Use Video Analysis Software to Give Your Driving a Boost- Then Combine it with Your Data-Acquisition to Explode Your Performance!

What would you say if I could give you a tool that allows you to work productively on going faster during the week when you can't to any testing. I'm guessing that you would bite my hand off, and that's what I'm going to show you here. You can use video software to intricately examine your driving and kart handling, so you can plan your next practice in detail and fix those problems you would never otherwise notice.

With proper video software, you can find those elusive tenths of seconds, and you can see where the time goes visually!. I use sports software to show drivers exactly where they are going wrong AND exactly how they need to improve. And the nicest little trick I use is to film the quickest driver out there, and run a direct comparison to my driver....that way he can see exactly what the other guy is doing, and copy him- yes, basically we are talking about spying, but it works....big time.

Check out this bit of video using video software showing how I used the sports software kit to find a driver a significant reduction in laptime. The software I used for that is called Dartfish, which allows me to do the split screen and also super-slow-motion

All you need is a digital cam corder with a dv output and a pc with firewire (my firewire socket cost me £1.56) and some sports software. Oh, and of course someone with you to do some filming.

Combine Your Video Playback with Your Data Acquisition

What is the biggest Advantage of using data aquisition? Well for me it tells you which are the most important corners on a race track. So, more often than not a great laptime will depend on how well you take one or two corners on the circuit. How do you find out which are the most important corners with data aquisition?

Simple, you look at your quick laps, and compare them to average laps and find out which corners made the difference....simple as that. And you are looking for speed or rpm channels, and speed is the easist. So, which corners did you go particularly quick through on the laps where your times were best.

Fine so your data acquisition has told you which corners are important....but can you remember exactly what you did on that lap to go so fast, probably not, and this is where the video comes in very handy! If you have some software like dartfish you can very easily find the lap in question and playback that corner so you can visually see what you actually did to go so quick. So, did you turn in early? brake late? use the kerb etc...there could be a thousand different reasons you went quicker, but here you have it before your very eyes!

Now, it is now possible to combine your video with your data logger. So when your data logger shows a loss of time, you can see exactly what the driver did on the track. So no more trying to interpret what your data logger tells you, you can see exactly what happened on video!

Dartfish is the particular piece of video software I use, but there are a few on the market