Stop editing match videos, draw on them instead
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If you’re doing football (soccer) match analysis using a video editing tool like Metrica or KlipDraw, you’re doing it the slow way.
It doesn’t have to be complicated
Instead of forcing you to learn a fully-featured video editor, Video Pencil lets you load up a video and draw on it live.
You can record it in the app or connect to a Mac, PC or Apple TV to bring it into a meeting or live stream.
And now you can add football (soccer)-specific tools with the Football (Soccer) Toolkit.
On the left is how a lot of match analysis gets made: pick a preset, set how many segments the inner ring has and how many the outer ring has, choose a colour for each, drag it onto a timeline, decide how long it stays up, then try to make it line up with what you’re saying. It probably won’t.
The Football (Soccer) Toolkit
- Tap a player to highlight them. The highlight follows them around the pitch.
- Drag from one player to another to draw a line that stays connected as they move.
- Label players with names and numbers.
- Draw arrows for runs and passes.
- Drag a player to where they should have been, with their original position faded out.
- Drag from one player to another to draw a line that stays connected as they move.
- Label players with names and numbers.
- Draw arrows for runs and passes.
- Drag a player to where they should have been, with their original position faded out.
Player tracking works on recorded footage, so it's for review sessions rather than live matches.
Where it came from
I’m not a football coach. This started with Ged Searson, a former Premier League scout who now runs AFCAS, teaching coaches and scouts to analyse the game like professionals.
Scouts used to add a still from a match to their written reports, and the still highlighted nothing. Or they’d edit the video with graphics and screenshot it, which took ages. So Ged made a PowerPoint template of ready-made icons to drag onto the picture.
[IMAGE: Ged’s PowerPoint template]
He sent it to me, and that’s what the toolkit is built on. Then he said: “Stage two is to get the icons to follow the players as they move. Then you have totally cracked it.”
So they do.
[Harry Kane: one line and the link. Video Pencil turned up in a video on Bayern Munich’s YouTube channel, with Harry Kane: youtu.be/EJNOxIGdieg]
The tools
Arrows. Three kinds: a run, a pass, and a run with the ball. Draw them however you like and they come out smooth: go direct and you get a straight line, arc round and it follows the arc. You can change the thickness and the colour.
Space. Mark the space a player can run into. Start drawing from the middle and pull out to size it. It sits in perspective on the pitch. Change its colour from the little pop-up editor.
Numbers. Tap a player and type a number or a name. Press play and it follows them. It’s saved with the clip, so next time you open it, tap that player again and it remembers who they are.
Highlights. Two of them, so you can switch colours quickly. Tap a player to highlight them. The highlight shrinks as they move away from the camera, so it looks right on the pitch.
Connections. Drag your finger across two or more players. They’re highlighted and joined by a line, and when you press play, the line stays with them. Tap a player again to take them out.
Move a player. The fun one. “You should have been here, not there”: drag them to where they should have been.
[CLIP: tap, drag, draw]
Undo works for all of it, and you can pinch to zoom anywhere on the video. Your drawings zoom with it, and small players get easier to tap. Zoom back out and it all stays where you put it.
The first time you open a clip
Video Pencil needs to work out where the players are and how they move, so a new clip is analysed by an AI model first. It takes a little while, and there’s an estimate on screen so you know it’s working.
If it’s interrupted, or you cancel it, or you close the clip, it carries on where it left off next time. You never lose that work, and once a clip is analysed, it stays analysed.
So trim your clips before you bring them in. Ninety minutes of Veo footage will take a long time. Export the moments you want from your platform, or clip them out in the Photos app on the iPad, then pick them in Video Pencil.
How it feels to use
Play a bit of the clip. Pause it with the shuttle wheel. Tap, draw, explain. Scrub forward, or press play to show what happens next, and back again if you need to.
Arrows disappear when you press play, because they were about that moment. Highlights and lines stay, because they’re following the players. It feels natural to do and natural to watch: “this, this, this”, and everyone gets it.
You can tap players while they’re moving, but I’d pause first so you don’t miss and catch the wrong one.
When someone asks a question, you’re ready: rewind a little, tap, show them.
Compare that with doing it properly in an editor. In my experience of motion graphics, you record the voiceover first, build the animation to fit it, and spend hours on something that still looks a bit stiff. Some of those animations are honestly a bit creepy next to someone just drawing with a pencil.
Where you can use it
Send a clip. Record your explanation in the app and send it to one player or the whole squad, on WhatsApp or your coaching platform.
In the room. Mirror the iPad to an Apple TV and it shows just the footage and your drawings, not the buttons. Or plug into the TV with HDMI.
That’s how Andres Echevarria uses it. He’s coached youth soccer for over fifteen years, and he puts Video Pencil on a classroom TV for live game film review, then records clips for the team or for particular players.
[Andres’s request, and what he’s doing with it]
Then hand the iPad round. It’s so hands-on that it isn’t only the analyst who can draw on the footage: a player can take it and say “No, give me that. I should have been here.” Everyone in the changing room can make their point without waving their arms about or shouting, and everyone sees the same thing.
On a call or a stream. On a Mac, CueCam puts Video Pencil into Zoom or a live stream today. A Zoom app is coming, which will also work on Windows.
Before the match, too. Use the other team’s footage. “These two always do this. Look.” Draw a line between them: they stay tight, so either pull them apart or stay out from between them.
Who it’s for
I’ve talked to a lot of football people recently. Some are paid analysts or consultants, and they use video editing tools that cost thousands a year to make polished clips.
Then there are coaches like one I met who’d been asked to help out. He used to be a player, and he’s used to talking to players on the pitch. There’s no world in which he spends his weekend editing clips. But I could see him picking up an iPad.
It also makes it worth learning to get clips off your pitch-side camera. Download them to the iPad, trim them in Photos, bring them into Video Pencil. Once you’ve got a bookmark and you know where to go, what’s going to stop you?
What’s next
This is the first version, not the last. The more you tell me about what’s awkward, the better I can make it, and the more situations it can cover.
A few I’m thinking about:
Pre-match diagrams. I’ve talked at length with one coach about this, and I’d like to add it to the toolkit.
Live from the side of the pitch. You can already do a version of this. Put an iPhone on the sideline with Shoot and select it in Video Pencil, or bring in an NDI feed from a camera that follows the action (Shoot doesn’t follow the play yet). When something happens, pause, save the clip, and it’s analysed when it lands in the library. One day I’d like that to happen straight away: “Everyone round the iPad. Look what just happened.”
Live game analysis, with the score on screen. There’s a lot we could do, but I need to hear it from you first. So give it a go.
Try it on other sports
It’s built on a football model, but there’s no reason not to try it on hockey, rugby, or the other football. It might work pretty well. That’s why there’s a seven-day free trial: try it on a few of your own clips and see.
Prices
The Football Toolkit is an in-app subscription, $19.99 a month or $149 a year. It isn’t cheap, but it’s a lot less than the editing tools. Until 31 October, the code SOCCERSQUARES gets you the first year for $99.
For clubs there’s a club plan: for your coaches, or for a couple of iPads that live in the team rooms. It comes with a call with me to get you set up: how to get the iPad on the screen in the room, whether your Wi-Fi is up to it, and the quickest way to get footage off your platform. Maybe I’ll add a button that pulls in your latest clips; once I know who I’m talking to, that sort of thing becomes possible. If you’re near enough, maybe I’ll come in. Get in touch.
One more thing
I didn’t want it called the Soccer Toolkit in the UK, or the Football Toolkit in America. So Video Pencil is finally translated, into US English and British English.
Show me yours
If you use it, especially on clips you can make public, please send them to me. One coach sent me his edited analysis and the original clip, and I rebuilt it in Video Pencil in far less time than the original took him. It took me a bit longer to work out what was going on, though. Every example teaches me more about how coaches explain the game.
It’s out now. Enjoy it, tell your friends, and tell your brother who coaches a youth team. It’s fun.