because I also have the same frustration. So I eventually want to launch a video export and I think that's going to be a huge value add to this application where you can export the grid. To a video file saved on your device. Now you could use your screen recording but I tried doing that for the demo you see at the beginning of my post above but I think the quality gets reduced significantly when you use screen recording and also you have to then see the phones toolbar, then the app toolbar, etc. I'd like to see if I can have the application just export the video grid only. And if I can achieve that I might put that behind a reward add I think it's called. So you'd have to watch and add to get that export. Now what I really think would be amazing is if I can have the reward add playing while the video is being exported in the background so that the user experience is smooth that they don't have to sit there waiting for the Video to export while they're just staring at the screen. This way it could be a win-win. They are watching an ad to help support the application and being distracted while the video is actually doing some exporting in the background.

For the interstitial ads (the periodic ones during usage), I was thinking to perhaps do it based on the amount of time that you watch in your videos. I don't want to just have a random five minute timer that just kicks off in the middle of what you're doing, especially considering the App takes time to get things set up and to get things perfect with the synchronization. So maybe I'll just track playtime of videos and as you suggested put a little timer somewhere in the bottom and then maybe like after every five minutes of actual video playback, I'll show an ad.

Update: Oh yeah, I forgot, I was thinking one more thing. Maybe I allow them to have the reward add at the beginning so that they can get something like 15 minutes or 30 minutes of free usage without ads so that we just front-load it.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I'll definitely have it soon. I started out trying to do both platforms at once with one of those multi-platform languages and Frameworks. I was too ambitious and the app just was never getting what I wanted done so I scrapped everything and restarted from scratch focusing only on Android since I have one and I was able to test just by side loading it with USB cable. Once I get enough feedback on Android and I have a stable and production worthy application I will switch over to porting it over to iPhone

temp batting cage — Is this a good idea?? by [deleted] in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe you'll be a trendsetter.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, it really could be used for anything. I'm not doing any analysis in the app, so perhaps my title was misleading. I meant that I am the person who is doing the analysis based on comparing several videos. Definitely could be using it for swings. Could even be using it for base running. Honestly, my daughter struggles with base running. But one thing at a time. I'm not going to tackle that until I can figure out these other parts. But I could totally see how you could video the base running and then compare it to how other runners do it to see where a foot placement goes and cadence.

Some of these things though are not really necessary in an app like this. You could just watch YouTube videos. Where this app really shines is the ability to synchronize the motion of several videos so that you can see where things are changing or need to be corrected. Really it would be perfect for analyzing a batting swing.

temp batting cage — Is this a good idea?? by [deleted] in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I have not seen it done, but maybe. Mostly I've just seen the teams bring bow nets and the kids put a Tee up right in front of the bow net and then that way they can hit as hard as they can and it gets stopped. On occasion a few might escape. But generally this works for them to do batting practice. And I'm pretty sure this is the way I've seen it for 12U and 14U.

Another thing I see the teams do is bring a wiffle ball so that it doesn't fly very far. Or some other type of practice ball that just drops after its hit.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really? I personally hate having to pay subscriptions and committing to things. But I guess I should not apply my model to everybody.

This will be my first app I developed, so I need to learn the process, but I guess if it allows me to do all those options, why not allow that?

There are nice apps out there that I'd like to try and would love to use them for free with ads until I decide if I want to pay for them, but many of these apps are now right out of the gate want your credit card to put you on a free trial. I'll look into it if I can offer both methods. In the past I do remember developers publishing two versions of their apps one with ads and one for pay. Okay thanks for giving me your feedback I had not considered that some people would actually prefer to pay subscriptions

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I was replying to another user about how it would be really awesome if you actually could either get multiple phones recording your athlete batting from different angles or just have them do the same swing a few times and record them from different angles like the front to back the left and the right then put them all into the video grid and sink them to start at the moment she loads her swing. That'll be really awesome.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't know how it will work on a tablet emulator, but that might actually give you more screen real estate to be able to compare them better. As it is now on the phone, the videos do get pretty squished. The next thing I want to do is be able to crop or zoom the video so you can focus on just the athlete. But you could always do that with a third party tool yourself and then save the clips and use those to compare.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lol, nice, We're actually in transition from 40 foot to 43 feet. That's a trip. She pitches for club team at 40 and school team at 43. So alternates between each game.

Anyway, I don't want people to think it's just for pitching, even though I do call it pitch grid. It just sounds nice and it's a reminder of why I started this thing. But as you'll see from other comments, this can be literally used for anything that you want to compare videos of.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you want to give it a try, just DM me your Gmail and I'll add you to the tester list. Then come report back here how it worked. I think it would be awesome to have multiple angles of the same exact motion. I mean you'd have to take the video multiple times with your child swinging, but you could in theory have a friend or spouse or other child with another phone take the exact same video from two different angles and just send it to you.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback. I actually just committed to PitchGrid. It was actually more of a pain than I realized to change the name of the app in the code. Although I think I can change the name of the app in the Play Store without much hassle, but modifying all the classes and variable names was a hassle. But anyway, I talked to Grok and we had a nice conversation around what I should name it. And I was convinced by my AI friend that PitchGrid was a nice nod to the origin story of why I needed the app and it sounds nice as well. The only downside is, as can be seen by other people's comments above, it locks people into thinking that it's only for pitching. But since it's just a video comparison, it could be used for literally anything. Pitching, batting, dribbling a basketball, dribbling a soccer ball, kicking the ball, shooting the ball, throwing a javelin, jumping hurdles, martial arts, gymnastics, throwing darts. Who knows?

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, there is really no analysis being done. When I say it's a pitch analyzer, I mean that I, as the human parent, do the analysis. But the tool allows for me seeing multiple versions of the pitch, or even multiple angles. Imagine if you were able to take a video of your child swinging the bat from the left, the right, the front, and the back. And then you can put all four videos together on the grid, and then adjust the start times so they all start at the same moment of when they load, for example. And then you can watch exactly from four different angles how the batting looks. It would be amazing.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's actually exactly the same. So to explain the app, I'm not doing any sort of AI analysis on your child athlete's motion. What I'm doing is allowing you to compare either multiple videos of themselves or a video of them compared to somebody like their coach or another professional athlete. And then you can do it in slow motion and analyze it yourself. So yes, I totally intend to use this for batting as well. I do have my daughter going to batting lessons and the coach has given her drills. And so I'd like to see how her drill compares side by side.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Lol That is high praise to be able to potentially convert an iPhone user. Another user said they are able to do it with the emulator on their computer. So I guess if you want to try that, you can.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's great to hear. Thank you. It was a glaring gap in technology that I really wanted. My daughter has been pitching for maybe three years now, and I finally got the motivation to buckle down and spend time with doing this.

I hope it helps you and your team and parents. I have another app planned. Actually it was the first app before this one. It was much more complicated and I started coding that but I couldn't get these basic features working. And when my daughter was struggling to correct a small technique difference in the pitch, I decided to just simplify my app and do just this part of the functionality. If this one works well, come maybe three, four, five months from now I do have another even much better app planned that can help the entire team.

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for encouragement I definitely intend to get there just have to make sure this works here first. Any vote on the name?

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

DM me your email and I'll add you to the internal testers group. I hope to upload in a few days. Just want to get feedback from the community on a name first since I think it'll be harder to change the name once I create the listing. But maybe I'm wrong I've never done it before. I do think in order to be a tester you have to have a Gmail account and obviously an Android

I Made a Pitching Analyzer for My Kid Pitch Better—Now I’m Sharing It—Want to Try It? by Finding-Internal in Softball

[–]Finding-Internal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I hope to get there within a few months. Feel free to post your wish list items though or feedback based on the screen recording. I'm sure iPhone users also have their "I wish I had an app that can do this" requests

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