The typical sports video analysis employed by most amateur coaching operations involves using a handheld device to capture video and audio, sometimes from precarious and seemingly dangerous positions. These would, to say the least, make interesting case studies for a Workplace Health and Safety committee. Add to this a training session on a rainy day and you’ve got the makings of a video analyst’s nightmare, which in many cases is a daily reality for cash strapped sports teams.
Low cost proliferation of video capture devices and athlete monitoring sensors have created a raft of disparate systems often operated by two different persons within the same coaching team. The information is only available post training sessions and post matches after painstaking periods of downloading, exporting and editing.
iOn Sport had its beginnings addressing these problems in one of Australia’s premier sporting leagues, the National Rugby League. The iOn Sport solution evolved to eliminate the need for handheld video capture devices and focus on empowering the analyst with the tools to work effectively in delivering live feedback for the coaching team so that a coach is able to provide instantaneous feedback and use video education tools during training sessions and matches.
Dennis Russell, Performance Analyst at the 2013 NRL and World Club Challenge Premiership winning Sydney Roosters, was faced with the challenge of capturing video at changing training venues. iOn provided Dennis with a portable battery-powered solution that featured a five meter pneumatic mast and wireless control of the Pan-Tilt-Zoom camera perched on the top of the mast.
Imagine you are the video analyst able to sit in the comfort of your office and operate a multitude of video and sensor data capture devices. Rather than focus on the drudgery of the task, the danger of working from heights, or the rain or the sun-glare, you are able to analyze the training session or the game happening before you.
You use the iOn’s SportsFocus software to create a multitude of different manual and automatic tags, propagate these tags and instantaneously make video clips available to tablet devices that are used by the coaching staff to educate the team through visual cues and facilitate corrections on the fly. The iOn Sport system is built around the instantaneous availability rather than waiting a day and doing everything post-processing.
As a video analyst, you are not hired for your skills of holding a camera still or else you would be a tripod. Your skills are to observe, capture and communicate in the most effective way to empower your coach and your team. If the team is serious about its performance and ability to continually improve, an initial investment in camera, sensor and communication infrastructure is mandatory. Trying to keep a tablet stable and chase after a player is not an acceptable approach. Your success in your job depends upon insisting on a system that employs the best technologies and fusing this through a software interface. Beyond that initial investment, the possibilities and efficiency gains are only limited by your imagination.
Matt Cameron, the High Performance Manager at the Penrith Panthers, used to be bogged down with handheld cameras, recharging batteries, ensuring proper filming positions, and working out how not to get wet in the rain – elements that can quite easily take over one’s time and focus. Having installed an iOn Sport solution, he simply has to let the coaches know where to train and can get on with his job, knowing that the training session is there on the network when he returns. On match day, Matt can rely on his end-on cameras connected on a fibre network to deliver the video feed right into the Coaches box.
In 2013, iOn Sport installed its system at the Sydney Olympic Stadium, also known as ANZ Stadium, allowing clients of the stadium to get an uninterrupted, ad-free, chessboard view of the game. The commercial TV feed is more concerned with the drama surrounding the sport whereas the coaching team is more concerned with the strategic view supplemented by performance data. The heart of the iOn solution is the SportsFocus software that serves as the analyst’s toolkit allowing rapid editing in a live environment, instantaneous propagation of video clips, integration to tablets on the field or in the change rooms, import of third-party statistics, integration with the cloud… and that is only the beginning.
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Any enquiries can go to info@ion-sport.com or visit the website at www.ion-sport.com.