How to film yourself playing tennis
A phone on the fence is all you need. Where you put it decides whether the video shows anything useful.
Mount the phone so it can't move, behind the baseline and as high as you can get it (a fence clip at head height or above works well), in landscape, at 1080p and 60 frames per second. Keep your whole body in frame, feet included, and record focused clips of 30 seconds to 2½ minutes rather than a whole session (a clip over 2:30 uses two analyses).
1. Pick the angle for what you want to see
| Camera position | Best for | Weak at |
|---|---|---|
| Behind the baseline, centered, raised | Footwork, recovery, court position, shot direction and depth, serves | Racket path seen edge-on; the far player is small |
| Side-on, level with you, near the net post | Stroke mechanics: take-back, contact point, follow-through, knee bend | Where the ball goes; you leave the frame when you move a lot |
| Back corner, angled across the court | A compromise that shows both body and ball flight | Some distortion at the edges |
If you only film one way, film from behind the baseline. It shows the most about how you play points, and it's the angle where you stay in frame.
2. Get the phone high and keep it still
A phone propped on a bag at ground level sees the net tape and not much else. Raising it to head height or above lets the camera see over the net, the ball's depth and your feet at the same time. A cheap fence clip or a small tripod on a bench does the job.
Don't hold it. A handheld phone shakes, drifts and follows the ball, which makes your movement impossible to judge. Turn off digital zoom: if the court doesn't fit, use the ultra-wide (0.5×) lens instead.
3. Settings that matter, and one that doesn't
- Frame rate: 60 fps if your phone offers it. A swing is fast; at 30 fps the racket is a blur for several frames around contact. On iPhone it's in Settings, Camera, Record Video.
- Resolution: 1080p is plenty. 4K files are several times larger and slower to upload, and Baseline scales large uploads down to 720p before analysis anyway, so 4K adds wait without adding detail the analysis uses.
- Slow motion: only for measuring speed. For coaching analysis, record at normal speed. For the serve speed calculator, a 120 or 240 fps slow-motion clip makes the measurement far more precise.
- Orientation: landscape from behind the baseline, so the court's width fits. Portrait is fine for a side-on clip of one player.
4. Light, background and other people
Don't point the camera into the sun or at a bright window; you become a silhouette. Overcast days are ideal. On a busy court, note what you're wearing: Baseline asks for your clothing color at upload so the analysis follows you and not the player on the next court. If more than one person is measured on a shot, the report lets you tap yourself so the rest of the session follows the right player.
5. Record clips with one job each
A 90-second clip of serves, or two minutes of crosscourt forehands, gets sharper feedback than 45 minutes of everything. Baseline accepts MP4, MOV and AVI up to 5 minutes and 500MB. Patterns matter more than single shots: a fault only gets reported when it shows up on at least two shots, so give it several repetitions of the thing you want looked at.
Common mistakes
- Feet cut off at the bottom of the frame. Footwork is often the real cause of a technique problem, so it needs to be visible.
- Camera at net height behind the baseline, so the net hides the far half of the court.
- Filming a whole session and uploading it unedited. Trim to the part you care about.
- Zooming in to make yourself bigger. Digital zoom throws away detail; move the phone closer instead.
Filmed something? Upload it and Baseline's AI watches every shot and writes you a coaching report: scores for technique, movement and consistency, notes tied to moments in the video, and drills. Your first analysis is free.
Related
- What AI analysis can see: An honest look at AI tennis coaching from phone video: what it reads well, what it gets wrong (forehand vs backhand, spin), and how to use the feedback without overhauling your game.
- Serve speed calculator: Measure how fast your serve is from any phone video. Mark contact and the bounce, tap where it landed on the court, and get your speed in mph and km/h with an honest error range. Free, in your browser.