Vuact Finds the Moment when your Adrenaline Kicks In

Some people are addicted to speed. Not the speed Paul Erdös used to solve mathematical problems, but an actual need for speed. There’s a good reason why such addicts tend to find themselves fascinated with extreme sports like snowboarding, motocross and skydiving; for them, having multiple G’s of force smashing against their face is just a way to say they’re alive.

Until the creation of the GoPro device, these extreme sportsmen had difficulties of getting easy video footage of their stunts and adventures. But even with all the advantages of the revolutionizing POV camera, the bicycle enthusiast behind Vuact couldn’t help but feel like raw video footage was a pain to go through. Without a Red Bull sponsorship level of production behind the footage, amateur videos can be slightly and simply boring.

Mikko Järvenpää, the Finnish CEO of Vuact and one of the co-founders, says the Vuact Action Capture has figured out how to improve this problem by combining video recording with simultaneous sensor data intake.The result is a video with sensor data overlaid on the video timeline, creating visual performance peaks which indicate where the hardest action is taking place. Now instead of digging through footage to see when that cool moment was, you can see when your heart rate spiked alongside the footage – meaning something cool must have happened.

The idea for Vuact came during a mountain biking trip when Järvenpää and Kalle (the tech guy behind Vuact) accidentally sat on a nest of wasps and had to run for the well being of their behinds. They didn’t catch the incident on camera, but yet so they realized if they had recorded it, searching for those best moments through hours of video footage would be quite tedious.

Since the fellows were already working with video for years, the idea really took root and from being just a though it soon became a concept. Practicality issues were solved with hardware and software and fast forward until today we see the Vuact Action Capture is very much a real thing.

Just yesterday the Vuact Action Capture launched its $40 000 KickStarter campaign with aims to engage the mostly American public to crowdfund their app to the next level. Showing off the product should be fairly easy as all needed is to show a few clips with the app in action.

The Vuact works with a combination of an application and sensors which can detect speed, heart rate, acceleration, location and altitude. When their algorithm combines with video footage, you can use any external camera device, such as GoPro to take the video or alternatively take the video via the app.

It’s a completely new way of processing long video footage and allows you to snatch the golden cherries on top just by fast forwarding to the displayed action peaks.

The timeline display allows voice overs, comments and easy sharing, so I’m guessing it’s kind of a self motivational learning app or a means to “blog” your speed trips. Good sports tutorials are bound to result from Vuact.

Backing the Kickstarter project will not break the bank so there’s a few levels of backing from which to choose:

$5: support & high fives
$20: early Action Capture App access + free hosting for 5 videos
$70: Action Capture Heart Rate Monitor and app + free hosting
$90: + phone mount hardware for helmet + free hosting
$100: + phone mount hardware for handlebar + free hosting
$2000 ecosystem level: preferential early API access and integration with your Bluetooth Smart hardware (limit 10)