okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Head cam notes
A few notes on orienteering head cam videos...
Watching a head cam video lets you count how many times an orienteer looks at the map. Map reading frequency is something I've been interested in for a while.
The camera I've been using - GoPro Hero HD 960 - does a great job of picking up the voice of the person wearing the camera. You could run a course and narrate what you're doing. It wouldn't be quite the same as a regular run (unless you talk to yourself out loud all the time), but it would be interesting. I think it could be a useful way to help relatively inexperienced orienteers understand what a more experienced orienteer is doing.
Chris Evans is wearing a GoPro in this video (he starts his run at 4:00 in the video and you can see a clip from his head cam at about 4:15):
GHO just bought the same camera and I'm quite impressed. It would be cool if somebody designed software that you could follow your quickroute GPS track and as you move you mouse along the track it moves the video on a separate screen. I'm pretty sure that video will be used as a coaching tool more and more now - especially with kids (and thats why we bought the camera).
I think the head cam has a lot of potential for coaching. It lets you see how someone orienteers in ways that looking at a GPS track and talking to a runner don't.
