Newsletter 3: July 2005

News | Technical Support | Coaches Corner | Case Study | Product Updates

Welcome to this months edition of the Sportstec newsletter.

As Beijing 2008 gets closer the pressure goes on the various teams to ensure they are fully into their preparation cycle. The Chinese Basketball team have purchased the first system to go into the Chinese Olympic Team and we see the potential as really exciting.

We are excited to announce that SportsCode 6.0 is going through the final testing phases. This release will have some exciting product features that we believe will add real value to the outcomes you can drive from your SportsCode systems.

Regards,
Philip Jackson, Managing Director

In this months issue:

News

Sportstec has had an awesome month adding a number of impressive sporting organizations to our customer list. To learn more about new customers click here.

Technical Support

This month our technical team look at Tiger. Click here to read more.

Coach’s corner

Apprehensive about live coding? Mark Amaral (UCSB: Men’s Basketball) shares with us how he got over this hurdle, and as a result saves himself valuable time and gets Coach the information he requires in record time. Click here to read more.

Case Study

Bolton Wanderers were one of Sportstec's first SportsCode Football customers globally. Get an insight into the club's integration of Sportstec technology by clicking here.

Product Updates

To find the latest available versions of all Sportstec products click here.

Sportstec News

Sportstec is ecstatic to welcome all new sporting organizations and individuals who have embraced our technology over the past few months including our first sales in China and Russia.

In June we saw an impressive number of teams integrate our technology into their day-to-day routines including:

Technical Support

Macintosh Operating System 10.4: TIGER

As you are all aware Apple recently released their new operating system: Tiger.

Our testing team has spent many long nights testing all of our products. We are happy to announce that we are now satisfied that there will be no disruptions to any of our products and encourage you to upgrade your Operating system with confidence.

SportsCode Users

Some of you may be aware of some the initial problems that occurred with Tiger, QuickTime 7 and SportsCode 5.4.** and below.

We have addressed all of the issues we are aware of, and now have confidence in Tiger, QuickTime7, and SportsCode working as well or better than in pre 10.4 versions of OSX.

In order to ensure your upgrade goes smoothly we recommend you do the following:

Did you know…

• Did you know that Address Book can print out a pocket-sized tabbed version of your entire address book so you can carry it around with you? Go to Print and choose Pocket Address Book from the Style menu. The resulting printout even includes cutting guides to help you assemble the booklet.
• Did you know that you can correct photos from Preview?
  Just go to Tools: Image Correction to adjust the sharpness, saturation, white point, exposure, and more.
• The new Dashboard hosts nifty mini-applications called widgets that appear instantly and keep you up to date with timely information from the Internet. View game scores, game statistics, check weather forecasts, track flights, what ever catches your eye. Your favorite widgets appear with up-to-the-second information, then disappear just as easily, so you can get back to what you were doing.

Coaches Corner

Live Coding – Get into it Now!

A common complaint we hear from customers all over the world, is the lack of time coaching staff have and as a result the need to get access to video information as quick as possible. One way to save time with post game edits is to code live.

Another common thing we hear is “Code live, we’re not ready for that!!!”.

We know that coding live seems like a daunting task, but I promise if you follow our few simple tips you will be wondering why you didn’t code live sooner.

Coaches Tip from Mark Amaral – University of California Santa Barbara; Assistant Men’s Basketball Coach.

Mark is in his fifth season as an assistant coach at UC Santa Barbara after spending three years as the head coach at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, Washington. Amaral oversees the Gaucho backcourt players and his duties include on-court coaching, in-season scouting of opponents, recruiting, academic concerns of athletes and a variety of others.

This is taken from a letter Mark sent to Sportstec’s East Coast Representative: Joe Boyle.

When we started using the SportsCode Pro software, I was most concernedwith how I was going to keep up compiling post game edits when I had to capture onto the computer and then code the game. Well, we have come a long way. This past season we were able to not only capture directly onto the computer during games, but actually coded the games live! The individual we had working with us did an incredible job and actually was recently hired to perform the same duties with the New York Liberty.

When we sat down as a staff in the fall to map out the particular areas we wanted to focus on, we all had the understanding that the capture and coding would be done post game, because that was how we thought we would have to do it. As you know, the amount of data you choose to code and compile is endless and completely left to the discretion of your staff. At first, we were coding clips that were nice to have, but quite frankly, did not help us in evaluating our team.

After purchasing a digital camera, we realized it was most effective, and easiest to capture directly to the computer. The use of a digital camera also enhanced the quality of the video to analyze and reproduce. To provide a video tape for opponents after the game and film exchange request, we connected additional VCRs to the camera like we normally would do in the past.

Once we started capturing directly to the system, we started to experiment coding the games live. First we started with just coding offense and defense. Then, we added coding the players as well. Eventually, we were coding all the above, plus offensive and defensive sets and other various points. Once our video guy memorized the hot keys and became familiar with our program and what we were looking for, he was able to provide us a wealth of information immediately following the game.

Coding games live can seem like a daunting task, but SportsCode is very user friendly and allows you to work at the pace you are comfortable with.
You are going to code the film and retrieve the data, it is just a matter when you want to code it. Give live coding a chance and make use of the time during the games.

Case Study

The Bolton Wanderers (UK) - Dave Fallows

Bolton Wanderers was one of the first football clubs in Britain to embrace advanced video analysis systems as a vital tool in helping to prepare its players and coaching staff deliver the optimum performance.

That was five seasons ago when Bolton was promoted to the Premier League in the England competition, widely regarded as the best domestic football competition in the world. This year, after finishing sixth in the Premier League, the club qualified for European football for the first time in its history. Tied by financial constraints, Bolton originally used two analysis systems before choosing to go with Sportstec’s range because of its flexibility and easy use.

"We can use SportsCode from first team level all the way through to our academy teams and specifically tailor it to the needs of each individual team,’’ Dave Fallows, head of the club’s Performance Analysis Department, said.
"Each coach, each team and each set of players has different areas they want to work out so it’s important for us that we’re not confined to one template. With SportsCode we can go off into different areas and focus on key things for each team. We can use it as a tool for analysing training and also helping the sports science department in various ways with different parts of the analysis."

Bolton Wanderers’ Performance Analysis Department has three members of staff with two working at first team level and one at academy level.

"We’re the only club, certainly in this country, and probably even outside, who has three fulltime members of staff doing the performance analysis,’’ Fallows said. "So the club’s made quite a significant investment in the analysis side of things which also reflects what the manager’s beliefs are and how useful and how vital a tool it is really for everything that we do.’’

The club boasts one of the biggest staffs in the Premier League with a massive back-up support for the players. Fallows said that again, is a reflection of manager Sam Allardyce’s vision where the players are given full support in every aspect of their career so they can perform to the best level. The Performance Analysis Department is an important part of that network.

Having used Sportstec systems for a long time in comparison to many of their rivals, Fallows and his staff rate it highly and have become near-experts at realising the potential this form of technology holds for quick and accurate assessment of a diverse range of subject matter that is of ultimate benefit to the club.

"We have improved the way that we use it each year and have found different ways of working with it as our staff’s got bigger on the sports science side and the coach has taken more of an interest in analysis and has seen the benefits of it,’’ Fallows said.
The open manner of Bolton Wanderers’ first team manager Sam Allardyce had been a key to greater exploration of what the SportsCode system can deliver.

"If you’ve got a manager who believes in the value of analysis and who allows you to do your work and have an input where each game is prepared for and reflected on, I think you can have a really big impact which is what we look to do here,’’ Fallows said.
"The staff all work together and communicate well so we obviously work within the manager’s guidelines of what we know but it’s such a great set-up at the club in the sense that we can approach the manager with information we’ve found from games or from training or from anywhere really and he’s really willing to sit down and listen to the ideas that we have or the information that we can give him."

"We are guided by the manager but he’s also very keen on giving people the freedom and creativity to do their own jobs. We’ve been fortunate that we’ve not just been following orders, we’ve been able to explore our own areas.’’
Bolton Wanderers is not considered a club of real financial power within the Premier League but has managed to get the best out of a lot of players other clubs didn’t want. Its reward after seasons of hard work is the opportunity to play in Europe next season.

"We were one of the first club’s to really embrace technology and since then we’ve seen everyone else who’s tried to jump on the bandwagon and get involved but because of the support Sam gave us in the early days we believe we’re quite a few years ahead of everyone else,’’ Fallows said. "Having the expertise of the three members of staff that we’ve got here and the technology that we’ve got has allowed us to keep exploring new areas.’

Product Updates

To download the latest versions of Sportstec software go to http://www.sportstecsupport.com

	Elite/Pro/Player/ Review/Gamebreaker	5.4.37
	Trak Performance	2.2.3S3
	Stream	2.0.5
	Cronus	2.2.1