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MillimeterVideo Makes the Super Bowl
Feb 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Bob Turner
Video technology has advanced the craft of football coaching by an order of magnitude when compared to Vince Lombardi’s old 16mm projector.
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Photo courtesy: David Bergman
I was just watching the New England Patriots game, and the commentator was saying “What a brilliant, unexpected play call that was!” for the third or fourth time straight. I couldn't tell if he was complimenting Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick, offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel, or special teams coach Brad Seely. While these fellows are all brilliant coaches (Weis will be head coach at Notre Dame next year, and Crennel has announced he is leaving to be head coach of the Cleveland Browns), few know about the technology that helps shape these brilliant, unexpected play calls, which earned the Patriots a second Super Bowl victory this year.
NFL post-game analysis used to involve players and coaches poring over scratchy 16mm footage, usually in black and white. Not anymore. The digital revolution has swept over professional sports just as it as professional video.
The Patriots use Team Sports Football, a digital editing and video analysis system from Pinnacle. The application helps the team analyze game footage and data and use it to prepare on-the-field strategy. While Belichick is an early adopter and evangelist of Team Sports, 26 of the 32 NFL teams (plus the NFL Officiating group) are now using this system. So are almost 100 NCAA football teams, as well as both professional and NCAA basketball (men's and women's), hockey, baseball, soccer, volleyball, lacrosse, tennis, diving, and softball teams.
The nerve center for the Patriots' system is a short walk from owner Robert Kraft's offices. The office is staffed by three video professionals: Jimmy Dee, director of video; Fernando Nato; and Steve Scarneccia. The Team Sports system includes Game Analysis software, three SportsEdit workstations, 33 Coach's Stations, and Meeting Room Stations. All are connected to a Pinnacle Media Store server.
Because the NFL has standardized with Sony's Beta SX format for acquisition, Beta SX is transcoded to DV for the Patriots' system. The DV 25 the Patriots use allows for high enough image quality that a player's jersey numbers can be easily identified in wide shots.
Pinnacle Systems’ Team Sports Football has changed the way 26 NFL teams plan their game strategy.
After the game video has been shot, editors use the SportsEdit system to break down game footage into three different sequences of plays: offensive, defensive, and special teams. Next, the divided footage is loaded onto the server. Then the assistant coaches use Coach's Stations and Game Analysis software to add descriptive metadata to the editors' cuts. These workstations let the coaches attach comments and voice-overs to the footage for later study by players.
Coaches have instant access to video libraries of their own players and those of opposing teams. Thus they are a powerful tool for finding weaknesses in opponents. Extensive communications and analysis tools are available for this process, including V-Mail for coaches and staff using the system.
The Patriots' Meeting Room Stations give both players and coaches access to the video library, including the added voice-overs and player statistics entered in the previous step. The Patriots hold meetings to analyze practices, their games, and competitor's games. Projectors give everyone an excellent view of the analysis.
The benefits of the SportsEdit system are that it is affordable (compared to traditional methods), fast, and easy to use. It also offers exceptional DV-quality images.
The server holds up to 400 games broken down and ready to use. The workstations and laptops come with remotes to make viewing easier. This system also allows access to huge amounts of detailed information. For example, there are probably 70 different categories of information you can assign the metadata for each play.
I was given an example of a play shown on the system. It is first and 10 on the 20-yard line. The team lines up in a slot-I. The play focuses on player #22 and the intended receiver on the play, #80. The coaches go through each of these plays and assign extensive descriptive identification or metadata for each one.
The assistant coaches who enter this descriptive metadata are amazingly hard-working, dedicated coaches. This job is not easy. Once this process is completed, the coaches synchronize the metadata with the essence media, and the project exists in a folder on the server. The video department does a final quality check, then the footage goes to senior coaches for review.
Each NFL team is responsible for providing game footage in Beta SX. Footage must be shot from two angles: the end zone (tight end to tight end) and sideline (“all 22”) angles. Though most NFL teams have Pinnacle Sports systems, and could receive footage electronically, tape duplication and distribution are still specified by the league. The next three opponents receive copies of game tapes the next day, via tape duplication and overnight shipping.
The Team Sports editing and analysis system is deemed so great an advantage that the NFL has decided it cannot be used on game day (nor can any computer system be used during the game).
Patriots video editors break each game down into offensive, defensive, and special teams footage for study.
An interview with Jimmy Dee, New England Patriots video director
I have worked very long hours as a post-production editor and consider myself fortunate to have never worked as a broadcast news editor because of the bad hours and working on holidays. But here is someone who works harder than anyone else I have met, and this is his story in his own words.
Jimmy Dee: My two staff members [Fernand Nato and Steve Scarneccia] and myself get to the away games the night before and set up decks and tapes in three meeting rooms: offensive, defensive, and special teams. The NFL does not yet allow computer technology to be used on game day. We assist with the meetings in the evening and in the morning. Then we set up their cameras in the stadium and shoot the game. We may arrive home at 6 a.m., but we need to go right to work breaking down the game tape and loading it into the system. It takes about three hours. Then we start with our next opponent's game tape. We will finish at around 5 p.m. When you get into the night games it can really take a toll on you.
VS: What is it like for a typical home game week?
JD: Sunday you set up and supervise the meetings, shoot the game, and then digitize and break that game down into play sequences that you send to the assistant coaches. We also get the Beta SX tapes overnighted to our next three opponents.
Monday you come in at 9, digitize the tape of your next opponents and send them to the coaches. We then make sure that all the metadata from the coaches is synchronized with the clips. We do a lot of quality control of the Patriots game after the metadata was added by the assistant coaches, so when we send it to the coaches they do not need to worry about something being out of place.
Tuesday is a lot of DVD creation stuff for players. A player may want to see all third downs in the red zone. A lot of clean-up stuff. Players needing specific play selections use DVD playback. On Wednesdays, we start getting into practice. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we videotape the practices. This is also the day that all the other games from around the league come in. So we have to digitize the games, break them down to sequences [offensive, defensive, and special teams], and load them on the system. This is done Wednesday and Thursday.
We also load and cut up the practice tapes we shot. When the coaches come off the field, the players shower and have a team meeting 45 minutes later. We need to be done by then and have the video on the server to be accessed in the practice meetings. We have a system in place where I collect the tapes halfway through practice and start the process, and the remainder gets done in that 45-minute period before the meetings. After that we continue to digitize the games. So that is how Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are for us.
So it is a lot of hustling to practice, hustling with the league's tapes, and hustling with college tapes as well, because we need to be ready for the draft. Saturday is a light day when you are not traveling. But game day needs videotapes of selects for the meetings, and the coaches start analyzing the next game on their coaching laptops with the Pinnacle removable hard drives [the drive can hold about eight games] as soon as this game is over, so we need to have that ready. Sunday is the team meetings, and then the routine begins again. Night games and away games make life more difficult.
Green Bay Packers coaches use 42in. Panasonic plasmas to view game footage from their Team Sports laptops in their offices.
VS: How many hours a week do you work during football season?
JD: I don't even want to think! At least one of us is here at 6:30 or 7 each morning, and at least one of us is here until 11 each night. We try to share the load between the three of us and break it up a bit, but we put in our hours.
VS: Off season is much lighter?
JD: Off season it is pretty much five days a week with weekends off. 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., which is nice. It is like a regular life. But during the season it is seven days a week. We had a week off after the Super Bowl and then we were back at it, breaking down teams.
VS: I see from the photos over your workstation that you have a family.
JD: Yes, and that is as much as I see them. We get the month of June off, which is nice. It is a nice time of year to get off. It is rough, but you get into a routine and it becomes normal for you. It seems roughest around the holidays. We play the Jets on the 26th — flying out Christmas Day to go to NYC. Denver plays at Tennessee on Christmas night. They have to go down to Tennessee and stay in a hotel Christmas Eve and they do not play until night so they have to hang out in the hotel all of Christmas Day. It is rough. I see people going shopping on a Saturday for the holidays and I am here long hours, working hard.
But it gets in your blood. And it is easy when you work for a coaching staff like we have. It really is. I have been with a lot of these guys for eight years — some of them for 11 — but when you know these guys and they can trust you and you know what they want, it makes it a lot easier.
And the Patriots take care of you pretty well. Plus, it is great to be in the Super Bowl parade!
VS: The Super Bowl must be fun!
JD: Actually it was a lot more fun looking back on it. It was very hectic at the time. We had to go down there and set up all the coaches' offices and meeting rooms with laptops. We received excellent support from Pinnacle Systems that provided us with extra drives.
We had to copy all of Carolina's broken down games onto offensive drives and defensive drives and special teams' drives. We had to go down to Houston and set up projectors and decks and laptops and cameras. It was a lot of work. It was fun — don't get me wrong — but it was a lot of work! I mean, this is the Super Bowl! There is no margin for error. You can't screw anything up. You have to make sure your stuff is solid. Sometimes that is easier said than done, especially when you move your whole operation.
— BT
The Lambeau Leap into Digital Display
It's difficult to imagine the likes of Knute Rockne or even Vince Lombardi hunched over a laptop or in front of a plasma screen, reviewing instantaneous statistics and game video within seconds of the game's end. But if Rockne were coaching the Gipper today, that's exactly what he'd be doing.
That's the scene at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis., according to Bob Eckberg, video director for the Green Bay Packers. The Packers use the same Pinnacle Team Sports system as the New England Patriots. When the Packers have the home field advantage, the coaches use their laptops to display footage on Panasonic 42in. plasma screens in their offices. For more extensive play reviews, there are meeting rooms with Sharp XG-40 projectors in the depths of the stadium.
“When we moved into a new building three years ago I was concerned because the coaches' area was rather small,” Eckberg says. “When we were talking about putting a projection system in there, we had a lot of issues as far as the space that we had to work with. So the plasmas came out to be head and shoulders above everything that we were looking at for a couple of reasons. Obviously, because of the space limitations we had, plus the fact that you didn't have to worry about working in a dark room. You can work at it in regular daylight.”
The transition from traditional video to a digital system went smoothly, literally letting the coaches see the light. “All of the coaches at one time had large projectors in their rooms, and they were the same small rooms. You could have all these coaches' rooms with no lights on and the doors closed so they would be able to see what they were looking at on the projection systems. I felt like they were looking like mushrooms because all they'd do is be in the dark all the time. So when it came to changing up and becoming more involved in the digital realm, it was one of the areas that with the advent of the plasma, because the plasmas were coming up right at the same time, would really solve a lot of problems. You could have a half a life as far as being able to see what you're doing and writing notes.”
The system also works on the road during the busy NFL season. “When we travel on the road we take the Pinnacle Systems with us on the laptops, and we project those onto regular screens. So we're probably blowing it up to a 10ft. screen. And that's projected with Sharp projectors. I haven't seen any real dropoff as far as quality from the plasmas to the large screen.”
Eckberg began his career with the Packers in the early '70s while working in the photo department of WBAY-TV in Green Bay. He started by processing Packers game film, and then in 1976 started shooting endzone coaching film for home games in Green Bay and Milwaukee. In the early '80s, videotape technology was standard in the TV industry, and in 1982 the Packers purchased the film lab setup from WBAY and hired Eckberg as assistant video director.
For a veteran of the analog video era, Eckberg is complimentary of the new digital pipeline. “We were initially one of the first sites that Pinnacle … had. We worked extensively with the company as far as getting things put together and how things worked. They were with us all the way along. It's worked out really well from that standpoint. …We're part of a big service contract that all the people in the NFL have, that if we do have a problem that we can't solve, they'll put someone on it who will be able to help us out with that.”
