What phone works best zoomed-in view on SkiDoc for slalom video

[swbca]

I am still using an 8 year old Galaxy S5 because it's unaffected by the high frequency vibration on the ski pilon and each frame is a good quality zoomed-in image.  The downside is the phone can't keep up with high-speed 90 degree panning of a slalom skier and skips some frames in the wake crossings.

I have tried a few newer Galaxy phones and they are all badly affected by vibration.

Are there any other phones that can provide this relativly close up view of the skier without vibration or skipped frame problems ?  And that can be controlled with Wakeye GPS stop-start ?

This is @pcan M8 friend showing us how to get angle.

[ETskier]

@swbca I use a GS5 phone too, for the same reasons, little or no vibration issues. I tried much closer zoom and it skipped like yours. Went back to x2 zoom. Can still review right away. Only downside is having to pause and start  manually between passes. At home l hook up to my computer and zoom in more. (Don't have a smart enough TV)

[swbca]

@ETskier  Wakeye works great on your phone - if its still available

[APB]

iPhone zoomed to .9.

 

stability returns

[Slalom.Steve]

**UPDATE** So I do not have an explanation why, but on the 2nd and 3rd attempts using the rear camera on an iPhone 13, the video is shaky again. So apparently disregard my post below.😞 Sorry for any confusion, but you will still get better results using the front/selfie camera rather than the rear camera, even on the newest phones, at least when using the Wakeye app. APB may have found an alternate solution of zooming out to 0.9x on the rear camera, but that can only be done in the native photo app (not Wakeye), and thus you'd have to manually start and stop recording for each pass.

I have just verified that the iPhone 12 Pro Max and later models (iPhone 13, 13 Pro, 14, 14 Pro, etc) no longer have issues with vibration when using the rear camera (, because Apple changed their stabilization hardware, going from "dual optical image stabilization" to "sensor-shift optical image stabilization." I don't really know what those mean lol, but I can tell you that you can finally use the rear camera on those phones!

And, if you have a Pro (13 Pro, etc) model - those rear cameras also have optical zoom, which means the lens is actually more zoomed in, maintaining quality. Digital zoom, which is the only option on non-pro models, is basically just cropping the photo so it fills more of the screen, but the quality gets "worse" the more you zoom in.
However, in terms of zoom, the Wakeye app was made many years ago, with much older phones, and Wakeye has gone completely dark as a company. I have no idea if the zoom option within the Wakeye app would know how to utilize the actual optical zoom of the Pro models, or if it’s just doing digital zoom within the frame of the Wakeye capture. (and once the video is captured, if you zoom in while replaying, that’s just digital zoom no matter what phone you have.) If you don't use the Wakeye app, and manually start/stop the native camera app, you would be able achieve optical zoom on Pro models.

So good news for newer iPhone models (13 and later, and 12 Pro Max): You can use the rear camera finally. And you can maybe achieve optical zoom within the Wakeye app if you have a Pro model.

[APB]

Wake eye was horrible. .9x works great on my ski doc. 

[Slalom.Steve]

1 hour ago, APB said:

Wake eye was horrible. .9x works great on my ski doc.

What iPhone model are you using? Is that the rear camera or the front/selfie camera? And that's not from within Wakeye, correct, just the regular camera app (manually started/stopped)?

[UWSkier]

been using Wakeye for years with an OG Google Pixel.  Nice thing about that is it includes unlimited Google Photos cloud storage, and automatically uploads the videos once you get back from the lake and the phone gets on the wifi.

[BobF]

Related, so not completely off-topic.  I have had trouble with stabilization on my last couple of phones using Wakeye.  I found an app called Automagic (Like Tasker, but with a worse name).

The full version is available for free out there, since development has apparently stopped for now.  It allows you to set speed triggers for user programmed actions.  I have it starting my Camera app, switching to Video mode, set the video stabilization to "active" on my Pixel (since you can't make it default to that for some reason), then start video.  On a pre-set stop speed, it stops the video.  Works great completely unattended on the Ski-Doc.

If anyone is interested, I can export and send the triggers for that app.

[UWSkier]

7 hours ago, BobF said:

Related, so not completely off-topic.  I have had trouble with stabilization on my last couple of phones using Wakeye.  I found an app called Automagic (Like Tasker, but with a worse name).

The full version is available for free out there, since development has apparently stopped for now.  It allows you to set speed triggers for user programmed actions.  I have it starting my Camera app, switching to Video mode, set the video stabilization to "active" on my Pixel (since you can't make it default to that for some reason), then start video.  On a pre-set stop speed, it stops the video.  Works great completely unattended on the Ski-Doc.

If anyone is interested, I can export and send the triggers for that app.

Which version Pixel do you use this for?  If I can find something that works with a newer pixel phone, that'd be great.  I'm on my third battery on my OG Pixel

[BobF]

@UWSkier I'm using a Pixel 6, but have no reason to believe it wouldn't also work on a 7 or 7a.

[swbca]

@UWSkier 

Does the Zoom control built into Wakeye control your phone's zoom level ?  (It works on my Galaxy)

Do you suppose I would get the Free Google Cloud If I bought a 2021 OG Pixel on ebay ?  

Does you OG Pixel have a problem with vibration ?

[coach3]

what do you mean, rear camera?

[UWSkier]

11 hours ago, swbca said:

@UWSkier 

Does the Zoom control built into Wakeye control your phone's zoom level ?  (It works on my Galaxy)

Do you suppose I would get the Free Google Cloud If I bought a 2021 OG Pixel on ebay ?  

Does you OG Pixel have a problem with vibration ?

OG Pixel refers to the very first Pixel.  Pixel 1.  Those do come with free unlimited google cloud storage. The Wakeye app does control the zoom.  I zoom to about 2x for 15-28 off skiing and it works great.

[Slalom.Steve]

11 hours ago, coach3 said:

what do you mean, rear camera?

The rear camera is the camera(s) on the back of the phone, which take images/videos facing away from the phone user - VS - the front camera, sometimes called the "selfie" camera, which faces back towards the phone user. Rear cameras are almost always more advanced than front cameras. As such, they also have stabilization hardware, which is great for normal use (someone holding the phone not perfectly still when taking a picture), but often produces really bad image shake when dealing with constant, high-frequency vibration like happens sitting on a boat pylon.

[swbca]

@UWSkier

Last Questions . . When you remove videos from the OG Pixel does that also remove them from the cloud ?

On my current phone I use Wakeye to record every practice run every day so I have to USB transfer the images from the phone to a PC avoid running out of storage space every couple of days.

Any comments about the quality  . . .   Vibration?  smooth video playback? 

Thanks for sharing your experience.

[UWSkier]

If you DELETE the photos from your album, it deletes them from the cloud too.  If you use the "Free up space" option in the Google Photos app, it will remove the videos from the memory on the phone but keep them in the cloud.

Here's an example video zoomed to about 1.8x.  The shaking is from the camera mount and my big ass taking out the slack, not from the imaging hardware.  https://photos.app.goo.gl/MxWHSbiTvmDDuq1u7

The other cool thing about hosting your videos in Google Photos is it uses the Youtube player to view, meaning you can slow down to 1/4 speed by clicking the little gear icon in the lower right.  But when you do that, you wish you had a higher frame rate camera lol

This is a Google Pixel first gen.  Starting in the second generation of the Pixel, they introduced image stabilization that would cause all the funky video effects.  I haven't tried my current phone, a Pixel 5, with what BobF suggests, but I think I'm going to.

Edited August 16, 2023 by UWSkier

[Slalom.Steve]

Just for reference, see the **UPDATE** to my post above. It seems not true that the rear camera is better now 😕

[Slalom.Steve]

Ok I've figured out why @APB's solution of zooming out to 0.9x takes away the camera shake. iPhones have for a while now used 2 or 3 different lenses (as you can see on the back, 2 lenses for regular models, 3 lenses for Pro models). So as you zoom in and out, the lenses aren't actually zooming, but at certain "break points" the phone starts using a totally different lens (though they make the changeover smooth/not noticeable).

It seems the main camera (sometimes called the "Wide" camera) has the stabilization hardware, but the Ultra-Wide lens does not. So as soon as you zoom out to less than 1x, it switches lens to the Ultra-Wide and you access a lens without stabilization = no pylon shake. On Pro models, there is also a Telephoto lens that has Optical Zoom, but this lens also has stabilization, so it also won't work for pylons.

The problem is of course then, you can't use the Wakeye app and get the auto-start and stop based on speed. There's got to be another way to achieve that?