How to Film a Pitching Video That's Actually Worth Analyzing

That's the whole recipe. Five rules, a phone, and five minutes. The rest of this article explains the why behind each rule, because the why is what keeps you from making the one mistake that ruins more pitching videos than everything else combined.

The #1 mistake: filming from behind

By a wide margin, the most common problem with the videos people send us is the angle. The camera is set up behind the pitcher or behind the catcher, looking down the line of the pitch, exactly like a TV broadcast.

It makes sense that people do this. It's how we've all watched pitching our whole lives. But think about what that angle was designed for: TV wants to show you the pitch, the ball darting in, the batter swinging over it. When the goal is analyzing the pitcher, that angle hides nearly everything that matters. Stride length? Invisible from behind. Front leg bracing or collapsing? Can't see it. When the hips fire relative to the shoulders, where the arm is when the front foot lands, how the trunk comes through? All of it is stacked up in a straight line behind the pitcher's back, hidden from the camera.

From the side, the delivery opens up like a book. Every phase is visible in profile: the leg lift, the stride, the landing, the rotation, the release, the finish. That's the view analysis actually needs, and it's why rule #1 is the one rule you can't bend.

Why the other four rules matter

Landscape, full body. A vertical phone crops the frame tight, and something always gets cut: the feet during the stride, the hand at the top of the arm swing. Mechanics live in the whole body. If we can't see his feet, we're missing half the delivery.

15 to 20 feet. Closer and the pitcher won't stay in frame through the motion. Much farther and he shrinks into a stick figure with details too small to read. Fifteen to twenty feet, straight out to the side, keeps the whole delivery large and sharp.

Light and stability. Daylight is your friend; late-afternoon sun directly behind the camera is perfect. Avoid shooting into the sun, which turns your pitcher into a silhouette. And brace the phone on something. A shaky handheld video at full zoom can turn a clean delivery into a blur.

One full pitch, normal speed. You don't need to film in slow motion. A normal-speed clip carries all the frames needed to scrub through the delivery moment by moment. What matters is the whole pitch: starting the recording after the windup has begun, or cutting it the instant the ball leaves the hand, throws away the beginning and end of the story. Start early, stop late. One clean, complete pitch beats ten messy ones.

Mound or flat ground? Practice or game?

A real mound is ideal, because the slope is part of the delivery. But if there's no mound handy, flat ground still shows the majority of what analysis looks for. Don't let a missing mound stop you.

Practice footage beats game footage almost every time. Game video is usually shot from the stands: too far, wrong angle, chain-link fence in front of the lens. A quiet bullpen or backyard session where you control the camera gives a dramatically better result. On that note: get in front of the fence, not behind it. Autofocus loves chain-link more than it loves your pitcher.

You've got the video. Now what?

If you filmed it the way this article describes, you're holding everything needed for a real mechanical breakdown. This is exactly the clip our free evaluation is built around: upload it, and our team goes through the delivery frame by frame, then tells you what's actually happening in there. What's costing velocity, what's stressing the arm, what's fine and should be left alone, and what to work on first. Free, and the upload takes about two minutes.

Common questions