Video Analysis

[the green man]

Any idea what the name of this computer software was and what do you mean by itgave solutions to footballing problems?

The editing software is 'Focus', which you can download a trial version. For the drills software it looked like Smartboard.

[darbyo]

Where do you go to download the trial version, is there a website or something?

[the green man]

Where do you go to download the trial version, is there a website or something?

I think so. There are people on this board who have used the trial version.,

http://www.elitesportsanalysis.com/  This might be it, though I'm not sure

[Aghdavoyle]

What is "drills software"?

[ONeill]

This is like Dragon's Den.

[the green man]

What is "drills software"?

the software package they used to show the training drills

[Aghdavoyle]

a camcorder then

[focus]

I work for the software company that this thread has been discussing. The software is called Focus X2.

The point I wanted to make is not about our software but about using software in general as a few people seem sceptical. You can of course just use video on it's own. You can extend this by using analysis as well as just looking at video - studies have shown that humans miss a lot of information (no matter how good a coach they are) and techniques such as notational analysis have been developed to help. You can do notational analysis with a pen and paper or a spreadsheet.

Using software just makes things easier, automates the parts of the process that are tedious and makes it very easy to quickly see patterns of behaviour. For example. a simple analysis might track all the times a midfielder has possession and what the outcome was (eg score, turnover, assist). If you watch the game you will have an opinion on which midfielder played the best but using analysis puts facts behind the opinion. Combining this with video exposes patterns. Staying with the same example you could show every time a midfielder gave away possession - software showing digital video would show each instance one after the other and the reasons for the turnovers and the differences between midfielders become sharply clear.

At the other extreme some users look for complex combinations of play and link these to areas of the pitch. People also add non-video information such as player heart rate data.

[focus]

The Focus X2 software standard price is £995/€1430 plus VAT but it's important to stress that most sales are based on a quote and the price is discounted depending on exactly what the customer requires. Most people download the software and we help them try it fully before they make any decision to buy.

It's also worth pointing out that 24 of the counties and many clubs have bought the software in the last few years. Not all of these are active users and if you are interested you might find that you have access to a full license that is not currently in use!