Neil Melville, Author at Dartfish Blog

In CASE STUDIES

Case study: University of Buffalo’s video strategies

April 9, 2014 No Comments

The following article, written by Carrie Bigbie and copied from Dan Tudor’s Collegiate Strategies website explains how the University of Buffalo have adopted a customized solution based around Dartfish technology and the benefits that brings. Katherine Aiken, the Director of Technology Services for Athletics at the University of Buffalo assists coaches with the Dartfish Total Solution – tailored to meet the specific needs of sixteen UB athletic programs. Coaches decide what’s needed for their sport, then the Athletic Department Tech Team experts led by Aiken, create a customized solution using Dartfish technology. How did it all start, and why did they choose Dartfish? Here’s what they’ve implemented at the University at Buffalo: Individual lockers on Dartfish.tv provide private access for viewing, commenting, and analyzing for coaches and athletes. The University at Buffalo uses several Dartfish.tv Channels, one for each of their sports. Each channel is set up differently depending on…

In Other Features

Nine things you can do with a key position or still shot

April 3, 2014 No Comments

The Dartfish software key position, or its Dartfish Express equivalent, the still shot, are the foundation of a Dartfish analysis but I’ll bet you didn’t realise all that you could do? Let’s put that to the test. 1. Create a photograph It’s hard to capture exactly the moment you need with a camera, but with video you have many frames per second to choose from. When you turn one of these into a still shot/key position it can be exported as an image. Plus, any drawings, labels or measurements that you added will be part of the image too. 2. Create a report Add a description to your still shots and key positions and together they comprise a record of that training session or consultation. Dartfish software can print it but, for the king of the reports, upload the analysis to dartfish.tv and look for the print button. 3. Bookmark something useful You…

In SOLUTIONS

Killing birds with data

March 14, 2014 No Comments

Here is a tip for Dartfish power users. It was sparked by this question…. “I’d like to display the current score on the video. I could add scores as text drawings and fade them in and out as required, but is there a quicker way? – Zak Saucede, Dartfish Certified Technologist. There sure is! You can use Dartfish Tagging to mark up the video with the score at different periods of the game, export the data then link the imported file to the video using Dartfish’s CSV data reader.Before getting down to specifics, let me ‘kill two birds with one stone’ by fully explaining the powers that Dartfish has to use data from other software and hardware. Using data from other software There are many sport-specific stats tools. That specificity can be a bonus, making use of these preferable to doing the same job with a Dartfish tagging panel. However,…

In COMPANY

Dartfishing to Sochi and the 2014 Winter Olympic Games

March 5, 2014 No Comments

Across the globe, Olympic athletes competing in each of the 15 winter sport disciplines, Dartfished their way to the Winter Olympic Games. Over 68% of the medals won in Sochi were earned by Dartfish users. Let’s take a trip and discover the Dartfish impact for some of them, starting with the host nation and medal table leaders… Russia Silver medalist in luge, Albert Demchenko Dartfish got a lot of airtime through the Olympics. Here Albert Demchenko explains to his home audience how it contributed to his success (in Russian) Vic Wild wins two gold medals in snowboard “Dartfish allows for us to look at where we are fast and where we need to be quicker through the turns and also allows us to look at what we are doing in slow motion. It is incredibly important when you are trying to get the most out of your riding. For me…

In Other Features

Streamlined sharing

February 28, 2014 No Comments

I’ve got stuck into a lot of teaching these last couple of months, mostly helping Dartfishers take their first steps. I love it when these experts in their own field make me look at our software in new ways and, as a result of that, yesterday I found myself giving out some advice that I thought might be good to share. A short while ago, an update to Dartfish 6 and 7 introduced the possibility to create a new dartfish.tv collection during upload. A very useful improvement for any channel admin, but let’s say you have the kind of customer flow that a physiotherapist has with patients or a bike fitter has with clients. You want to share analysis but the possibility is that it is a one off share. For you, this small change could represent a completely new workflow: You create your storyboard in the Analyzer, enriching it…

In CASE STUDIES

Dartfish keynote to the Youth Sport Trust academy

January 8, 2014 No Comments

I love the pragmatic approach that coaches take to technology use. Nevertheless, sometimes it is a tough gig to pull out a laptop in front of people who often lead active lives avoiding screen-time and may never have had the support of a teched-up corporate environment. So how would it be to face two hundred of England’s most talented young coaches and officials at the Youth Sport Trust’s annual academy? The Youth Sport Trust is a charity devoted to changing young people’s lives through sport. Their academy is a three day hot-house for the new talent nominated by the national governing bodies funded by Sport England. The idea is to inspire and educate by bringing them into contact with new ideas, top level coaches and their peers in other sports. When I joined them at 8:30pm on Technology Night, they were well into the second day of the academy and,…

In CASE STUDIES

A fast learner

December 3, 2013 No Comments

Coach Glen Mills has an impressive list of Jamaican sprinting’s household names under his wing and now Tyrone Lim joins the team. Who? Let me introduce Tyrone. His speed is not on the track but he has a fast, agile mind when it comes to technology and he has been brought in as a video analyst to support the coaching staff. Dartfish met him this summer at the team’s European base at Brunel University, London, where he spent two days learning how to apply the software to the primary goal of developing a better understanding of sprinting mechanics. A lot has been said about how Usain Bolt breaks the mould. In the video below, Michael Johnston, with the aid of Dartfish, explains how a 6’5” sprinting giant can be so fast. Now, Lim and Mills want to understand how other sprinters do what they do best. To achieve this, Tyrone…

In Soccer

Crowd sourced tagging

November 13, 2013 No Comments

Every fortnight, Deborah Stuard and I offer online training to get you started with the Analyzer, Tagging and dartfish.tv. Three one hour lessons gratis (English only, sorry). You should join us! We love having the opportunity to help people who otherwise may not have time or budget for training and we especially love it when, occasionally, we learn something too… Last month one of our regulars told me of an idea that he had implemented since we’d last spoken; crowd sourced tagging. As the coach of a junior soccer team, he faces two problems. First, he has no desire to spend his remaining spare time tagging up that day’s match video and second, his young players aren’t too interested in re-watching the entire game either! His solution was to email each of the parents a Dartfish Easytag tagging panel with a single button, labeled with a player’s name. Their instructions…