Ski Jump Automatic Video Tracking

skijump

n3wb
Feb 10, 2023
1
0
US
Hello All,

I am a highschool student designing a system to automatically track the motion of a ski jump.

The ski jumpers in the videos are moving quickly, at 30-40 mph, so I will need cameras with a high frame rate.

I would also like to shoot around 60 fps.

The cameras will spend all year outside, so they will need to be weather resistant and cold resistant.

Additionally, I need a swivelling mount to pivot to a given angle from the hill with a very high level of accuarcy.

Below is attached a sample video of the motion I hope to track.



I am searching for people who can give me more expertise on what cameras I will need for this setup.

What considerations are important, what cameras should I consider, is there a better method for caputering this motion?



Any feedback is appreciated
 
There is no video attached.

First off, shutter speed is more important than frame rate.

Second, surveillance cameras are not designed for that type of capture. Most will cap out at 30FPS but may be glitchy and problematic running at that speed.

These types of cameras are not GoPro or Hollywood type cameras that offer slow-mo capabilities and other features. They "offer" 30FPS and 60FPS to appease the general public that thinks that is what they need, but you will not find many of us here running more than 15 FPS; and movies are shot at 24 FPS, so anything above that is a waste of storage space for what these cameras are used for. If 24 FPS works for the big screen, I think 15 FPS is more than enough for phones and tablets and most monitors LOL. Many of my cameras are running at 12FPS.

If your unique case requires that type of FPS, you will find surveillance cameras are not going to meet your needs and you need to get a camera capable of that - and spend some serious money if a gopro isn't sufficient.

We have had recently people come here after purchasing cameras in two instances where they were wanting 60FPS - one was a tennis club and another was a youth soccer club. In both cases they found that these types of cameras were not capable of what they were wanting to do. Sure the cameras could run faster FPS, but it still didn't provide them with the level of detail they were looking for. I recall the soccer club had a decent quality PTZ ($800) that is fine for a residential or retail/commercial installation, but to cover the action of the soccer field it wasn't capable of meeting their needs. And because of the extremely fast motion, it was creating a halo type effect around the action (which can be seen in certain lighting conditions). These cameras are good, but not good enough to catch the rotation of a ball for example.

Without knowing exactly what you want to capture, we can only share with you the capabilities and limitations of surveillance cameras. Maybe these cameras will work, maybe they won't, but we are sharing with you these limitations so that you are not disappointed when it doesn't accomplish what you want.

If you want true 60FPS, then you need to find a camera that has that as the priority. Otherwise you may get 60FPS from a surveillance camera that looks smooth, but not much else will be of use.

Do a freeze frame capture of motion at night coming from 60 FPS. I bet it is a blur. But watching it realtime probably is silky smooth LOL.

Sure 60FPS can provide a smoother video but no police officer has said "wow that person really is running smooth". They want the ability to freeze frame and get a clean image. So be it if the video is a little choppy....and at 10-15FPS it won't be appreciable. My neighbor runs his at 60FPS, so the person or car goes by looking smooth, but it is a blur when trying to freeze frame it because the camera can't keep up. Meanwhile my camera at 15FPS with the proper shutter speed gets the clean shots.

We wouldn't take these cameras to an NBA game to broadcast, nor would we take the cameras they use at an NBA game to put on a house. Not all cameras are alike and the approach of "a camera is a camera" mentality will result in failure. Another example, I can watch an MLB game and they can slow it down to see the stitching on the baseball. Surveillance cams are not capable of that. You need to find one for the intended purpose.

We were joking in this thread just last night about the differences between a true camera capture and a surveillance camera, but at a price difference exceeding $60,000 between the two lol



But if you think a surveillance camera is sufficient, then you probably need to be looking at a PTZ camera.
 
I can tell you right now, there are a lot of challenges for this project.

First, just identifying the target from frame to frame reliably enough to track them, especially with a moving camera, that is a difficult problem. Even state of the art auto tracking PTZ cameras often lose tracking when the person they are tracking walks behind a tree or lamppost.

You're also going to need the entire processing pipeline to be quite low latency, and modern IP cameras are not really suited for that. About the best latency you can hope for from a PTZ camera is a half second or so, and that doesn't even include a computer vision step.