Filming guide

How you film sets how many fruit get a ripeness, and ripeness is what the forecast counts. A few habits make most of the difference.

The four rules

Camera height

Hold the phone at the height of the lowest ripe trusses, about 0.8 to 1.2 m. Keep the lens level and pointing straight at the row.

Distance

Stay 0.5 to 1 m from the row. At that distance a tomato is about 30 to 50 px across once the frame's long side is scaled to 1024 px. Cherry fruit need the near end of that range, or 4K.

Speed

Walk slowly, about 0.3 m/s, which is one step every two seconds. Keep the phone steady. Fast walking blurs frames.

Framing

Film in landscape with the near row filling the frame. Keep lamps and sky out of the picture. Film one side of the aisle per pass.

Why distance matters most

Fruit too small to read ripeness (under about 29 px across) are counted but carry no ripeness, so it drops out of the forecast. In a 960×540 clip most cherry fruit stay under that size. Record at 4K, or walk closer. The 29 px comes from the ripeness head: a fruit's crop, padded 10%, has to reach 32 px.

Too close is also a problem. On close-range 4K phone frames from a public dataset, the detector found about twice the labelled number of fruit, mostly extra boxes on one large tomato. Those extra boxes are small, so the median fruit can look far away. The capture check looks at the large fruit instead and warns when the 90th percentile fruit is over 60 px.

Film with the live guide

In the app, choose Film a walk to record with the phone's camera. About once a second the app checks one frame and shows a large banner with an icon and a short instruction, so the distance and focus are right before you walk and stay right while you record.

Move closer

The fruit are too small to score ripeness. Step toward the row, or record at 4K.

Step back

The fruit are so large that one tomato can be counted twice. Step away from the row.

Hold steady

The frame is blurry. Walk slower, keep the phone still, and clean the lens.

No fruit in view

Fewer than 5 fruit are in the frame, too few to judge the distance. Point the camera at the fruit trusses.

Good: keep going

Distance and focus are right. Keep this height and pace.

• Framing guide. Keep the fruit trusses between the two dashed lines. The inner ring is the smallest fruit that gets a ripeness, and the outer ring is the largest the detector counts well, so most fruit should fall between them.
• While recording. The check keeps running. The app counts how long the verdict was good and how long it was flagged, and warns when more than a third of the recording was flagged, so you can film that stretch again.
• After recording. Score the clip on its own, add it to the clips of one walk when a crop cycle is chosen, or save it to the phone.
• Screen readers. A change of verdict is announced politely, at most once every few seconds.
• No camera in the browser. Some browsers can't open the camera or record in a web page. The app says so and offers the file picker: record with the phone's camera app, then choose the video.
• A secure connection. Browsers open the camera only on a secure page, so use the app's HTTPS address.

The live check is not a walk and does not count toward your plan. Only the clip you upload is scored and counted. See Capture check for the thresholds.

Filming a long aisle in several clips

A long aisle can be filmed as several clips and uploaded together as one walk (see Your first walk).

• Keep the same phone, resolution, height, and distance for every clip. Clips at another resolution are refused.
• Start each clip where the last one stopped, so no plants are skipped. Avoid overlapping by more than a plant or two: fruit are not matched across the cut between clips, so fruit filmed twice are counted twice.
• Up to 12 clips make one walk. Each clip is sampled on its own, with the same seconds between frames and the same frame limit.
• The capture check reports each clip and the whole walk, so one blurry clip is easy to spot and film again.

No signal in the greenhouse

Greenhouse Wi-Fi is often weak between the rows. You can still film: when a recording finishes and the phone has no connection, Film a walk offers Upload when online. The clip is kept on the phone, with its crop cycle, week, and capture mode, and shows under Waiting to upload on the Walk pages.

• It uploads on its own when the connection returns while the app is open, and the next time you open the app. Upload now sends it straight away.
• Retries wait a little longer each time, up to 15 minutes. A walk that was sent but whose answer was lost is not made twice, and counts once.
• A walk the server refuses, for example when scoring is paused on the plan or the file is too large, is not retried. Its message stays on the list until you remove it or try it again.
• Before keeping a clip, the app checks the room the browser allows on the phone. It warns when space is low and does not keep a clip that will not fit; save it to the device instead.
• If you are signed out when the connection returns, the walks stay on the phone and upload after you sign in again. Walks are tied to the organization that filmed them and never upload under another one.

Add the app to the home screen so it opens without a connection:

iPhone

Open the app's address in the phone's built-in browser, tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen and Add.

Android

Open the app's address in the browser, open the menu (three dots), then Add to Home screen or Install app, and confirm.

Open it once while connected, so the phone keeps a copy. After that it opens on Walk and Film a walk without a connection. Results, records, and the forecast need a connection.

Before each walk

• Clean the lens.
• Record at the highest resolution the phone offers.
• Keep the same height, distance, and route from week to week, so walks compare fairly.
• For sizes and weights, hold the calibration board in the frame at the depth of the fruit (see Scale, photos, and modes).

How many plants to walk

The counts the forecast reads come from a sample, so how many plants you film and where they stand matter as much as the filming.

• Film at least 20 plants in each greenhouse every week; 30 is better.
• Spread them over at least 3 paths, or every path in a smaller house, not one corner.
• Count the fruit on the same 6 or more tagged plants each week, on Records → Fruit counts.

Pick the crop cycle on Film a walk, and the page shows this week's coverage for its greenhouse: plants filmed, paths walked and tagged plants counted, each against its target, with what to do next. A scored walk shows the same. Overview flags a greenhouse whose walks this week are below target.