Video has been in common use for quite some time now, and I think it's fair to say that most teaching professionals use video in their teaching, at least from time to time.
While it can be very useful to help catch certain happenings of the swing that cannot be seen by any naked eye, I think it's important to be aware of a few of the pitfalls a teacher can experience when using video.
Parallax / Consistency: It's important to make sure that, if you are going to be comparing before and after shots or shots between two different golfers, you have the camera in the exact same position relative to both the student and the target. Otherwise, you might see differences or similarities that aren't necessarily there. I've seen examples of the same, exact swing satisfying two teachers with opposing philosophies just because of a difference in camera placement.
Wikipedia's definition of Parallax: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax
For example, let's say a student strives to have their club shaft parallel to the target line in their takeaway/backswing when it reaches level with their hands/parallel to the ground (the clubhead could appear to cover the hands at this point). Well, a camera placement very slightly to the left will give the impression that the clubhead is more outside the hands (RH golfer), while a camera placement a little to the right would make the takeaway look much inside than it actually is (again, RH golfer).
Method of screen capture: My technical information on cameras isn't all that great but, the way I understand it is that a camera takes each frame in a "wipe" method from top to bottom. This means that the lower part of the image is actually very slightly delayed relative to the top portions. In some older 30 frames-per-second video, this shows up as the clubhead having way more lag than is revealed in high speed video (240+ fps), and other distortions ("rolling shutter" problem). Interestingly enough, this problem can be somewhat countered by turning the camera upside down when filming, and then flipping the image back the right way afterwards.
In short, I believe that video (especially 240+ frames per second, High speed video - very smooth in slow motion) can be very valuable, but is often overused. I often caution against drawing too many lines on the screen, because it could encourage the exact re-creating of those lines by the student. "Isn't that what the student and teacher both want," you might ask? Well, only if you have properly accounted for the pitfall phenomena mentioned above.
If you rely on video too much, and draw lots of lines for your students, you might find that you occasionally "prove" your own teachings to be wrong when they're actually right, or convince both of you that a change is there, when it actually isn't.
Those are my thoughts, take 'em for what they're worth.
Thanks for reading.
-Mark
@StrongerGolf
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