Upgrading to SwingPractis from iDSR Home Edition FAQ

A: SwingPractis™ is the new name for iDSR Home Edition. It has a number of improvements, but it still works like the old program and you can do all the same things that you used to do, and more. There is more information about SwingPractis™ on [http://www.inpractis.com/swingpractis.php its page], and an introduction video [http://www.inpractis.com/spvideo.php here].

A: If you regularly record swings at a DSR kisok, you will have to upgrade. All IGOLPING DSR kiosks have been upgraded to capture the video in an improved format that will require SwingPractis™ for viewing. All swings available on this website also use the new format. The good news is that the new swings will be stored as one file with the extension .swi. As you may know the old swings were made up of five files: two .avi, two .bmp, and one .swi. The new .swi file is not the same as the old one; it contains the whole swing (both angles) and all the swing information. Best of all, the new swings offer improved video quality and take up only about 1.2 Mbytes each -- about 1/10 the size of the old swings.

A: SwingPractis™ will recognize old swings when it first starts. It will invite you to convert them to the new format. Conversion will typically take anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds per swing depending on the performance of your computer. You don't have to convert them right away; SwingPractis™ can display old swings.

A: They will be about 1.2 Mbytes and will have about the same or slightly better look to them than the old file format. Each swing will be one file ending with an extension of .swi.

A: You can do this at any time. The swings that were converted will now be in your "My Golf Swings" folder. Any swings that were not converted when you hit abort will still be in your "My Golf Swings" folder. The original files from the conversion will be moved into a folder under the "My Golf Swings" folder called "Old Format Backups". If you ever want to recover them they will be there.

A: Keep them for a little while until you are sure that you won't have to recover them. If space is an issue on your computer and you are satisfied that the files have converted correctly, you may delete the backups. For safety purposes, it is always nice to have a backup and you may want to save old swings to CD.

A: Yes, you can use SwingPractis™ to view the old format swings. You don't have to convert them, but every time you start the application it will ask you if you want to convert any of the old swings?

A: Not really. Depending on how many swings you have, it may take some time though. You may want to let it do the conversion when you are not sitting there ready to look at your swings.

A: No. All IGOLPING DSR kiosks have been upgraded to work with the new swing format, and the new format is smaller, more portable, and even higher quality.

A: They will not be converted until you move them on to your computer and you start SwingPractis™ again. At that point you will be asked if you want to convert them. At some point you will probably want to remove old swings from your Flash Drive in order to free up space. Deleting one old swing will typically free enough space to hold 8 to 12 new swings.

A: You can expect a 128 Mbyte drive to hold about 100 swings.

A: In general, SwingPractis™ will run better on older Windows XP PCs than Home Edition.

A: Not yet. Please accept our apologies, but much of the software we provide is free and the development cost to support Mac is significant.

A: You can only run SwingPractis™ on a Windows XP computer, but you can play the new swing files using Microsoft Windows Media Player under other operating systems. Most versions of Media Player will display two separate video windows for the two angles of the swing. On some versions of Media Player (such as the Mac version) you will have to rename the .swi file extension to .wmv, and you will only be able to see the target line view.

A: Lesson Mode is a new feature in SwingPractis™. In the free version of the software, you can only playback lessons that were created by others. Lessons are basically annotated swings which include a voice track. The content provider can move the swings to various points and draw objects on the swing while narrating a lesson or tip. The best part is that unlike other applications that just generate a “canned” movie, SwingPractis™ allows you to pause the lesson and interact with the swing at any time. When you want to continue the lesson just press Play on the lesson control panel.

A: Open the Options menu when in Lesson Mode, and select the check box next to "Advanced Controls". This enables the standard playback controls so that they are available when a lesson is paused. The controls will be grayed out while the lesson is playing.

A: We will start having content on our web site, but expect to start seeing content from other sources as well. We look forward to making SwingPractis™ the tool for distributing swing instruction content on the web.

A: If you are a teaching professional you may qualify to receive our SwingPractis™ Pro due out shortly.

A: Though most of the changes have happened underneath the hood making the software more robust and faster while using a new video format, there are also many feature enhancements. Several changes were made to the drawing features. When drawing lines or circles, there is an enhanced recognition mode that rubber bands the line or circle. You may connect two lines to form an angle. Click the corner or angle and the measurement will be displayed in degrees. Click the end of a line to make an arrow. You may erase all drawing objects by pressing the Del key. There many other features explained in the help menu. There are also new features in the [http://www.inpractis.com/swingpractis-faq.php?topic=2 Premium] version for recording swings and more.