Index

1. Introduction

2. Activating Auto-Lists and Auto-Presentations

3. The Next Step

4. Viewing Auto-Lists and Auto-Presentations

5. Practical Uses of Auto-Lists

6. Practical Uses of Auto-Presentations

7. Conclusion

What Are Auto-Lists and Auto-Presentations?

Before we start, let’s take a quick look at the normal process of creating video presentations in Nacsport and then we’ll look at the more advanced options of auto-lists and auto-presentations. Check out this video for a quick refresher:

Related Content: 10 Tips for Creating Better Sports Video Presentations with Nacsport

So, what about auto-list and auto-presentations? Well, basically speaking, these are behaviours that can be added to the buttons on your tagging template and they do exactly what the names suggest…automatically create lists or presentations. If you’ve ever created one of these from scratch, adding your clips and data manually, you’ll know how much time this can save.

Activate the auto-lists behaviour on a button and, every time you click that button, the clip and all associated data will be sent to a new list in the presentation window that you create in your Nacsport timeline. From there you can then pick and choose what to include in your final presentation.

Activate the auto-presentations behaviour and, every time you click that button, the clip will be saved to a presentation window (.pre file) which has the same name as the button. In addition, if you use the same button template across multiple matches, Nacsport will automatically build this presentation window further with a new list for each game, which acts as a database for all related clips over multiple matches.

They sound similar, right? And they are…but both features have slightly different uses, which we’ll try to explain in this article.

But first…

How Do I Activate Auto-Lists and Auto-Presentations?

Ok, first of all, it’s important to note that these features are only available in Nacsport Pro+ and Elite. If you are using a version of the software which is below either of these and are interested in this tool, plus a range of other time saving features, it might be time for an upgrade. Read this article to find out how Nacsport upgrades work.

If you are using Pro+ or Elite, the process for activating these behaviours on your buttons couldn’t be simpler.

Go to the button template editing environment and click on the button you want to assign these behaviours to. It doesn’t matter what type of button it is as this feature works with both categories and descriptors.

Next, click on the “Behaviour” tab in the side menu and, in the lower half of the menu, you’ll find the options “Auto List” and “Auto Presentation”. Decide which of the behaviours (or both) you want to assign to the button and click to add a tick to the box…and that’s it now active.

What’s the Next Step?

Go ahead and tag your game as you normally would.

Ok, Done. How Do I View My Auto-Lists and Auto-Presentations?

Ok, after tagging has finished, go to the timeline environment. If you have created auto-presentations, a pop-up will appear confirming this. Click “OK” and the timeline will open.

Here, you’ll notice a little change to the menu icons. Can you see it?

No? Well, the presentations icon now has the word “AUTO” written across it in bold. This signifies that there are auto-lists or presentations present. Click this icon and you’ll be shown an option menu.

Choose “New Presentation” and you’ll be given the option to add your auto-lists to the presentation. 

Click “OK” and the presentation environment will open with your lists in the left-hand column.

Now, let’s open an auto-presentation. These are saved in a folder called “AUTOPRE” on your computer. Click the presentations icon, then select “Open Existing Presentation”. This will open a file explorer window and “AUTOPRE” should be the first folder at the top.

Select the presentation you wish to open, double click it and it will automatically open in the Nacsport presentations environment.

This video will take you through the whole process step-by-step if you need more help.

How Can This Feature Be Used in Practice?

Again, this is a feature designed to save you time, as you will no longer need to manually add clips to lists and presentations. But what are the practical uses of this? Let’s take a look…

Auto-Lists

You could quite easily activate the auto-lists feature in every button on your template, meaning that you have separate lists for every action that happens on the field inside one presentation window. From here, you could simply filter out the actions that you don’t want.

But perhaps it would be better to be a little bit more focused. If there is an aspect of the game that you particularly want to focus on during your analysis, give all the buttons that are connected to that aspect the auto-list behaviour.

Let’s take set-pieces in football as an example. Freekicks, penalties, corners, throw-ins, etc. You probably have a button for each one of these on your template. But giving them each the auto-list behaviour will create a separate list for each one, making it extremely easy for you to create a collection of tagged clips containing the most important of these aspects in the game.

Or perhaps you want a list of clips for each player on your team? Activate auto-lists on each of your player buttons and that’s exactly what you’ll get.

The possibilities here are endless.

Related Content: Download FREE analysis templates and dashboards like the one above

Auto-Presentations

As we said, the function of auto-presentations is slightly different to auto-lists. Instead of having a list of clips, you’ll have a completed presentation, which is named the same as the button which has this behaviour active.

So, sticking with the theme of set-pieces, perhaps you want to group all your set-pieces together in one presentation without separating them by actions. To do this, add a set-piece button to your template and give it the auto-presentation behaviour. Now, every time a set-piece happens on the field, click this button and that clip will be sent to your automatically generated presentation.

What’s more, these presentations can be added to continually. That is, if you use the same template for tagging various games, all the clips from all the games will be sent to the same presentation. The different games will appear as separate lists on your “Set-Piece” presentation and Nacsport will automatically create another list inside the same presentation which contains all of the clips from all of those different games.

This means that, at the end of the season, you can have a presentation which contains every set-piece from every game of the season. This is supremely useful for organising your work and keeping everything in the same, easy to find, place, provided that you always use the same template structure.

Of course, you could have two sets of buttons on your template, one for set-pieces in general and one for each of the different types of set-piece. These could then be assigned different behaviours and you could have separate auto-lists and an auto-presentation.

Combine this with other Nacsport features, such as clustered buttons or activation and deactivation links, and the general set-piece button could be automatically activated every time you click one of the separate actions, saving you even more time.

Obviously, this feature is not limited to set-pieces. You could have presentations containing all your goals, all the successful attacking moves, or even all the actions by a specific player.

Related Content: A Guide to Nacsport Clustered Buttons

Conclusion

The auto-list and auto-presentations feature of Nacsport is, undoubtedly, a huge time saver, not only for the analyst, but for coaches too. With auto-lists and auto-presentations, clips can be ready for review immediately after the final whistle, speeding up the whole process. 

And the possibilities they bring to your analysis work are literally endless. We’ve given you some ideas above, but every analyst is different and each will have their own way of working, so why not give it a go for yourself?

If you aren’t yet a Nacsport user but are interested in our professional level software packages, please feel free to get in touch with us about your needs. We’re always happy to hear from potential new users and would be more than happy to give you a personalised tour of the software and its features.

If you’re already a Nacsport user but are currently using Scout or below, it might be time for an upgrade. There will come a point in your career that you need more tools to help you towards a more complete, professional analysis. Maybe, that time is now? Again, get in touch with us and we can discuss your options for upgrading.

And, if you’re already using Pro or Elite…well, there’s really no excuse, is there? Get to work now, experiment with these features, find out what’s right for you and incorporate it into your work flows. We promise you, it will save you a lot of time.

Of course, if you need help with anything that you’ve read here, please do get in contact with us through our website or through our social media channels, we’ll be happy to put you right!

Until then, thanks for reading!