How to Locate Specific Video Events in a Tennis Match
Okay, you’ve bought your QM-1 and MUVI and recorded a tennis match and now you are ready to review it. But maybe you don’t really want to look at the whole match! Maybe you’ve already done lots of match analysis, or you watched the match and just want to review or cut out a few points or strokes. How can you do this without having to guess and jump forwards and backwards to find the right spot? Just knowing it was “towards the end of the 2nd set” is usually not good enough! Too much wasted time poking around…..
There are better ways to do this, and I want to share them with you. Here are my top two ways to get to what you really want to see, the first way costs lots, but the 2nd method is free:
1. Hire a third party, like TennisAnalytics, and simply upload your video. They won’t just highlight one shot, but will analyze the whole match, giving statistics and removing any dead time between points, and giving you the ability to sort the video by shot, as in, show me all the forehand errors, or all the volley winners. This is a fantastic solution but is out of the reach of great if you can afford it.
2. This second method costs absolutely nothing and is very low-tech. Simply start the camera and either start a stopwatch simultaneously or write down the starting time. Then with a pen and paper, just make notes of when an event occurred. That’s all, but you can get as fancy as you want. Make columns with time, shot, remarks, score, whatever. When you get home, go straight to that exact spot. Joila! As an example, I played some points with my regular partner the other day and I started my stopwatch and camera together. At 19 minutes into the match, my opponent (and long time friend and hitting partner) made a horrendous call. The ball was in by more than a foot! (If you don’t believe me, here’s the proof) I went over to the bench while talking and wrote down the time. When I got home I went directly to where this occurred without wasting any time searching. Uploaded to YouTube much to his everlasting shame!
That’s it! Give it a chance and let me know what you think!
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