Eat some hay, I can make things out of clay, and create an overlay

If you don’t get the title of this blog, you need to click on the video below to see a clip of the world’s most iconic golf movie of all time; Happy Gilmore.

Now that you’re up to date on pop culture, this blog post will discuss an app called Video Blend. This app allows you to create overlay videos which take two separate videos, and fuse them into one, allowing you to identify the minor differences between the two. For example, here are two separate clips working on my chipping from this past week on the range at the Murray Golf Course. For this clip I am using my pitching wedge.

Next, I fused the two videos together to create an overlay on Video Blend.

For some insight, I was aiming for the same flag both times. When I use the overlay technology, I can see that I used increased acceleration on my “bad chip”, meaning I was swinging faster than I needed to. This was something I addressed in my last golf post where I discuss letting the club do more of the work, and have me doing less. Here is another example of two separate swings, this time with my driver.

Then, again here is my overlay of the two swings.

So what are the steps for creating a slow-motion overlay video like the ones seen here? First, I had my husband record me at the driving range. He stood in the same spot for the comparable videos to ensure the angle was the same. These videos were recorded on an iPhone X, using the slow motion filter. I then used these videos to upload onto Video Blend. Once I had the two videos on Video Blend, I could tell if I had to go back to adjust my original videos to make them overlap better. For example, in the “Drive slow-mo overlay” video seen above, I adjusted the start of my bad swing, so that it started later than my good swing. This is because I wanted to line up the time when my club made contact with the ball, as I was suspicious it was the contact itself that impacted my shot. Likewise, you could adjust either video to be able to compare any point in the video to analyze your back swing or follow through for example.

Here you can see the formatting of the app itself. At the bottom, you upload the two videos you’d like to overlay, and there are filters readily available as well. You simply press play to see how the videos overlap. I found that when I went back into my original videos to make sure the slow motion filter applied to the whole video, that ensured that the videos were playing as true slow motion videos. Another option, if you don’t have the slow motion option on your phone, would be recording and overlaying as usual, then upload onto iMovie to convert into a slow motion video.

I think this app could be a really cool tool to incorporate into the classroom. My first thought would certainly be in science class. I think it would be awesome for experiments when comparing variables and how they impact the results of certain reactions. In my opinion, the app was a little slow for my liking, and would freeze if I tried to download the overlay video to my phone. Instead, I uploaded to my Google Drive, which didn’t result in any freezing. I chose this app because of its star-review, however upon reading comments and reviews, a lot of people found the same problems I had.

The one thing I really liked about this app was how user friendly it was. I didn’t need a single tutorial or video to help me out, just a few trial and error runs which I can now use as experience to help show my kids how to use the app. I think once the bugs are worked out and it runs a little more smoothly, this app could be really cool to use in school. Keep in mind the app is free so of course there are ads that come up here and there, however from my experience they were all kid-friendly! Super cool to have given this app a try!