Live playback
Watch the race back with the field moving beside you.
Live playback replays the race: every runner as a moving marker, a timeline you can scrub, and mistake pins appearing as you pass them. It is the default view an analysis opens in, and it is the one that makes a race make sense to somebody who was not there.
Three ways to synchronise
The choice of synchronisation is the whole content of this view. Each answers a different question.
| Mode | What it does | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Mass start (default) | Every runner starts together at the start control and then drifts apart exactly as they really did | Who was ahead at any point of the race, in an individual-start event |
| Real time | Absolute clock time — runners appear and disappear according to when they actually started | Who was where in the forest at a given moment; first-leg relay analysis |
| Per-leg restart | Everyone resets together at every control | One route choice, isolated: two runners leave the same circle at the same instant and you watch where the gap opens |
How mass start finds the start
Every runner's GPS clock starts when they pressed the watch, not when they started running, so two tracks both reading "600 seconds in" are at different points of the race. Lining them up needs one number per runner: the moment on their clock at which their race began.
Where split times exist, that number is derived from them. For each control, the track's pass minus the official split is an estimate of when the race started on that clock, and they should all agree; the estimate used is the median across every control, which one bad control match cannot move.
Why it is not a per-control time warp
Cameras
| Camera | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Per-leg (default) | Keeps the whole active leg in view and moves leg by leg |
| Follow | Locks onto you and keeps its own zoom |
| Free | Leaves the map where you put it — and is the only camera you can drag to rotate, because the other two own the heading themselves |
Markers
Your marker and everyone else's are styled separately, so you can stand out:
| Style | Best for |
|---|---|
| Circle | The default — a filled dot |
| Arrow | Seeing which way someone is running, which matters at a control |
| Pulse | Picking one runner out of a busy map |
| Initials | Telling a crowded field apart without a legend |
| Club logo | Relays and mass starts — falls back to initials for a club with no logo on file |
Club logos come from the platform club registry, the same one Live draws on. See Clubs and club logos.
Mistake pins during playback
How long a pin stays up is a setting, because the right answer depends on what you are doing:
- Until the next control (default) — a pin appears as the playhead reaches it and clears at the next control. Keeps the map readable leg by leg.
- After it is passed — pins accumulate as you go.
- Always — every pin visible for the whole replay.
Full course and per-leg always show every pin; this setting only affects playback.
The ghost runner
In a sprint, an optimal ghost can run alongside you following the computed shortest legal path, at your own leg times. Watching where your line leaves the ghost's is the fastest way to see a route-choice loss as opposed to an execution loss. See Sprint analysis.
Other controls
- Playback speed — 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 or 50 times real time. The default is 10×, which is roughly the speed at which a middle distance is watchable end to end.
- Start from a control — begin the replay partway round rather than scrubbing to it.
- Step to the previous or next control — the fastest way to move through a race leg by leg.
Exporting a clip
A replay can be exported as a video, with whatever the map is currently showing. The branded export is free and always will be; what a paid plan removes is the Routster mark and the closing card.