Hack 1: Keyboard Shortcuts for Faster Registration

Are you the kind of analyst who uses Ctrl + V / Ctrl + C to copy and paste texts? 

Keyboard shortcuts are common in most software, although the majority of users never bother to learn them. At Nacsport we do our best to put you in control of our tools and, in this case, the shortcuts available to help you work faster.

Our shortcuts are super useful for navigating around the software as well as registering games and your analytical observations. Plus, they’re 100% customisable, with up to 173 combinations available. In fact, you can assign almost anything to a keyboard shortcut in our Basic and Basic+ editions.

You decide exactly which keys, or combinations of keys, are used to control each action. Watch the quick tutorial below to learn how.

Hack 2: Manual Buttons to Avoid Mistakes While Registering

We know that one of the most frustrating parts of using any sports analysis software is correcting errors made during the registering, or tagging, of games. It’s so easy to inadvertently click the wrong button in the heat of the action.

But with our manual buttons feature to protect you, no button can be activated while other actions are being registered. Check out the video below, that should explain everything.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand how manual buttons can help make your analysis easier is by watching the following short example, where we measure ball possession during a match. As you’ll see, until the first button is deactivated, it’s not possible to switch possession between teams.

Hack 3: Move Around Videos Faster Using ‘Jumps’

This one’s perfect if you get tired of searching through videos trying to find specific moments to analyse or share with your team.

Time breaks allow you to move back and forth within a video by a predetermined number of seconds. The length of the jump is decided by you and activated with a single click.

You have the choice of 3 time breaks; short, medium and long, so you can skip through periods of inactivity. The exact length of what constitutes a short, medium or long jump is decided by you. Movement is controlled by using the forward and backward arrow keys - as detailed in the following short video.

Hack 4: Save Buttons and Space in Your Template by Using Descriptors

It’s quite common with new users of our sports analysis software to create crowded templates with lots of buttons. But sometimes, less can be more and a less crowded template can be more comfortable (and easier) to work with.

We can declutter a template by using what are called ‘Optimal Descriptors’ - and here’s how they work:

Let’s say we’re analysing a soccer match and want to register the number of shots and fouls committed by each team. While it wouldn’t be wrong to create categories for ‘Shots for’, ‘Shots against’, ‘Foul’s for’ and ‘Fouls against’, our recommendation would be to use descriptors.

In this way, we could create one category called ‘Fouls’ with two descriptors - ‘For’ and ‘Against’ - which would already reduce the number of buttons needed by one. The same method could be applied to shots and so on…

If you wanted to add more detail, a second descriptor could be added using player names, so the sequence would run; ‘Shot’ (category), ‘For’ (descriptor 1) ‘Player 1’ (descriptor 2).

If you’re not sure, here’s an example; 

Hack 5: A ‘Low-Cost’ Alternative to Graphic Descriptors

You’ve probably seen the new Graphic Descriptors feature we released for Nacsport premium editions in our latest update.

But if your budget doesn’t run to a Scout+ license (or above), this hack is a low-cost way of achieving something very similar. Not quite as precise as a true Graphic Descriptor, you can create buttons (both categories and descriptors) from an image. 

For example, you could add an aerial view of a soccer pitch, divided by zones. Then, by adding the different zones as descriptors, indicate the specific area an action takes place, within your analysis.

Hack 6: Organized Windows Help You Work More Efficiently

This is another of those really simple hacks that should make analysing games much easier. 

Did you know, you can give your template a transparent background allowing you to view full-screen video and register the game ‘over the top’ of the images?

It’s not just full-screen either. There are other options to adjust the video window and make analysing the action more comfortable. Feel free to drag the windows around and adjust their size to fit comfortably onto any screen size.

Of course, if you have the luxury of working with multiple screens you have even more choice. You could even recreate the compact appearance of our Tag&View app for Apple devices.

Check out the video below for some inspiration and feel free to experiment, until you find a layout that fits your analysis perfectly.

Hack 7:  Adapt Your Presentations to Match Your Needs

We get asked a lot of questions about presentations and although there are many options for organising lists, the two we recommend are:

Making a single list and adding ‘covers’ to separate in the final presentation and (from the main menu) joining different clips to make a single video. This last one is a very useful way to present your work to players, especially when you break down each section of a game and give each one its own cover.

Hack 8: Recycle Your Presentations

Use Nacsport for any length of time and you’ll quickly begin discovering your own shortcuts and analytical hacks.

The chances are, your work process will become routine and you’ll follow the same style of template, creating the same lists over and over again - defensive, offensive actions, rival report etc. And the structure will always be the same.

Well, using this simple hack you no longer need to recreate lists every time you create a presentation. You can automate a part of your work and save a lot of time by saving then reloading the lists you usually work with. As this video shows, it’s probably one of the most time-efficient - and simple - hacks available for anyone using our sports analysis software.

So there you have it. 8 simple productivity hacks to help you analyse smarter using Nacsport. Give them a try, share this post with your colleagues and let us know what you think.