10 Tips for Producing Great Sports Video Presentations with Nacsport

Understanding the Structure of Presentations

Before we get stuck into this, let’s remind ourselves of the structure of the Presentations environment in Nacsport and the vocabulary we describe to talk about them.

Presentation

The whole kit and kaboodle. The finished product. The aim of any analysis. You can create a presentation based on anything, a single match, a player or an entire season.

Lists

Presentations are divided into lists, which are basically playlists that gather together similar clips. A presentation must have at least one list, but you can create as many as you like. You may have a list for attack and one for defense, for example. These are the chapters which make up your final presentation.

Clips

Lists are made up of clips. A clip is like a single shot within your chapter, a fragment of a video with a fixed duration that usually contains something important the analyst wants to share. Clips are created during the tagging phase of the analysis. For example, you can have a list which contains all the attacking clips.

You can add as many clips as you want to each list or even have a list which doesn’t contain any clips, although this is fairly pointless when it comes to sharing your work.

Other Elements

There are other elements which make up a Nacsport presentation. Covers, images, slides and transitions are some of the most common and we’ll talk about each of them throughout this article.

How to Share Presentations with Nacsport

Ok, now that we’re clear on how presentations are organised, we also need to look at how they can be shared. You can present directly from Nacsport, create and export a standalone video or upload your work to the online Hub platform. Here we take a look at they work and the advantages and disadvantages of each:

1. Present Directly from Nacsport

What do we mean by this? In short, Nacsport has an environment that allows you to select the best actions from your analysis and order them logically.

This is usually done by connecting your Nacsport computer to an external projector or screen. This option offers enormous versatility as you have all the tools needed to hand in Nacsport, meaning that you can make changes to your presentation on the fly.

In other words, you can create a summary of your work and share it with third parties.

•   Advantages: You can edit, add and delete actions as many times as you need before the presentation…or even while you are presenting.

•   Disadvantage: You need the software to do this.

This is usually done with a secondary screen or monitor which is connected to your Nacsport enabled computer. The biggest advantage is having all the tools available to you at the click of a button.

2. Create and Export Standalone Videos

In this case, you decide in advance which clips will be included in your lists. From here, they are automatically exported as a standalone video. Once exported, you can share it with whomever you want.

All of the production is done through Nacsport so you don’t have to spend time in editing or post-production work. Simply share it.

•   Advantages: You decide what to include in the final video and Nacsport does the production work, saving a lot of time. In addition, exported videos can be played on any device.

•   Disadvantages: Once you’ve decided what to include in the video and exported it, it can’t be edited…unless you produce a new video.

This video explains how the process works:

3. Upload Presentations to the Online Nacsport Hub Platform

We’ve got what is possibly the best and most versatile option for sharing videos for last. 

Nacsport Hub is an online platform designed specifically for sharing video analysis online and for improving internal communication within teams and organisations. It has a full suite of tools and functions that are designed specifically to meet these goals.

In addition, it integrates seamlessly with Nacsport. This means that you can upload your presentations directly to Hub without any intermediate processes. Once your work has been uploaded, sharing, commenting and presenting are extremely easy.

•   Advantages: It integrates perfectly with Nacsport, it is versatile, editable and has endless extra tools to augment your analysis, presentations and team communication. You can also work directly from the platform, tagging your videos and editing your clips. There are very few drawbacks.

•   Disadvantages: An account is needed to access the platform. Please contact our sales team for more information about Hub and how it can aid your analysis work.

Ok, so that’s a quick overview of how to share your presentations, but now it’s time to learn how to actually create them…and do it well.

Below, we’ve combined ten tips that will ensure your presentations are perfect every time.

Let’s get started…

Tip 1. Keep Your Objectives Clear and Remember Your Audience

It might seem obvious, but these are the fundamentals of a successful presentation.

Creating a motivational video with background music and dynamic transitions is not the same as a presentation for a team meeting, which may have more pauses for reflection and incorporate more text notes, annotations and drawings

You also need to take into account the level of interaction with the recipient. Is communication going one way? Do you simply need to produce a video and send it by WhatsApp? Or will the video be presented face to face with a player or team? Do you need to include breaks for input and feedback?

Tip 2. Define the Structure of the Presentation

Most coaches and analysts we work with have a fixed structure for presentations, the same narrative order, lists organised in the same way and of a similar duration. This is something they have developed over time.

You don’t have to do it the same way as everyone else, but we recommend that you quickly establish your own structure. This means that your team know what to expect during a presentation and communication improves.

To help you define this structure, we have a few tools that we think are ideal for this task (Note: availability depends on which version of Nacsport you are using). Favourite lists, favourite autolists and autopresentations.

• Favourite List Structures

• Favourite Presentations

• Create Lists and Presentations Automatically

• Presentation Script

Tip 3. Choose the Best Way to Export Your Presentation

Depending on the version of Nacsport you’re using, you can export your presentation as a video file in different ways:

• A file containing the whole presentation

• A file containing each list in your presentation

• A file containing each clip in your presentation

In higher versions of the program you can select which lists you want to produce, as opposed to producing all of them.

How you share your work is entirely up to you!

Tip 4. Add More Elements to Augment Presentations

A presentation doesn’t have to contain only videos. There are many additional elements you can add to augment your reports. Here are a few ideas:

• A cover for the presentation…or for each list.

• Images (photos, clip art, drills, etc.).

• PowerPoint slides (for example, add the bio of a rival player or team, or annotate what will be seen in the video...).

• Overlay text notes.

• The name of the category and number of the clip.

Tip 5. Illustrations to Reveal the Full Story

A picture is worth a thousand words, or so they say, and there are many different learning styles. The majority of people learn visually. So, instead of a ten-minute spoken lecture, show your players what you mean with illustrations.

KlipDraw Basic is included as standard in all version of Nacsport, while the more powerful KlipDraw Animate comes as standard in all annual subscriptions. If you’re looking for a telestration tool with a little more power, why not integrate KlipDraw Motion into your Nacsport set up for quick and easy automatic tracking.

In addition to KlipDraw, there is a more simplified drawing tool in the presentations environment which can be used to add quick illustrations to your videos whilst you are presenting.

This is great for clarifying points of interest in your clips and, in addition to this, you can record all the drawings and mouse movements you make during a presentation and export and share it at a later time. Check out this video for more info:

Tip 6. Aesthetics

Everybody has different thoughts on aesthetics and we’re sure there are many coaches and analysts out there who’ll disagree with this piece of advice. “The important thing is the video!”, they’ll exclaim. “There’s no need to add any frilly extras!”

But we disagree, sorry! In our experience, players are more receptive to presentations which contain a higher-level aesthetic value. Where it looks like the analyst has taken care and attention to get the video and the details just right.

An aesthetically pleasing analysis conveys professionalism and, according to our experience, generates a higher level of interest and confidence among the recipients.

A couple of tips: add a nice cover for your presentation and each of your lists to capture attention from the first minute of the presentation. Add KlipDraw animations. Seeing sequential drawings will provide your presentations with a hook and make them easier to follow.

Finally, here’s a trick that many people don’t know…

You can add your team badge as a watermark when creating a standalone video. How do you do this? It’s in the settings in the video production menu.

Tip 7. The Rhythm of Your Video

You can add external audio files, either music or voice, and transitions to control the rhythm of your presentations.

Narrative is an aspect that not many people pay attention to when producing videos and this can harm the message they want to convey.

A motivational video in the moments leading up to a match, like the one Guardiola showed his players in the final in Rome, with an epic song...this can get anyone charged up and ready to go! A team talk, on the other hand, may require a higher level of pauses to allow for interactions.

Tip 8. Add More Perspectives

Advice for professional analysts: if you work with Nacsport Scout or higher, you can add more videos from the same match from different angles. You can add between two and four different perspectives depending on which version you’re using. You can group them and show them together in the same clip or show the same action from different angles.

A second angle can provide information that the first angle can't offer. Not only that, watching the action multiple times may let you see aspects of the game you didn’t notice during the first playback.

Tip 9. Find the Right Length

Finding the correct length for your presentation is a complicated subject and the subject of great debate. We wouldn’t want to impose our ideals on you for this subject, but we will say that we are great believers in balance.

The duration of the whole presentation and the clips within the presentation should be just the right length. No more, no less. Here’s an example related to clips: when you’re showing a goal that goes against your team, when do you start your video? Do you start it from when the opposition goalkeeper releases the ball and then the 100 passes that are played in midfield on route to goal? Then after 3 minutes of tippy tappy football in midfield the striker breaks out and scores the goal? Maybe that’s too much to show, eh?

So, what about an entire presentation? How long should that be? Many people say around 10 minutes is perfect, others say that is too long or too short. We think that the only way to ascertain the correct length for your presentation is to experiment for yourself and see how your group of players react. Too short and the message might not be conveyed successfully, too long and it could cause boredom and inattention.

Basically, pay attention to your audience, they’ll dictate the length of your work.

Tip 10. Scripts: A Helping Hand

The presentation script tool is sometimes overlooked by many analysts. This tool, available from Scout onwards, automatically generates a PDF file with all the clips divided into lists. It basically gives you a script of your presentation, showing the order of your clips and any descriptors, text notes or drawings attached to each clip.

With this information at hand, conducting a presentation becomes a breeze and means that you don’t get lost. You can even deliver copies of the script to other coaches or players, so they’ll know what to expect during the presentation, encouraging better communication.

Bonus Tip: Nacsport Remote

As always, we like to end with a little extra tip. In this case, we’re talking about Nacsport Remote. This is a free app, designed for iOS devices and it works spectacularly well with your iPhone. It’s designed to let you control your presentations remotely, just like a remote control for your TV.

And that’s it for now, 11 tips for transforming your Nacsport presentations into authentic pieces of video analysis art. There are many other things to discover within this environment, too many for us to cover in this article, so we’ll leave you to discover them for yourself. Play around, experiment and find your own presentation nirvana.

If you want to delve deeper into any of these tips, ask us about a specific one or simply share the tricks that you use, you can contact us through our website. As always, we'd love to hear from you!