YouTube is the New Ticker Tape

I've been working with the kids on an experiment to try to show whether "pumping" has any measurable effect on skateboarding down a ramp. The set up reminded me of the old ticker tape experiments we used to do at school. This being the 21st century we've upgraded the ticker tape to videoing the skateboarding with a clock with 0.01 second resolution in shot at the same time.

The analysis of the results needed us to step through the video one frame at a time. After spending ages trying to make various standalone video software players work, the solution turns out to be really easy.

  1. Upload the video to Google Drive. YouTube would work just as well
  2. Open the Google video player or YouTube
  3. Press the space bar to start the video then space bar again to pause it
  4. Press the "." key to move one frame forwards
  5. Press the "," key to move one frame backwards