I think all of the above software gives the same results and all of them need the requirements

Hi, Mir Chad

Thank you for your quick reply.

Hi Takahiro,

Kinovea, SkillSpector and Dartfish are similar (all 3 are video based motion analysis tools), yet with different capabilities and options. Which one to use really depends on your needs.

Kinovea - used to track objects, calculate kinematic parameters, measure angles and compare videos of (usually) sports performance.

Pros:

• Freeware.
• Easy to use. I use it in intro Biomechanics course with undergraduates.
• Works with virtually any type of video and I never had problems with codecs either.
• Still being developed. There are both stable versions and beta version with more options.
• Easy to export data measured.
• With a bit ingenuity can be used variously. Check out the Fukuda stepping test from Kinovea's own blog:

http://www.kinovea.org/en/measuring-angles-in-perspective/

Cons:

• Freeware: Although Kinovea is still developed and there are forums and developer-user interaction, you can't expect same kind of support as if you were a paying customer.
• Calibration: In order to calculate kinematic variables it uses user defined length, which depending on distance of camera from movement, distance of calibrated length from movement tracked and of course difference in depth between calibrated length and movement tracked can be somewhat problematic to calculate precisely.

SkillSpector - used for video based motion analysis. Can calculate COG shifts, joint angles, segment angles and other kinematics and also kinetic variables.

Pros:

• Freeware
• Surprisingly versatile for freeware
• Can do 2D and 3D analyisis
• More accurate calibration than Kinovea
• More complicated to use than Kinovea but still not overly complicated. You can easily learn to use it by yourself.

Cons:

• Freeware
• I don't think it is still being developed so version 1.3.2. is as good as it's going to get.
• Works only with .avi and only with certain codecs so you are almost guaranteed that you will need to convert videos. This is probably the thing I hate the most about SkillSpector since I lost so much time fiddling with video conversion. If you end up using SS drop me a message and I will give you some input on what codec and software to use for conversions.
• Data extraction from measured variables is somewhat unwieldy

Dartfish - never used it but my department is thinking of buying it. As far as I can tell it is somewhat similar to Kinovea without all the cons of a freeware tool and more versatile but there is a price tag which is not too expensive.

Hope this helps.

Take care.

Ivan Jurak

Hello

The main difference is measuring performance time and Kinovea belief that it is better than the rest at the time of measurement.

Dear Ivan.

Thank you for your answers in detail.

It's very helphul for me.

Dartfish has various functions, but almost thier functions doesn't have any relation to measuring and extracting numeric data.

Takahiro