Filmstrip — See Your Swing in 10 Key Positions
What is a filmstrip?
Think of the swing sequence photos you see in golf magazines — a row of frames showing a pro's swing from setup to finish, so you can study what changes from one position to the next. MotionEdge generates this automatically from your swing video.
Every filmstrip shows 10 frames pulled from your video at the key positions of the swing:
| Frame | Position | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Address | Posture, ball position, alignment |
| 2 | Takeaway | Club path, wrist hinge starting |
| 3 | Backswing | Arm position, shoulder turn |
| 4 | Top | Shaft position, wrist angle at the top |
| 5 | Transition | Lower body leading, hands dropping |
| 6 | Downswing | Lag, hip clearance, hand path |
| 7 | Pre-Impact | Shaft lean, wrist position approaching the ball |
| 8 | Impact | Ball contact, shaft lean, body rotation |
| 9 | Follow-Through | Extension, rotation, balance |
| 10 | Finish | Balance, full rotation, club position |
MotionEdge detects the key landmarks — address, top of backswing, and impact — from your video using pose analysis, then fills in the remaining frames at evenly spaced intervals between them.
How does impact detection work?
Impact is the most important frame in the filmstrip. MotionEdge looks for two signals:
- Ball departure — if a white golf ball is visible in the video, the system tries to detect the frame where the ball leaves its resting position. This is the most precise method.
- Body-based detection — using pose landmarks (wrist position at its lowest point, acceleration patterns) to identify the impact moment.
If ball departure is detected with high confidence, it's used as the impact frame. Otherwise, the body-based estimate is used.
The impact frame matters for AI coaching — the filmstrip images are what get sent to the AI coach for analysis. If the detected impact frame doesn't look right to you, you can adjust it before sending (see Nudging below).
Nudging frames
Every frame in the filmstrip can be adjusted. Tap any frame to open the nudge view:
- Step buttons let you move forward or backward one frame at a time
- A scrubber lets you slide to any frame within the allowed range
- "Reset to Auto" reverts to the automatically detected position
Nudged frames show a small indicator dot so you can tell which ones you've manually adjusted.
Why nudge? Sometimes the auto-detection is close but not perfect — you might want to shift the impact frame by 1-2 frames to catch the exact moment of contact, or adjust the top-of-backswing frame to show your shaft position more clearly. The filmstrip is then saved with your adjustments, so they persist across sessions.
Zoom levels — from full swing to frame-by-frame
The filmstrip starts at the full-swing view — 10 frames spanning address to finish. But you can zoom in to see more detail around impact:
- Zoom in and the 10 frames narrow around the impact zone, showing you more closely spaced frames through the critical part of the swing
- Keep zooming and the window gets tighter and tighter — eventually you're seeing 10 adjacent frames right around impact
- How many zoom levels? It depends on your video's frame rate. A 240 FPS slow-motion video has far more frames to work with than a 30 FPS video, so you get more zoom levels. The system keeps zooming until the filmstrip is showing adjacent frames — that's the maximum resolution your video supports.
Each zoom level gives you a fresh set of 10 frames with the same pinch-and-zoom interaction.
Pinch and zoom on individual frames
Beyond the zoom levels that change which frames are shown, you can also pinch and zoom on the filmstrip thumbnails themselves to see them larger. This is useful for studying small details — hand position, clubface angle, ball compression — without leaving the filmstrip view.
Sharing filmstrips
Tap the share button to export your filmstrip as a JPEG image — a clean layout with all 10 frames, the swing name, club, and date. From there you can:
- Text it to a friend or coach
- Email it with your analysis notes
- Post it on social media (Instagram, X, golf forums)
- Save it to your camera roll
It's a self-contained image — anyone can view it without needing MotionEdge.
Filmstrips in swing comparison
When comparing two swings, each swing gets its own filmstrip row. Both start aligned at the same zoom level so you can compare positions side-by-side — your address next to a reference swing's address, your impact next to theirs.
You can independently scroll each filmstrip to adjust the alignment. If you want to compare your transition against a pro's transition, but the auto-alignment is slightly off, just scroll one row to line them up.
This is especially powerful when combined with imported reference videos — import a pro swing you admire, generate its filmstrip, then compare your 10 positions against theirs.
Filmstrips and AI coaching
When you share a swing with the AI coach, the filmstrip frames are what get sent as images for analysis. The AI sees your 10 key positions and analyzes your posture, angles, and movement patterns across the swing sequence.
This is why nudging matters for AI coaching. If the auto-detected impact frame is off by a frame or two, the AI is analyzing the wrong moment. Check your filmstrip, nudge any frames that don't look right, and then send to the AI coach for the most accurate analysis.
Tips for better filmstrips
- Use a tripod or stable mount — camera shake makes every frame slightly different, which makes position detection harder. See the Filmstrip & Video Quality FAQ for details.
- Higher frame rates give you more zoom levels — 120 or 240 FPS gives you many more frames to work with than 30 FPS, especially around impact.
- Trim your video so it starts before your swing and ends after your finish — extra footage before and after helps the landmark detection find address and finish positions accurately.
- Good lighting and contrast help both pose detection and ball departure detection.