Breakdown

Film breakdown in WatchGameFilm has been revamped from the ground up to provide a more flexible and efficient workflow for better breakdown and analysis of your film. Instead of the traditional clip-based film system, we've transitioned to a more modern markers-based system.

Think of markers as literally a bookmark that is placed at a specific point in your film. Each marker holds tag data such as Q1, DEF, etc. However, you also can type whatever you want for a tag, giving you ultimate freedom over your film breakdown.

Once a marker is created, you can search for any tag across all existing markers to quickly navigate your film, as well as filter your clips to create a viewing list of just the plays you want to watch.

Interface

Film breakdown was one of the biggest changes made to WatchGameFilm! Here's an overview of the key parts you should know about: 

1. Create Marker - Creates a new marker at the point in clip when this button was pressed. It then opens the Markers dialog box so you can add your tags and then save your new marker.

2. Create Comment - Creates a new comment at the time point in clip when the button was clicked.

3. Toggle View - Toggles the table to either be underneath the video player, or on the right side of the video player.

4. Table Dropdown - Dropdown to choose whether to display the Clips, Comments, or Markers of your current film.

5. Search Bar - Search for terms in the given view. This is how you would view a specific list of clips for viewing (i.e. All 4th quarter pass plays on offense).

6. Data Table - The table displaying the film's data (Clips, Comments, or Markers).

Markers

Markers are how you can create a system of bookmarks in a film containing tag data so you can easily navigate your film when viewing, which is especially useful for those single 3-hour long films! You can also break down your films by utilizing these markers in tandem with the search feature to filter for the content your looking for.

Add Marker

To create a Marker, first navigate to the  button in the top right corner of the video player.

After clicking it, you'll be presented with the following dialog box:

Enter a tag you want to add to the new marker and then press the Enter key when done to apply your tag to the pending marker for review. Keep doing this, one tag at a time, until you've applied all the tags you want for the current marker.

You should see each tag right above the text box to preview for accuracy:

When finished, click the green save icon to save the marker with your tag data.

IMPORTANT! If you add multiple tags in one go (ex: Q1, O, Pass and then press the Enter key), this will make a single tag in the marker as "Q1,O,Pass" instead of 3 separate tags (one for each).

While you are allowed to put whatever you want as a tag, having a consistent and well organized tag structure for your markers are vital for you to get the most out of markers.

Film Breakdown Example

Let's say you're a football team and you want to break your last game down for ODK, Quarter, and Play Type (Run/Pass). You create a consistent tagging system by making one marker at the start of each play, and you made the tags be Q# for the quarter (ex: Q1 = First Quarter), O or D or K for the possession, and either Run or Pass for the play type.

Now fast forward, and you've just finished adding your markers to the film and now you want to view the film. Since you were consistent in your tags and placed a single marker at the start of each play, you could filter the markers to view just the plays you're interested in. So, if you only want to watch the pass plays on offense in the third quarter, then you'd simply search for "Q3, O, Pass" and then press Enter. You'll end up with a viewing list of just the markers belonging to the offensive third quarter pass plays.

As an added bonus, since you used the pre-designated terminology that WatchGameFilm can automatically identify (and not your own custom tags) you'd automatically get reports to generate since your tags match the terminology that the WGF platform understands.

So in our hypothetical case just now, you would have automatically had the entire Basic report calculated by WGF when you finished your markers since it would've recognized your tagging terminology, and it also had all necessary data/info to make this report (ODK, Quarter, and Play Type). The other reports would be partially calculated since it has some but not all of the tag data it needs to fully calculate.

An official list of pre-designated terminology will be released in the future for what the WGF platform can understand and use to automatically calculate reports.

Comments

Comments are a great way for coaches to leave messages in a film for their team to review at a future time, without requiring the player(s) to currently be present. A comment is added to a specific point in a film, and will display as a text message overlayed onto the film itself.

IMPORTANT! Once a comment is created, it is public and visible for all members of your team to see on WatchGameFilm. There is not a method of private comments in WatchGameFilm.

Add Comment

To add a comment, click the  button in the top right corner of the video player. You'll be presented with a dialog box much like you would when adding a new marker.

Type your comment you want to say to your player(s), and then click the green save icon. Your comment will now display at this point in the video for your players to see when they hit this point in the film.

Comment Navigation

You can also use the search bar when you are in the Comments viewer to search for keywords in all of your comments. This is a great way for players to search for comments involving them as they can search for their name, position, etc depending on how you wrote the comments, and get a filtered list of just comments pertaining to them!

Clips

The Clips viewer is somewhat more of a utility section that allows you to see the files that make up your current film. This is great for things like viewing the upload status of a particular clip in your film, verifying that you uploaded the correct clip, etc.

Basically, any task related to viewing the individual video files for your film is where you would open this viewer for.