Wight/Groves video

[wight jr]

look what i found on youtube, Martin has a second on me by the time you reach the wood on the inside at the exit of the first corner. I must get this car off the line better.
Wight v Groves video

[jo white]

Very taxing on the eyes Graeme but a fab comparision

[Dad's Lad]

Nice 'find' I was thinking of ways to show the relative positions of different runs last night.

If you've ever seen Red Bull Air Race they have a great shot where they combine video from a track side camera of two runs so you can see the planes next to each other - like the animations shown on WRC but with real video rather than computer graphics. I think it would be great for hill climbs but am not sure how they are doing it.

[wight jr]

yes i like this a lot, watching it on a player you can slow down, lets you pause it and take a count of the time difference at different parts of the Track.

[PaulR]

A couple of years ago I got quite a long way towards drawing a 'ghost' of the leading car on the onboard image of the chasing car. This would obviously only work for closely matched runs.

A possibly simpler option would be to draw some graphics on the black area of the side by side onboards, showing perhaps the virtual distance between the cars.

Paul

[Fireblade]

Originally Posted by Dad's Lad

Nice 'find' I was thinking of ways to show the relative positions of different runs last night.

If you've ever seen Red Bull Air Race they have a great shot where they combine video from a track side camera of two runs so you can see the planes next to each other - like the animations shown on WRC but with real video rather than computer graphics. I think it would be great for hill climbs but am not sure how they are doing it.

Start saving your pennies then. Then when you have a big pile of them send them in the direction of Messrs Snell & Wilcox.

[redturner37]

Maybe I am missing what Paul says, but what if there was a beacon, say every hundred metres/yards which was coupled to some magic box, and after the first runs when everybody had recorded a time, all the information was downloadable, so that anybody who had suitable dash mounted equipment could see exactly where they were gaining/losing time against the quickest in their class. Would it work ?.....

[Dad's Lad]

That's what I was just trying. I tried using tools for aligning images for panoramas to see if it can align individual video frames to then composite them, or at least workout the relative position of the lead camera to show it virtually. Youtube video is too rough but a test with some images here show the first software I've tried assumes the camera doesn't move so struggles to calculate the alignment but does still get it close.

Rather than trying to figure out how frame x of car a's video aligns with frame x for car b's it might be easier to find at what frame car b's video best matches the view from frame x for car a's video to just get the time difference. As the times are close only a few frames would need to be compared for each frame.

For track side cameras it should be a bit easier as the fixed camera location reduces the variables, though difference's in zoom might be a bit tricky. For the air races I think they must either use this sort of image alignment or positional encoders on the pan, tilt and zoom as use for aligning graphics over the pitch in various sports - e.g. the kick distance in rugby or the record line in swimming.

[Fireblade]

All in the timecode, Sydney.

[PaulR]

If you have access to the dataloggers then you know the time, speed and distance difference. The interesting thing is to make it visual.

Paul