Video procesing/production?

I'm a 2nd year varsity assistant coach, having spent 3 years at the youth level. I coach the DE's and WR's. I also do all the video processing.

In our league/area we have no/very limited film exchange so we scout and tape other teams - if we want to see it, we have to go get it. This gives me control over our own video – I’m not relying on someone else/other teams to provide me with the video material.

My procedures are to record a game (ours or a scout game) to tape using the mini-dv (digital) format. We use a $500, 3 CCD Panasonic camera that is pretty good, but it’s not the $3k Sony-type. It's good, but not the best. I had 2 soph. students that taped the games for us and they did an outstanding job. The resulting video was outstanding for the coaches and players. We went from VHS where the player numbers were sometimes hard to see, to digital where they could see the players hands.

I load the tape into my Macintosh computer using the iMovie application. I then archive the tape. Loading the tape into the computer brings in each play/clip individually. I generate a quick DVD of the game. We meet the morning after games to stretch, lift, and go over the video. I have from after the game until 0900 to get the game video and any scout video out to DVD. This is just a replication of the game tape – no cutups, no editing. It’s easier to use the DVD with the controls than with the VHS machines, plus the image quality seems to be a lot higher.

I then move the clips to a Mac product called TDVideo. I add the stats for each play (done with the other coaches after the "morning after" player meeting) and generate the game reports and detailed cutups. From there I take the cutup clips to DVD Studio Pro and generate the cutup DVD's. The coaches get these on Monday.

Using TDVideo, which is the same product type as the other video editors that are Windows-based (ex. Digital Sports Video), enables me to enter the detailed data about each play. This then generates the stats and scouting reports. Entering the data takes the longest time of the process. I can combine games for a team and then generate cutups of all their offensive plays over a number of games. I would assume this is pretty basic functionality for the football video applications out there.

This is a new process for our school. Before last year it was VHS tapes with poor labeling, no archive, etc. Now, the DVD’s are printed for each game, multiple copies are made for the coaches, a library has been setup (binder with all the DVD’s), and the overall quality of the video has been greatly improved.

Taking budget considerations out of the picture . . . .

Let me start by saying that my goals for video are the following:
1. To allow me to scout opposition in-season. Validate Game Plan.
2. To review game performance of playes and scheme in-season.
3. To allow me to scout opposition during the off season.
4. To perform self-scout in the off-season
5. To create a 1.5 hour 'highlight film' post season

Film angle priority (for my own filming):
1. Endzone tight (the box).
2. Sideline wide
3. Endzone wide
4. Sideline tight
5. Opposing sideline

Priorities:
1. Video the games in digital format.
2. process the video in digital format (No D-->A conversions).
3. Be able to store 4 years worth of video for my team's games with 2 camera angles.
4. Be able to store 2 years worth of video for our opposition's games with 1 camera angle.

Having reviewed many of the video solutions, I think the Cadilac is DSV. There are many other good solutions, but IMO DSV is the best affordable package on the market.

Friday nights after the games, capture the video from the various camera angles in DSV using firewire IEEE 1394 interface. It will automatically mark the video and interleave the camera angles. It should take 45 minutes or so for 2 camera angles. Then print a 'cutup' DVD of the game broken into ODK (a DVD is really a D-->A conversion, but the Analog video is stored in a digital format - AVI files that use MPEG-2 compression). Use a DVD duplicator to create copies for the rest of the coaches to review that night or early the next AM.

Watch the video with the team. Have a team manager enter the data available into the DSV database (using call sheets, tackle sheets, etc.). Have the coaches enter the balance of the data into the database after watching the film. Replicate the database onto the various coach's hard drives. All done with everyone having a full package of current game by Saturday afternoon.

Take the trade films (2) and capture them Sat PM. ODK the film. Upload film to secure server Sat night, so it is available for coach's download and game planning.

That's the ideal process that I have identified. Don't know anything about TDVideo, but I doubt it is the same as DSV by your description. Just like an Escort and a 740i are both cars. They both get you from A to B, but one will do it faster, with more style, be easier to drive and with better engineering.

I've been very satisfied with TDVideo. The author has even incorporated a couple of my suggestions.

If we were a bigger and/or more advanced (video wise) program we would probably consider one of the bigger video editing packages. We haven't even really scratched the surface with what TDVideo can do for us, much less the high-end packages. I mean even with the basic reports that is so much more than the coaches had before that they are extremely happy. We are lucky to have a single press-box high-angle camera, much less end-zone or sideline angles. My film crew last season was 2 sophomores - 1 would do our game, 1 would hit the scout game - who did just a heckava job, but that was all I had.

Anyone else care to share how their video production works?

JD,

WRT: iDVD/DVD SP

iDVD is much simpler and easier to use. It connects directly with iMovie and is certainly very operable. However the simplicity comes at the cost of variability.

First premise is that iDVD and DVDSP are used to create DVD’s directly, or files that can be burned to DVD. They are not intended to generate the video streams on the DVD, the content. You need to use iMovie or some other video editor to generate the content. I generated 48 different DVD projects last year, and burned just over 400 copies.

Suppose that I need to have to produce A) a straight game DVD, and B) game cutups/highlights. For A, iMovie->iDVD works just fine. I put the clips in the iMovie viewing pane, take out what I don't need, trim clips, remove the sound, and send it to iDVD. That gives me an iDVD project with a button/link to the iMovie video files. I change the look & feel, titles, check it, save it, and burn it to a .img file. Then use the Disk Utility to burn that .img file to 1/more DVD's. Very simple, very quick, very easy.

Saving the DVD as an image file (.img on the Mac) means that I can move the file to other computers or burn to a DVD without going back into the video/DVD editing software. Once I am satisfied with the .img/DVD, I can delete the project and free up hard drive space.

For B (or any other product that has variability), iMovie-iDVD ain't so good. In a game I will have clips that may go into multiple categories - a run may be a trick play that scored. A pass interception may be a score, things like that. If I do this with iMovie I have to create separate .dv files and then import these .dv files into iDVD. Not a major issue, but somewhat clunky. To do this in DVDSP, I would copy the clips (from TDVideo in my case, having done the search and selection in TDVideo) into DVDSP. I would then create tracks (1 for offense, 1 for defense, 1 for special teams, 1 for passing, 1 for rushing, etc.) and add the clips to the proper tracks. In this way the clip is available for me to copy to multiple tracks without having to create separate .dv files. I have greater control over the DVD navigation and operations, as well as the video configuration (not the clips themselves, but where they go when). DVDSP has a much higher learning curve than iDVD.

iDVD is probably suitable for most of what you want to do. I use both.