I don't have a radar gun and DD has never had a gun put on her pitches. I wanted a baseline speed as we start this off season so that we can measure her progress. So I had the idea that I could calculate it from video. I know the frame rate of my camera (30 frames per second) and can use software to click through the video one frame at a time to count how many frames elapse through any sequence. Then we measured exactly how far from where DD released the ball (six o clock position) to where I was catching it. (I made sure to be consistent with where I held my glove.) I set up the camera on a tripod far enough away to film the entire pitch and had her pitch 30 or so pitches.
Using this method I found her pitch speed to range 43 mph to 48 mph. This seems reasonable to me, she's 14 but pitches on the slow side for her age, the reason we are working on speed this off season.
Here's the details of what I did:
I came up with this formula and plugged it into a spreadsheet. Speed in Feet/Second = Distance in Feet/(Elapsed Frames/Video Frame Rate in frames per second.) Speed in MPH = Speed in FPS * 0.681818181818182, so that is added to the formula to convert the result to MPH.
This formula obviously calculates the average speed over the entire flight of the ball, so I did a little research and found that a softball loses 1 mph for every seven feet it travels. I added a line to the spreadsheet that uses that to calculate the speed at the release (Average speed in MPH + ((distance in feet /7)/2) = speed at beginning of flight.)
I loaded the video on my PC and counted frames pitch by pitch. I have Adobe Premiere which makes it easy to count frames, but you can do it in Quicktime or Windows Media Player, and probably most video players.
I found I could even count fractions of frames, it was obvious when the ball only traveled half the distance in the final frame that it had been traveling in previous frames. I rounded to the nearest half frame, I figure that's plenty precise enough for my purposes.
The spreadsheet allows me to enter any distance and frame rate, then it's very simple to plug in the frame count of a pitch and see the average and top speed for the pitch
Any flaws in my logic or formulas here?
I apparently can't attach the spreadsheet here, but I will be happy to email if anyone wants to try it or check my math. (request it at robin@robinhickman.com)
Using this method I found her pitch speed to range 43 mph to 48 mph. This seems reasonable to me, she's 14 but pitches on the slow side for her age, the reason we are working on speed this off season.
Here's the details of what I did:
I came up with this formula and plugged it into a spreadsheet. Speed in Feet/Second = Distance in Feet/(Elapsed Frames/Video Frame Rate in frames per second.) Speed in MPH = Speed in FPS * 0.681818181818182, so that is added to the formula to convert the result to MPH.
This formula obviously calculates the average speed over the entire flight of the ball, so I did a little research and found that a softball loses 1 mph for every seven feet it travels. I added a line to the spreadsheet that uses that to calculate the speed at the release (Average speed in MPH + ((distance in feet /7)/2) = speed at beginning of flight.)
I loaded the video on my PC and counted frames pitch by pitch. I have Adobe Premiere which makes it easy to count frames, but you can do it in Quicktime or Windows Media Player, and probably most video players.
I found I could even count fractions of frames, it was obvious when the ball only traveled half the distance in the final frame that it had been traveling in previous frames. I rounded to the nearest half frame, I figure that's plenty precise enough for my purposes.
The spreadsheet allows me to enter any distance and frame rate, then it's very simple to plug in the frame count of a pitch and see the average and top speed for the pitch
Any flaws in my logic or formulas here?
I apparently can't attach the spreadsheet here, but I will be happy to email if anyone wants to try it or check my math. (request it at robin@robinhickman.com)