Newsletter: November 2005

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

Welcome to this months edition of the Sportstec newsletter.

Two months ago the Newsletter included a small comment about the Football Association (England) having two vacancies for SportsCode Analysts. They deferred the appointment, but Stephen O’Brien (from the FA) was amazed at the quality and geographical spread of the applications. If you would like to advertise a role for your organization in our Newsletter please contact your local Sportstec person.

Regards,
Philip Jackson, Managing Director

In this months issue:

News

Sportstec has branched into the education, corporate and government markets with ‘Studiocode’. Studiocode is a modified version of SportsCode and is educating the non sports market in the world of innovative video analysis and management. Click here to read more.

Technical Support

Many of our customers are now creating DVD’s for players, coaches and presentations on a daily basis. This month we provide you with some tips to get your DVD making process running smoothly. To read more click here.

Coach’s corner

Take your video analysis and presentation to the next level – Using SportsCode’s Drawing and Measurement Tools. Click here to read and learn more.

Case Study

Lacrosse is one of the fastest growing sports in the United States and the University of Virginia was no different from others in holding the view that keeping abreast with technological advancement meant staying competitive.

Lacrosse is a prime example of how the use of digital technology is becoming more prevalent across a broad range of sports – in both professional and amateur codes – and more particularly in the super competitive arena of college sport in the US. To read more click here.

Product Updates

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

Sportstec News

We are excited about the launch of Studiocode Business Group (SBG). SBG has been established to service the needs of all our non-sports customers (which we are ecstatic to say is growing on a daily basis!).

At present SBG has two products under it's wings, Studiocode and Studiocode Stream. We have already experienced success in the education and corporate markets.

Here are a few things the education sector are using Studiocode for:

In the corporate sector, the same product is being used within:

• Market research
• Sales training
• HR departments to track professional development
• New Product development
• Industrial design units
• Occupation, Health and Safety departments (distributing best practice movies)

To learn more about Studiocode and SBG visit our new website at:
www.studiocodegroup.com

Technical Support

Using iDVD

You can add most video or image files supported by QuickTime to your iDVD project. If your video-editing application can export to QuickTime Pro, you can create movies that you can add to your iDVD project. For best results, in the QuickTime Pro export settings; choose NTSC-DV with a frame rate of 29.97 or PAL-DV with a frame rate of 25. Choose No Compression for audio and set the rate to 48 kHz.

QuickTime movies smaller than the standard DVD size of 720 x 480 (NTSC) or 720 x 576 (PAL) are scaled to fit the DVD window, which may decrease the image quality.

Not all QuickTime formats can be added to your iDVD project. For example, MPEG-1 files, QuickTime VR movies, and movies with sprite or Flash tracks cannot be added.

Setting Up Your Computer Make things easy for the future by creating a Movie Folder Shortcut in the Dock. Open the "Macintosh HD" and navigate to /Users/"YourUserName"/Documents. Drag the folder to the Dock and place it between the "Trash" and the Separator line . Close the finder window. Setting Up A Project Template To start creating your DVD in iDVD, you start a new project and choose a theme. One of the cleanest Themes and the one I use is called "Brushed Metal Two". Double-click the iDVD application icon in the Finder. A project opens, with the main menu showing in the iDVD window. Name the New Project "My DVD". iDVD will open with this name. Click the Customize button at the bottom left of the iDVD window. The Customize drawer opens. Click the Themes button at the top of the Customize drawer. If you do not see a list of themes when you click the button, choose "All" from the pop-up menu at the top of the Customize drawer. Drag the scroll bar up and down to see the available themes. "Click Brushed Metal Two" to select it.

Change The Title Of The Dvd To set your own Title for this DVD Double click the "Brushed Metal Two" title and put your own title into the text box.

Set Up Some Basic Settings. At the top of the Customize panel select "Settings" Drag the "Duration" Slider to the left hand end. Drag the Button Size control to the Right hand end. Save The Project As A Template. If you save the project now, you will have the basic setting in place for all future DVD creation. We suggest that you save it to the desktop and then drag and drop it to the Movie folder in the Dock. Close iDVD.   Now you have set up a basic Template, you can now easily put together your DVD content.

Create SportsCode Instance Movies For Export To iDVD Create an instance movie (or movies) in SportsCode / GameBreaker. There is no need to save them as standalone movies, as iDVD works with reference movies. Once the movie is created, click inside the movie frame and drag (a Shadow picture) to the desktop. This will create a reference movie on the desktop named "Movie Clipping 1". Continue this process with all the instance movies you want to include on your DVD. Close SportsCode / GameBreaker. Note: If you have Elite you can simply create your movie references in the Movie Organizer. Open Your iDVD Project Click on the Movie folder in the Dock and then double-click the "My DVD" project file. iDVD will open with the settings you created previously.

To Add A Movie To Your Project Drag the "Movie Clipping 1" file from the Desktop and drop it into the "Movies folder" in the Dock. Open the "Customize menu" and select the "Media" Tab This will display the reference movie that you dropped into the Movies folder.

Just "Click and Drag" this movie from the Media list and drop it onto the "Brushed Metal Two" Window to the right. Double-Click on the Movie name (Movie Clipping 1) and name the movie appropriately.

Preview iDVD Projects Before You Create A Disc Because you can only write to a DVD-R disc once, you should preview your project before you burn the disc.   Simply click the "Preview" button and you will be watching your movie within seconds. Tip: Check the Status Before Burning Any DVD Click on the "Status" Tab and check that the length (size) of your Movie does not exceed the DVD capacity. The only way to fix such a situation is to reduce the length of the movie appropriately.

Tips for Burning a DVD With Mac OS X, you can burn DVDs and CDs directly from the Finder. Using this feature while iDVD is running is not recommended.   Close all other applications while burning a DVD Burning DVDs uses a lot of processing power. To ensure successful burning with iDVD, do not use other applications that place heavy demands on the system while you are burning a disc.   If you're burning a disc on a laptop, be sure the computer is plugged in to a power outlet.   Do not press the Media Eject key while burning is in progress. Doing so may eject the disc and result in an incomplete disc.   Burning your DVD   When you are finished with your iDVD project, you can burn it to a blank DVD-R disc.   Burn a disc only when you are sure that you are finished with your project. Once you burn a DVD-R disc, it cannot be burned again. If you change anything in your iDVD project, you have to burn it on to a new, blank DVD-R disc.   Before burning your DVD, be sure you have at least twice as much free space available on your hard disk as your project uses, to allow for encoding and burning. Check the DVD Capacity meter in the Status pane of the Customize drawer to determine the size of your project. For example, if your project uses 4.0 GB, you need at least 8.0 GB of free space on your hard disk. To Burn A DVD: First "Save" the project. We suggest that you use the "File-Save As" feature so that you do not overwrite your iDVD Template file. Burn From the Menu line select "File - Burn DVD"   The time it takes for the disc to be created depends on the amount of video on the disc and the type of computer. If you have a disc with a lot of transitions, it may take more time to burn.   The results also depend on the speed of your computer and SuperDrive.   If you want to make multiple copies over time, then we recommend that you use the "File">"Save As Disc Image" option. You can then burn as many copies as you wish. (Use Disk-Utility)

Testing A DVD You Have Created

You can test your DVD in your computer using DVD Player. If the DVD plays in your computer, it will work in most newer consumer DVD players and computers with a DVD drive.

Coaches Corner

In this coaches corner, will examine the sport of water polo. The piece of video that we will use is a 6 on 5 situation, where the “Man Down” defense breaks down. It is the Gold Medal winning goal for Hungry in the 2004 Athen’s Olympics.

The crossing pass is from the 1 to the 6 on the weak side. This creates a 3on2 situation, advantage to the offense. Then, the pass is made from the 6 to the 5 which stretches the defense and forces the X4 and X5 defenders to make a decision. Attack or maintain position?

The X5 commits to the attack leaving a gap in the middle of the field of play. The X4 defender, circled, maintains position, but should have rotated over to cover the 3 or should have attacked the ball, the 5, allowing the X5 to maintain his position to cover the 3. This is where the defensive breakdown occurs.

Now the 3 is open and in excellent shooting position, receives the pass from the 5 and scores.

Now, let’s measure how out of shape the defense was stretched. From the Analysis menu, select the Line tool under the Measurement area.

To accurately measure distances in this frame, we must set the horizontal and vertical scales for the camera angle. We will use the goal area as a scale reference since it is a known area set by the rules of the game, 3m x 1m.

Move and set the Line Measurement to the width of the goal. Control+Click on the middle the line and select Horizontal scale, then set the proportions to 3 (to represent 3 meters).

Set the vertical scale using the depth of the goal at 1m. .

Now that we have set our scale, we can measure the distance between the athletes or landmarks.

As we can see here, the defender, X5, has to cover a distance of 3.15m. When the ball is passed from the 6 to the 5, the X5 commits to attack the ball. Firstly, the X4 should have attacked the ball instead of maintaining position. This is an effective use of space by the attacking team opening up the middle of the field of play.

We can see that all defenders are over 2.78m away from the ball and there is a great hole in the defense! Using the Angle tool, I can demonstrate the angle (red lines) that the shooter can shoot the ball. We can see that no defenders are in the shooting lane.

Case Study

University of Virginia Lacrosse (USA) - Marc Van Arsdale

Lacrosse is one of the fastest growing sports in the United States and the University of Virginia was no different from others in holding the view that keeping abreast with technological advancement meant staying competitive.

Lacrosse is a prime example of how the use of digital technology is becoming more prevalent across a broad range of sports – in both professional and amateur codes – and more particularly in the super competitive arena of college sport in the US.

"Video analysis is very prevalent in all levels of college lacrosse,’’ University of Virginia assistant team coach Marc Van Arsdale said. "Digital technology is coming to the forefront to replace VHS systems. At our level, all teams spend a great deal of time, particularly in season, on video analysis.’’

From the beginning, Van Arsdale said the ease of using the SportsCode system has been evident.

"It has proved to be very user friendly in all of the applications that we have tried,’’ he said. "The outstanding support from the company whenever any questions arise has helped our programme as well. The unlimited number of ways to categorize our video is a powerful tool that previous systems did not provide.’’

With no specialist video analysts in lacrosse, the user friendly equipment offered by Sportstec has been pivotal for the coaching staff, who code the video information and manipulate the databases and movie organizers for team presentations.

Virginia competes in lacrosse at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) division one level -- the highest level competition offered in college sports. There are about 60 division one lacrosse teams in the US, which tends to be extremely competitive among the top 15-25 teams.

Van Arsdale is embarking on his 11th season as the top assistant coach at Virginia after serving five years as a head coach at the University of Pennsylvania.

Since the inception of the NCAA championship tournament in 1971, Virginia has won the title three times – 1971, 1999 and 2003. It was also was runner-up in 1980, 1986, 1994 and 1996, all four times losing the championship game in sudden-death overtime.

The university’s women’s team also has a strong presence, winning the national championship in 2004.

"The main uses for SportsCode for our programme are the video analysis of our own performance -- both practice and games -- as well as in the scouting of our opponents,’’ Van Arsdale said. "We also use it in teaching our systems of play to our players.

"From the beginning of our use of SportsCode, the greatest benefit has been the ability to be more efficient in our time spent working with our video. We can organize presentations for our team so that we can give them the relevant information in a very concise manner. Given attention spans of 19-21 year-olds, this is a major asset.’’

Another great benefit for Van Arsdale is the ability to be able to code games immediately after they are finished --even when traveling.

"This portability and instant access assists us well when we are traveling and have a quick turnaround for the next game,’’ he said.

"Also, the ability to access video from previous years is much better with this system than any we have previously used. In preparation for opponents who use similar patterns of play from year to year, we are able to easily draw on past video to help us prepare for future contests. We continue, as we become more familiar with the system's features and upgrades, to find ways to be better in our video presentations.’’

Virginia does not have enough coaches to make full use of SportsCode during a game, in terms of coding as the game is being played. But it is used in the most important weekends of their season – the conference championships and national championships.
"It means we are able to give our teams a quick review of our own game from the semifinals, as well as be able to access the video of the opponent. Then present a concise presentation to the team, which is invaluable in these settings as we have such a short preparation time.’’ Van Arsdale said.

"Each year we continue to discover more uses for SportsCode. The use of the movie organizer last spring was a good step for us to take. This year we intend to incorporate the power point features into scouting reports to combine both text and video on upcoming opponents. It certainly allows us to stay on the cutting edge of video analysis in our sport.

"It is important to do so not only because of how it better prepares and develops our team, but it also gives the impression to our players that we are using whatever methods possible to get better. We like them to see that we are going to continue to seek new ways to do what we do better.

"It also adds to our credibility with a generation of athletes that has grown up as technological consumers if we can use the best video tools available. We feel that SportsCode does that for us.’’

Product Updates

Coming Soon …. SportsCode 6.0 and SportsCode Gamebreaker Plus!

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

	Elite/Pro/Player/ Review/Gamebreaker	5.4.44
	Trak Performance	2.3
	Stream	2.0.5
	Cronus	2.2.1