Slalom.Steve

@ironhorse @FishFreq I can assure the top minds in both the private and public sector are working on this as we speak. 😂 In the meantime, just released a new update: 1. The zoom setting now saves and reloads even if you completely close out of the app, as requested by @swbca and @Stathis Ventouris 2. The zoom indicator is now more legible (larger font, black text on white background) 3. Removed the "Flash" option from settings. I had put it in just cause it's an option on the native Camera app, but I can't think of any time someone would want to use this app with the camera light on.

@braindamage 99.9% sure the issue is that you have selected for video mode HD120. This records in Full HD (1080p) at 120 frames per second. Apple defaults the playback of 120 fps videos to slo-mo. This is the same as if you go to you native Camera app and select the "Slo-Mo" mode and record a video. Slow motion playback is really the purpose of 120fps though, so if you're just watching back full speed you'd probably be better served at 60fps. You can still adjust where a 120fps video goes into slo-mo though (including not at all). Here's a video showing how.

@Golfguy Hmm, are you able to adjust the zoom in the standard iPhone 'Camera' app? It's the same gesture there as in PylonCam. This isn't problem-specific, but first thing to always try for tech problems: Make sure your iOS is up-to-date, delete and reinstall the PylonCam app, and restart your phone.

@KelliK - What speed trigger do you have the app set at? For 32mph skiing, it should be at a 30mph trigger at most, but try it down to 28mph or even lower if it's still cutting off video.

@Golfguy Two finger pull/drag on the screen.

For now, if you set a zoom in PylonCam, then go back to your home screen or another app but don't actually "close/quit" the PylonCam app (ie it's still in the background), it saves the zoom setting when you go back to PylonCam. PCP (experimenting with an acronym lol) doesn't do any Background App Refresh activities (it doesn't use data or battery or anything) when it's not active, so you could conceivably just never actually close the app and always have your zoom setting saved. But getting a "permanent" zoom lock is on my list of possible future upgrades as well!

@swbca - The fact that the selfie camera is shaky and the rear camera is stable is exact opposite of what I'd expect, but I don't have access to a 14/15 Pro, and Apple did institute "Second-generation sensor-shift optical image stabilization" on the 14 Pro and 15 Pro (but not the regular 15), so maybe they finally got it figured out! (and then maybe moved the old, shaky optical stabilization to the selfie camera lol - they don't seem to say anything about stabilization with the selfie camera). If so, that's even better though because the main rear camera will definitely be higher quality than the selfie camera. That screenshot certainly looks nice, particularly given the zoom! @Shell - Just following up on the shakiness you experienced as compared to Wakeye. Just in case you hadn't seen, the stabilization has been fixed/improved in the latest update and it's quite smooth now! Version 1.0.4 - Give it another try and let me know!

Fastest dismount I dun ever seen 😆 Hazlewood funny.mp4 "When you took a second set even though you told your wife you wouldn't." "When they told you the resident lake gator lives under the start dock."

@Golfguy So like any other app, Apple is supposed to put up a Notification badge on your App Store icon, then you'd click into the App Store and see which apps have updates available, and you click to update them. I imagine you've done that before with other apps. For some reason, it seems like that's not happening with PylonCam Pro, so I just sent a support ticket this afternoon to Apple to sort it out. Maybe it's just on a 24-hour delay or something? BUT, in the meantime, if you go to the App Store and manually search for "PylonCam Pro" again, you should see a button that says "Update" instead of "Open", which if you click will get the most recent version onto your phone.

@mike_mapple - The maximum setting is 40mph right now. I also recommend you set it to 2-4 mph below the speed you're skiing, to make sure it captures everything. ---- Ok, big update news! I just published a new version (1.0.4) that improves the image stabilization. Due to the un-changeable physical/hardware stabilization on the Rear camera (discussed above), in this new version Rear video will likely still be shakier than Selfie video, but compared to older versions of the app, the new-version Selfie video will now be more stable than the old-version Selfie video, and the new-version Rear video will now be more stable than the old-version Rear video.

@BGrow76 If I do one, it won't be for a little while still, sorry!

Tagging some other folks who've expressed interest in the past: @Wish, @skiermk, @BGrow76, @Bbrandau, @nate93, @sunperch, @DanE, @GWaterski, @C5Quest, @Zman, @greghayes, @bkreis, @roda, @nautique1228, @Stathis Ventouris, @ral, @Inboardfix, @SkiRV, @CReckard, @switchbackr, @MattW, @RAWSki, @BobF, @Laz, @aupatking, @Golfguy, @Indyskier, @OK_SKIER, @igkya, @ToddA, @Waternut, @lw_moskier, @Alberto Soares, @TLeach, @lakeho26, @motoskier, @gator867, @Mastercrafter, @JackQ, @mac, @MickeyThompson, @darinmontgomery, @mrawle, @LanceHCook, @Beezer, @MarkTimm, @Sunapee, @tjm, @jercrane, @cp, @Vernon Reeve, @Stefan

@mbabiash @Shell - Alright, that bug has been fixed in the just-released version 1.0.3

@BKistler This is an iOS/Apple app, so unless a Pro Xtreme camera can run iOS apps (doesn't look like it based on a quick google search), then no it won't work.

@Shell - In terms of playback, anything is possible but I don't think that's a PylonCam issue, because once the video is saved to the camera roll, it's no longer "connected" to the PylonCam app, and I haven't been able to replicate the issue. But I'll keep an eye out if anyone reports something similar! For the shakiness, are you using the same lens and zoom on both PylonCam and Wakeye? I will be honest, I don't know exactly what the Stabilization feature on Wakeye does or how it works. I always found it to not really make a difference, and maybe even looked better with it off.

@mbabiash - Ah shoot, that's an issue I ran into during testing and thought had been solved. I'll get it re-fixed and do an update this week!

@Hucklefin Creative thinking, but the camera specs have come so far since the 6 that even the selfie camera on any model from the iPhone 11 or later is probably better than the rear camera is on an iPhone 6.

@swbca So right now, if you go to your home screen or another app but don't actually "close/quit" the PylonCam app (ie it's still in the background), it does save the zoom setting when going back to PylonCam. I'll look into whether I can get it to save/re-load the zoom even after a "full quit and re-open."

Oh I almost forgot! Wakeye would also, at least on some phones, save any selfie-camera videos backwards, and you'd have to manually reverse each video. No such issues on PylonCam! All videos save in the correct orientation. @BSBELL Interesting... I would've expected the background vibration to be much worse on the main rear camera! Well, that's the idea behind the Camera and Lens selectors - it's gonna depend on each person's phone. Test each configuration and see what works best for yours!

@BSBELL Glad to see it at work! Curious, could you post your "full specs"? Phone model: Camera Select: Lens used: Video mode (HD/4K, fps): Pylon mount (Ski-Doc/Wakeye): I could add 4k at 24fps in the future!

There's only been two commercial products (that I'm aware of) for pylon mounting/tracking: Wakeye and Ski-Doc. Wakeye has gone silent as a company for years now and you can't buy them anymore. Ski-Doc is still active and makes a great solution in the Ski-Doc Orbit: Camera Mounts (theskidoc.com)

Will this app solve the issue of “shaky image”? The short answer is: The PylonCam Pro app gives you the flexibility to choose the best possible settings for your specific phone model. Just record a set using each lens on your phone and see which one is best. The long answer is: Yes and no, and there’s a lot understand about iPhone hardware and software: Lens Info: Starting with the iPhone 6S, Apple introduced “optical stabilization” on the rear lens that, while improving image stability under “normal,” hand-held use, creates terrible image shake with the hi-frequency vibration of a pylon. This is a physical mechanism in the hardware of the phone and thus there is no way to turn it off or circumvent it via software. The solution has been to use the front/selfie camera instead, which does not have optical stabilization. The downside is that the front/selfie lens is a lower quality lens than the main rear lens. At the time of the 6S, there was only one rear camera on iPhones. For a while now though, iPhones have 2 or 3 different rear lenses: On regular models there is a main lens, sometimes called a “Wide” lens, and there is an “Ultra-Wide” lens. On Pro models, there is those two lenses plus a third “Telephoto” lens. No matter what model you have, as you zoom in or out, the lenses aren't physically moving and thus aren’t actually “zooming” (called optical zoom) - the phone is just cropping and expanding the image on your screen (called digital zoom), which means the image quality degrades, because after a crop, you have a lower number of pixels occupying the same amount of space. However, with the extra lenses, at certain "break points" the phone switches to a different lens. As you zoom out, it switches to the wide-angle lens. As you zoom in, on regular models it’s all digital zoom, but on Pro models at a certain point it switches to the Telephoto lens, or it seems sometimes Apple does an interesting software mixture of the Main/Wide lens and the Telephoto lens as you zoom in. If you press and hold on your zoom options while in the camera app, you can see this dynamic a little more clearly, with the different lens demarcated. Here’s a screenshot from an 11 Pro, showing the three lenses and their “start points”: Back to stabilization: On non-Pro models the regular/wide lens has the problematic optical stabilization, and on Pro models the telephoto lens also has optical stabilization and thus unsuitable for pylon recording. On either model, the ultra-wide lens does not have optical stabilization, so as soon as you zoom out to anything less than 1x, it switches lenses to the Ultra-Wide and you “access” a lens without stabilization = no pylon shake. This seems to solve the “problem” of having to use the selfie camera, except at least on my iPhone 11 Pro, the ultra-wide rear lens isn’t any better quality than the front lens, and the ultra-wide lens is more zoomed out than you need to capture skiing, so if I use the ultra-wide and “re-zoom” the video (which remember, isn’t zooming but just cropping), I end up with slightly lower quality than if I had just used the selfie/front lens in the first place. However, Apple is perpetually updating their lenses (most models) and stabilization (stabilization was upgraded on the 12 Pro Max and again on the 15 Pro), so with newer models or not-yet-released models, the ideal pylon-recording settings may change. The best thing to do for now is just record a set on each lens of your specific phone and see which is best. To restate the important part: The PylonCam Pro app gives you the flexibility to choose the best possible settings for your specific phone model. *one final note to understand about lenses: the MP (mega-pixel) size is not the only, or even really a good way, to determine the actual quality of a lens. Sensor-size is a better measure, and you can find that info for some models but Apple doesn’t seem to proactively list it, so it takes digging, and even then, there’s still other factors. So don’t just assume that two lenses with the MP will turn out the same

Download here: PylonCam Pro on the App Store (apple.com) I am excited to announce the release of PylonCam Pro, the next progression in automatic phone recording for water skiers. This iOS app works very similarly to our old friend Wakeye, but with better quality and more flexibility (Wakeye max quality is 720p). Here’s the features: - Ability to record in Full HD (1080p) at 30fps, 60fps, or 120fps* - Ability to record in 4K quality (2160p) at 30fps or 60fps - Start/stop trigger based on GPS speed - Previous settings reload automatically on opening - Saves videos directly to camera roll - Ability to select ultra-wide lens when using rear camera (see below for explanation) - Active support and bug fixing guaranteed! The app is $9.99 as a one-time purchase with the promise to never switch to a subscription model. *When recording at 120fps, Apple defaults the video to playback as a “slo-mo” video. It's a super quick fix to make it playback regular speed, though you do have to do it on each individual video. Get it on the app store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pyloncam-pro/id6480435107 Right now this is only available for Apple/iOS. If this version is successful enough and there’s enough demand for an Android version, I may be able to do an Android version as well.

The challenge isn't keeping hands warm, the challenge is keeping hands warm and still having good grip on a ski handle. @Gale K - What's the "other thread" you mention? To confirm: you use these "dry suit" gloves, and wear ski gloves underneath? And your handle grip is still good?

Seriously, and he's only 18! I feel like his cutting position/stack is practically perfect.