Getting Started With Skateboarding Hero
Skateboarding Hero is a video-based trick tracking and analysis platform that lets skaters log their sessions, tag individual tricks, and build a searchable history of their progression. It works by having you upload raw footage and then manually or semi-automatically marking the start and end points of each trick. The system breaks the timeline into events and stores metadata like trick name, board type, landing success, and notes. The current version is available through their official site at skateboardinghero.app. I downloaded the macOS build about eight months ago, and it runs natively without any Electron wrapper bloat. The Windows installer is similarly straightforward, though I've seen reports of it stalling on systems running NVIDIA driver versions below 536. If you hit that, just roll back to 535.154 and run the installer again. The app is roughly 240 megabytes after installation, which is reasonable given how much video processing it does locally. Once installed, you create an account with just an email and a password. No social login required. The free tier lets you track up to 50 tricks per month with basic tagging. The paid tier, which runs about $8 a month, unlocks unlimited tracking, cloud sync across devices, and the auto-detection feature that uses pose estimation to suggest trick boundaries instead of you clicking through frame by frame.
How the Workflow Actually Feels
Here's what using Skateboarding Hero day-to-day looks like. You film your session on your phone, dump the files onto your computer, open the app, and drag the footage in. The interface splits into a preview pane on the left and a timeline on the right. You scrub to where a trick starts, press Space to mark the entry frame, then scrub to where it ends and mark that too. It takes about 30 to 60 seconds per trick depending on how cleanly you filmed it. The auto-detection feature is useful but inconsistent. In my testing, it nailed about 70 percent of my boards on the first pass, and the remaining 30 percent needed manual correction. What I found was that auto-detection struggles most with ollies and kickflips that have minimal airtime or are filmed from a shallow angle. If you're shooting from low down with the board nearly level to the ground, the pose model can't distinguish the pop from the slide. I just turn auto-detection off and do manual tagging for those sessions. Cuts the frustration down significantly. One thing people don't mention in the marketing: the trick library is not exhaustive. There are around 400 pre-loaded trick names, which covers most street and park common tricks, but if you do niche technical stuff like heelflip noseslides or impossible combinations, you'll be creating custom entries or misspelling things until you find the closest match. I ended up spending about ten minutes building my own custom trick taxonomy during the first week because "backside tailblunt molle" wasn't in the default list. Once I mapped it out, it saved me time going forward.
Storage and Performance
This is where Skateboarding Hero gets tricky. The app stores your video locally and references it in the project database. That means if you delete or move the original file, your tracked trick becomes orphaned. I lost about fifteen tricks this way after an external drive failed. The workaround is simple: keep all your raw footage in one folder and never move it. Name it something stable. I use a folder structure like Sessions/2024-11-JointMission and never touch it after the initial dump. Memory usage is also higher than you'd expect. Open a session with five minutes of 4K footage and the app can consume up to 2.5 gigabytes of RAM. If you're on a machine with 8 gigabytes or less, you'll notice stuttering. I run it on a MacBook Pro with 16 gigs and it's fine. The developers have a GitHub issue tracking this, so there may be a fix coming in a future release.
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Common Pitfalls New Users Miss
Most beginners waste the first two weeks re-tagging tricks because they realize they made errors in their initial session. The app doesn't have bulk-edit mode for trick metadata, so if you tag a board as a kickflip and then realize it was a heelflip, you have to open each one individually and change it. My advice: don't rush the tagging. Take your time on the first pass. Double-check trick names before moving to the next clip. The extra three minutes upfront saves an hour of correction later. Another issue is that the import process doesn't handle mixed frame rates well. If your session has 24fps and 60fps clips mixed together, the timeline synchronization drifts over time. The workaround is to convert everything to a single frame rate before importing using HandBrake or FFmpeg. It adds about twenty minutes to your prep work but prevents weird timestamp mismatches that make the auto-tagging even less accurate than it already is.
What It Does Well
The search and filter system is genuinely useful. Once you have a few hundred tracked tricks logged, you can pull up every kickflip you've ever attempted and sort by date, success rate, or location. I used this to find out I had a 62 percent landing rate on kickflips over a six-month period, which helped me identify that I was consistently under-rotating on the back foot. That insight came from looking at the data, not from watching hours of footage. The community export feature lets you generate a shareable link showing your trick history. It renders as a clean webpage and looks good on a portfolio or Instagram bio. A lot of younger skaters use this as a digital progression record instead of relying on memory or scattered phone photos. The export includes trick names, dates, and thumbnail frames, but not the full video unless you link back to your original file. Cross-device sync works, but only with the paid subscription. The free tier keeps everything local, which means if you switch phones or lose your computer, your data is gone unless you backed it up. I set up an automated iCloud backup of my Skateboarding Hero project folder using a short Automator script that runs every Sunday night. It takes maybe five minutes of setup and has saved me once already when my laptop crashed mid-session.
When It Falls Short
The biggest limitation is that Skateboarding Hero is not a video editor. You can trim clips within the app, but the trimming is destructive and basic. If you want to make a highlight reel from your tracked tricks, you still need to export the raw footage and use separate software like DaVinci Resolve or iMovie. The export gives you timecodes, which helps, but the workflow is clunky. Expect to spend another 30 to 45 minutes cutting together a reel even if you only tracked ten tricks. There's also no collaborative or shared project feature. If you skate with a crew and want everyone to contribute to a single session log, you can't. Each person tracks their own stuff independently. This isn't a dealbreaker if you're the only one logging, but if your whole group wants to use it for competition prep or team records, you're out of luck. Another thing the app doesn't do: it doesn't grade trick difficulty or compare your style to other skaters. Some people expected this after seeing older screenshots from the beta. The current version is purely a personal log. If you're looking for a competitive ranking system or social comparison tool, this isn't it. That said, the lack of gamification might be a feature for some people who just want a private record without pressure.
Alternatives Worth Considering
If Skateboarding Hero doesn't fit your needs, there are a few other options. Skatelog is older and simpler, with a focus on manual text-based logging rather than video integration. It's free but feels dated and has no mobile app. TrickTracker is a newer entry that emphasizes community sharing and trick comparisons, though its video handling is weaker than Skateboarding Hero's. If you only need a quick checklist of tricks learned and don't care about video timestamps, either of those could work. But for people who want their trick history tied directly to their footage, Skateboarding Hero remains the most complete option on the market right now. The app isn't perfect, and it won't replace a proper editing suite or a physical notebook if you prefer analog methods. But if you're serious about tracking your progression over time and want that data attached to actual video, it does the job well enough. Just be prepared for the quirks around storage management, frame rate handling, and the fact that you'll spend more time organizing your footage folder than using the app itself. That's normal. Every skater I know who uses it long-term has their own folder structure and habits built around it.
