How to Record Your Golf Swings while Minimizing Flickering

In home golf simulator setups, many golfers use swing cameras alongside projectors to record swings and improve their game. The purpose of swing cameras is to replay and analyze each golf swing in slow motion to identify mistakes and opportunities for improvement. This kind of setup helps to easily save footage so players can compare and track progress towards the ideal swing, plus helps save thousands of dollars on in-person coaching.

In this article we’ll quickly share ways to prevent flicker and explain why DLP projectors are ideal for home golf sim setups.

When using DLP projectors with high speed cameras, a flickering side effect occurs often enough to be a common topic of discussion among golf sim fans.  This is because DLP projectors use a spinning color wheel which displays one color at a time. Images are displayed at specific frequencies or refresh rates, such as 30Hz or 60Hz.

When these individual, one-color images are shown in rapid succession, our brain usually merges them into a single, unified image, so flickering or rainbow effects are generally not noticed by the naked eye. However, flickering is more easily observed when the image is captured by high speed cameras or when users are replaying recordings from a swing camera. This is because the fast speed shutters of those cameras are not capable of capturing the full RGB image displayed by DLP projectors “in time”. In other words, the cameras have a hard time keeping up with projected images, and drop frames, resulting in flicker becoming noticeable.

However, flicker doesn’t affect the tracking of your movements and your club, and doesn’t interfere with swing camera performance or data collection, but does cause distraction among some users.

To minimize flickering, there are three key settings you should note:

• Projector refresh rate (measured in Hz)
• Swing camera frame rate (measured in frames per second, or FPS)
• Camera exposure time

Basically, as long as you set your camera and projector to the same frequency or multiples of the same frequency, you will have a clearer view of your swings while minimizing unwanted flicker. For example, when using the LK936ST DLP 4K projector with a Carl’s Place swing camera, for a better experience and to minimize unwanted flickering we suggest you use 3840x2160 at 60Hz for the projector and 120FPS for the camera, which means the frequency of the projector and camera are set up with the same frame rate multiplier.

There’s a lot going in favor of DLP projectors. And flicker is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. Also, flickering isn’t a functional problem, and it won’t affect your golfing progress. It is a comfort issue, though.

DLP technology eliminates color fading and image yellowing over time. With a sealed design that protects the DLP chip from dust-induced image degradation, BenQ golf simulator projectors are capable of maintaining long-lasting picture quality by eliminating color decay.

DLP chips enable high color accuracy. BenQ laser projectors help you determine the color accuracy of each model by referencing standard color space measurements like REC 709, the color standard used in most modern TVs. For example, BenQ’s new LK936ST 5100 lumen 4K UHD laser projector, which is priced under $5000, achieves 92% of the REC 709 color space, allowing you to enjoy golf, movies, and video games in perfect color, knowing that what you’re seeing on screen is exactly what the content creators intended to show.

BenQ uses DLP architecture to create filter-free IP5X certified laser projectors that eliminate the need for filters, and that’s perfect for environments such as a garage or a basement, where dust particles may be prevalent.

To sum up, if you encounter flicker while using a DLP projector with a swing camera to record your swings, don’t worry. As we showed you, there are easy ways to reduce or eliminate flicker, and in any case this is not something that affects the accuracy of your golf simulation arrangement. Also, it’s not a good enough reason to miss out on all the benefits of high precision, durable, wide color gamut DLP projectors.

BenQ has trained staff to help you find the perfect golf simulator projector – within your room size and budget. To help you make the best decision, you can reach out to one of our experts to set up anything from a chat to a complete online demo, to help you find the right projector for your needs.