Object Detection — Golf Club and Ball Tracking

What Is Object Detection?

When object detection is enabled, Swing Catalyst detects the golf club and ball in every video frame and draws 3D overlays on top of the skeleton visualization. You see:

• Club overlay — five keypoints along the shaft (head top, head bottom, shaft bottom, middle, and grip end) connected by color-coded lines. Colors fade from yellow at the club head to cyan at the grip so orientation is immediately clear.
• Ball overlay — a single white sphere at the detected ball position.

Overlays appear during both live camera view and playback of recorded takes. Takes recorded without object detection play back normally with body-only visualization.

Why Object Detection Is Golf-Only

Object detection currently supports golf only. The underlying models (RTMDet-M for object detection and RTMPose-M for club pose estimation) are trained specifically on golf equipment. Extending to other sports (baseball, tennis) requires additional trained models, which are not yet available. The architecture is designed to support additional sports in the future; no code changes to the pipeline will be needed when new models are released.

How to Enable or Disable Object Detection

Detection Mode (global setting)

1. Open Settings → Video & Capture.
2. Scroll to the Advanced Settings section.
3. Find the Detection Mode dropdown.
   • MultiClass — runs person detection AND object detection. This is the default.
   • HumanOnly — runs person detection only. Use this if you do not need club and ball tracking, or if you are experiencing performance issues.
4. Changing the mode restarts the detection services automatically. No app restart is required.

Enable Object Detection toggle (per-session)

When Detection Mode is set to MultiClass, a separate Enable Object Detection toggle is available. Turn it off to temporarily skip object detection for the current session without changing the global Detection Mode. This toggle is grayed out when Detection Mode is HumanOnly.

Show / Hide overlays in the viewport

Use the toolbar above the viewport to show or hide club and ball overlays independently:

• Show Club — toggles the club keypoint and bone overlay.
• Show Ball — toggles the ball sphere overlay.

These toggles take effect immediately without restarting detection and persist between sessions.

Hardware Requirements

Object detection requires more GPU memory than body-only motion capture.

For full details and the full list of compatible graphics cards, see Recommended computer specifications .

On systems with less than 8 GB VRAM, the application may automatically fall back to person-only detection. A notification banner in Settings → Video & Capture will appear if this happens.

Intel integrated graphics (UHD 620/770): Object detection is automatically disabled on Intel iGPU configurations because the OS-assigned VRAM budget (typically 400–800 MB) is insufficient. Person-only motion capture continues to work normally.

What You See in Playback

When you open a take that was recorded with object detection enabled:

• Club and ball overlays appear on the timeline alongside the body skeleton.
• Overlays stay synchronized with the video frame when you scrub the timeline.
• Low-confidence detections fade out rather than jumping to incorrect positions.
• You can toggle club and ball visibility independently using the toolbar controls described above.

Takes recorded before object detection was available, or with Detection Mode set to HumanOnly, show the body skeleton only. No reprocessing is required to view them — they open normally.

To add object detection data to an existing take, open the recording in analysis mode, click the Motion Capture button in the toolbar, and choose Reprocess MoCap. This reruns both body and object detection on the recorded frames.

Troubleshooting

Club and ball overlays do not appear

1. Check that Settings → Video & Capture → Detection Mode is set to MultiClass.
2. Check that the Enable Object Detection toggle is on.
3. Check whether the notification banner “Club and ball tracking models are not yet available” is shown in settings. If it is, the required model files are missing from the components directory. Reinstall the motion capture components following the Component Installation Guide .

VRAM warning / automatic fallback to person-only

The application logs a warning and falls back to person-only detection when:

• DirectML reports less than 600 MB of free VRAM at service startup, or
• The system has an Intel integrated GPU.

To resolve this: ensure no other GPU-intensive applications are running, and check that your graphics card meets the recommended specifications for MultiClass detection (8 GB VRAM minimum).

Overlays appear for the wrong activity

Object detection is only active for golf activities. If you are recording a non-golf sport and see no club or ball overlays, this is expected behavior. The Detection Mode setting is not shown in Settings for non-golf activities.

Low detection accuracy or flickering overlays

• Ensure the club and ball are well-lit and not obscured for a significant portion of the swing.
• Try lowering the camera frame rate to reduce system load (see Motion Capture Settings ).
• Increase the detection confidence threshold in Settings → Video & Capture → Advanced Settings if you are seeing false detections from background objects.
• For consistently poor detection, try switching the Execution Provider to DirectML as it has the broadest hardware compatibility.

Model files missing after update

If an application update changes the required model versions, the notification banner will reappear in settings. Follow the Component Installation Guide to reinstall the components.

See also: Motion Capture Guide · Motion Capture Settings · System Requirements