Is there any software to automatic motion analysis tracking?

[Ali Abbasi]

Because the motion analysis systems are very expensive, I want to use simple video cameras with high sampling frequency for sports and exercises kinematics analysis. There are some free software likes “Kinovea” and “SkillSpector” for tracking the films. But the process of tracking is very time consuming and there are much user errors during tracking the landmarks. I am looking for an automatic motion analysis software. I appreciate that someone introduce an automatic motion analysis software.
Regards

[Edmund Cramp]

Re: Is there any software to automatic motion analysis tracking?

The answer that I am going to offer is one that I first heard many years ago and it seems to be as true today as it was when I first heard it in response to my question...

Cheap, Easy to Use, Accurate - pick any two, you cannot have all three.

[Young-Hui Chang]

Re: Is there any software to automatic motion analysis tracking?

Hi Ali, I use Kinovea in my classes with some success, but as you mentioned it is not without its drawbacks. But it is great for the price (free!).

If you have access to Matlab, I would suggest you try some free code made available by Dr. Ty Hedrick. It is research-grade and reasonably easy to learn. It also has some good supporting resources. Here is the website:

http://www.unc.edu/~thedrick/software1.html

best,

Young-Hui

[Edward Morra]

Re: Is there any software to automatic motion analysis tracking?

I use Blender, an open source 3D creation software (blender.org). It is generally used by the video effects industry for blending virtual 3D models with actual film footage. There are some remarkable tools for tracking markers under changing lighting conditions, that are then used to drive the motion of superimposed 3D models. It is easy to review and modify the underlying code to suit your needs, and there is a very large technical user base available as a support resource.

The process is semi-automatic in my experience, but if you are clever about your markers, 90% of the work will be automated.

- Ed Morra -

[Wadim Korneew]

Re: Is there any software to automatic motion analysis tracking?

Maya (Autodesk) is currently used in the film, television, and gaming industry. Maya has developed over the years into an application platform in and of itself through extendability via its MEL programming language. It is available for Windows, Linux and OS X.

[Karl Grainger]

Re: Is there any software to automatic motion analysis tracking?

I've been using Tracker (http://physlets.org/tracker/) with my undergraduates. As long as you can get a good marker definition, then the autotracker function works really well

[Rodrigo Bini]

Re: Is there any software to automatic motion analysis tracking?

I have used SkillSpector (Dgeeme before that) and could do full auto tracking using gray scale footage recorded using AVT cameras. For color images it gets tricky and there is need to play around with settings to get a semi-auto tracking.