Recording cycling movies for training on Wahoo Kickr/Kinomap?

Triathlon Forum
1

I must admit that most of the indoor cycling DVDs don’t really kick me, either because of the ‘visuals’, because of the selection of intervals and rest periods, and most importantly because they control training load by HR/CAD/intensity scale instead of %FTP.

So as we were in Trentino (which is extremely nice for riding in autumn) last week I thought about recording my own movies with a GoPro / Contour / Garmin combination. I would like to use them either to simulate a complete climb, a race stage, or a tri loop or alternatively cut and reshuffle parts to match intervals and power as I like. I could then also add my own music, preventing me getting crazy listening to the klingklong* which is on some of the early Spinervals or CTS. Basically I would like to use the finished video for training on the Wahoo Kickr with Kinomap streamed to a larger screen using Airplay. So much about the ambition. Unfortunately I have never recorded cycling movies so I have some open points which concern me.

One aspect which I am concerned of is camera shaking, if I record while actually cycling using a handlebar or frame mount. I think I would be safe for elevation profiles up to 8%, but if the climb requires me to stand up at 15% or more I guess the image could make me (or someone else) crazy if watched indoors. I could change the cassette to a 12-29, which would certainly help me to keep seated keep the bike more stable, but it would make things more complicated anyhow.

Other videos on Kinomap are filmed using a camera mounted to the car. I could do the same, but there are two things which come to my mind. I would probably go faster with the car than with the bike especially on the climbs, even if I drive very slowly. So I understand I need to record with a higher fps rate to prevent the playback being bumpy, when slowed down from 25km/h (car) to 10km/h (on the trainer). But none of the cameras support 120fps in HD quality. Is that a thing to wait for?

To synchronize the elevation profile I would just tape the Garmin to the car and start recording on the Garmin and the camera synchronously. Kinomap has an application to synchronize the GPX profile with the video, but it seems that there are some problems attached to this. Some videos show a completely downward profile, but the picture actually shows a positive elevation. If such happens the complete recording would be useless, as I understood the Kickr uses elevation data for power calculation and would therefore most probably set itself to zero resistance.

Also while actually training I use a plugin for Sporttracks to correct elevation based on the actual map data. I guess I should do the same here also.

Finally GoPro offers a case which allows synchronizing two of their cameras for recording in 3D. Given the more or less reasonable price of two devices, I think this is a kind of fancy feature. Anybody experimented with that in the context of cycling?

The whole story seems interesting to me mainly to keep or share some cycling specific memories of past vacations or events. Also it would allow having a solid understanding of the bike leg of a certain race, which helps me to gauge my efforts, prevent taking the wrong turn, and simply makes me feel better. So I would be happy if anyone can share experiences/thoughts.

Cheers
Richie

2

recording from your car would be far less time consuming. you could record several routes in a fairly short time. riding the routes of course would be lengthy.

LOTS of footage makes editing better in the end.

if you mount your camera firmly to the bike the shaking is actually not that bad.

the video is certainly not something that is something you end up watching for memories of past vacations though.

contour has a model that has GPS built into it, not sure if that’s something you want to check more closely on.

good luck.

Tim

3

Once you figure out your video, I’d recommend using PerfPRO Studio to merge it with your effort file and control the Kickr. PerfPRO already supports this for things like the computrainer and I suspect Kickr support will be straightforward on or shortly after release (that’s speculation).
You may want to consider making an erg file (watts or %FTP) instead of an elevation file. Otherwise you have the challenge of trying to make the video play slower/quicker to match your riding intensity that day. If you want to have multiple riders at once, it is pretty much impossible to reconcile the video pace and two different ride speeds. If you make an effort/erg file instead, however, you can just have it require a %FTP at each location and ride along… and you will need to just lower your FTP if you can’t keep up.

You can make an erg file several ways. You can record the power meter output off an actual file, of course (or find someone else’s file online). I believe PerfPRO has a field you can add to the resulting file to specify the FTP of the original rider so it will scale all the relative values automatically (if the pro had a 350 FTP, it would call times when he rode 350 “100%” and times when he rode 175 “50%” and thus require those percentages of your FTP at those times). You can also make the file manually, which might not be as bad as you think. Even with a live file you will likely want to edit it to not have the power changing every few seconds, and instead have longer steadier efforts of 30s to several minutes. You can take the real file and start editing it/smoothing it, or you could just look at the elevation or speed over a ride and make an erg file from scratch. You could start by just cutting it into 5-minute segments, and then over time cut it into smaller more varied power levels to make it more interesting.

PerfPRO has all the tools for this sort of thing -

From http://perfprostudio.com/StudioFeatureSheet.aspx:

Associate any video with any workout. PerfPRO Studio comes standard with The Sufferfest video workout files (not the videos themselves) in MRC format. If you own their videos, and if you don’t you should try them, you can associate the videos with the workouts and ride some cool video workouts. Also, if you want to build up and sync a workout from your own helmet cam video you can do that too. Just build the video, create a workout that matches it and you’re good to go. If you’re willing to put in the time of producing the videos with PerfPRO Studio you can have your own free video workouts. It’s pretty sweet!

4

Nothing to add technically as I’m not in the know, but I gotta say -

the prospect of being able to record video on a ride, then sync it to the GPS record (with elevation) and then replay it on a Wahoo trainer is really, really tantalizing. Sounds amazing, actually.

I really hope this doesn’t turn into vaporware, just as the i-fit did for treadmills. The i-fit sounded like it would do very similar things to the Wahoo for a TM - map out a course on Google Maps, then run the elevation (inclines, at least) with street view replaying on the screen. Despite a great idea, it flopped beyond belief - I don’t know anyone who likes it, and they sold tens of thousands of those things.

5

Thanks for mentioning this one, I was not aware such tool existed. From first looks it seems to tackle the problem of matching a sequence in the video to a certain wattage really well. I’ll try to dive a little bit deeper into this. I understand if I record the erg file using the powermeter on my ride I can add the visuals shooted from the car later on. Surely limits the routes I can do during a trip, but I prefer to have two or three quality footages instead of seven jerky ones. Finally this would also allow to compare the power recorded in the erg file to the power that the Kickr derives from the elevation profile.

As I took a look I was also thinking, from the perspective of Wahoo, such a piece of software would be crucial for overall product success and I was wondering why they did not put more emphasis on providing such a toolset. I checked the various announcements and they did not mention to support anything else than kinomap. Let’s see if PerfPRO adds support for this setup. I think the most thrilling feature of the Kickr is to record your own rides combine it with performance data and use it for training. If such things do not work at the release date, my personal opinion is that the current hype will not be sustained very long. Especially if the Kickr is compared to a setup of using trainerroad.com (or even a sheet of paper) together with a cheaper powermeter like the Power2max or StageOne. Someone might keep his old trainer, add such a powermeter for winter training and would get a solution for summer season as well. Granted, that’s not like riding a SRM, but it’s better than nothing.

6

The new model is really to disconnect the hardware vendors from the software vendors. Wahoo has espoused this with their other hardware as well; many people are using the ANT+ iphone dongle they offer, for example, with applications such as Strava. I use the Wahoo app and dongle to retrieve workouts from my Garmin 910XT watch wirelessly and upload them to Strava, Trainingpeaks, Garmin Connect etc. Wahoo certainly does put some effort into software and they do a good job of it, but the focus seems to be on hardware and the key to what they offer is choice.
From what I have seen and heard, the Wahoo Kickr will be no different. The idea is that it is an erg trainer at great value, and it interfaces - generally wirelessly - with a wide variety of tools. I imagine Racermate/Computrainer wrestled with whether they should take the same approach, and I imagine all would agree that their hardware has been bulletproof, but the pains and challenges have been in software. That said, when they invested a lot of effort into software there were few other offerings out there, so they really had no choice.
I don’t think software from Wahoo is going to be the allure of the Kickr and make or break it. Rather, I think the idea is that this will be (hopefully) the most reasonably-priced and best-performing erg-mode trainer you can buy, and you are free to use it with packages such as PerfPRO, trainerroad, ergvideo, and Kinomap, among others. I do not know anything about specific support for any of those, but I would be very surprised if it didn’t work with some or all almost immediately on launch. I love this approach. The release of PerfPRO couldn’t be timed better. To directly address the scenario you mentioned, I do not believe the Kickr will compete with Trainerroad. Rather, I believe the Kickr+Trainerroad will compete very favorably with a powermeter+trainerroad. I think it will go head to head with a computrainer+trainerroad, and that is where the battle will be fought. The same goes, of course, for the Kicker+PerfPro etc. It will be interesting to see if Ergvideo is unreceptive to supporting the Kickr since they (he) has a tight, helpful relationship with Racermate. Either way, lots of options for all of us!

7

There’s two things you’re talking about.

  1. FTP based workouts with synced custom video.

  2. Elevation profile workouts that are time based with many segments.

For #1, you’ll be able to do this with TrainerRoad very soon. You’ll be able to make a custom percent FTP workout and drop in any video.

With that, you could use the kickr, computrainer, or any other trainer.

For #2, kino map does that. One thing to know about kinomap is that it pauses the video if you are going slower than the recorded speed. Once you catch up it starts again. If you go too fast you’re just ahead of the video.

For video smoothing, there’s some software that does that. It zooms your video a bit then " unshakes" it. I forget the name of it.