This week I had a question about using technology in my regular hockey “workflow”. Now, I am not the kind of coach that tries every single software package to judge which one is best and, I certainly know that everyone I talk to on the subject has a preference in the apps that they use. I tend to find that most people love the software application that they used first and it’s tough to get them to see it any other way. I am certainly like that so, as a caveat to my list of apps I use, I have not done an exhaustive survey of everything available out there. I will also say that I am not a big MAC fan and am very happy with my Dell laptop. Mostly this is because I don’t like how MACs try to think for me all of the time. I like to be able to easily create subdirectories and folders and I know where all my files are located (most of the time!). I am sure the MACs can do this as well but, there is something about trying to find a photo after you have downloaded your camera in iPhoto that is an impossibility for me for some reason.
Anyway, here is my list of apps that I use in no particular order:
1) Microsoft Office - Word takes care of my documents, Excel takes care of my spreadsheets and PowerPoint my presentations. I particularly like PowerPoint for creating a quick graphic that can be exported and incorporated into a presentation of video clips.
2) Adobe Photoshop - I do all of my photo editing in Photoshop. It was a little bit of a bear moving from CorelDraw a few years ago but, with YouTube as an online tutorial I find I can do almost anything I need to do. A few years ago I needed to “animate” some photos to make them a little more interesting in a video piece. There was a great YouTube tutorial that explained it all to me and it worked like a charm.
3) Adobe Premier - A hugely powerful video editing application. You can probably get away with Movie Maker or iMovie but Premier is certainly the Cadillac for video editing. It is a robust application that can be a little daunting but, it’s worth it to learn how to use it. Again, YouTube is an awesome tutor when you are learning new skills.
4) Jing - a little known screen capture application. You simply draw a rectangle around anything on your monitor and save it as a graphic file or simply copy and paste into a document or presentation. I am amazed at how much I use this little app for so many things during the day. And it’s free!!
5) DrillDraw - This is my favorite go to X and O diagram drawer. I am SURE that everyone has their favorite - DrillDraw is mine. Why? It’s easy to create and edit diagrams. It is easy to retrieve them once they are saved. You can export to a .jpg easily and it looks great. You can create a multi-diagram drill all in one. It has lots of drawing elements and I have never wanted something that wasn’t available in it. Best of all? The curved line drawer is outstanding.
6) STEVA Hockey Pro - I use STEVA for all my coding and clipping of game video. There are certainly other apps out there that do the same thing (and the list grows regularly). This may be the one package that I am just comfortable with and will keep using. It’s has its drawbacks and needs some work arounds occasionally but it rarely lets me down. Bottom line is that I can run a video feed into my computer (or upload it afterwards), use keyboard strokes for each event during the game (faceoff, offensive zone entry, shot, cycle, etc. Truly whatever I want to code!), then after the game watch in succession any clips I choose. For example, I can watch all of the faceoffs we took on the power play one after another. Or, if I am doing some pre-scout on an opponent, I can string together all of their forechecks to easily get a sense of what they are trying to do. The other nice thing about STEVA is that I can do a video presentation right out of the application rather than having to export everything into PowerPoint.
7) Hockey Coach Vision - A new piece to my application arsenal, HCV allows me to animate drills and systems. I have only had a week or so with it but, with a little practice, it has become a pretty powerful app for me. Simply, I can now demonstrate a system or drill with an animation rather than searching for the perfect video clip. This is going to come in very handy as I begin to put together a video series to compliment my book on the Torpedo System.
Finally, I have a clip on lapel microphone that I plug into my phone to record any voiceovers I need. And, I use two monitors on my desk. This allows me to have two applications open, one on each screen, making copying and pasting very easy and, you can easily read from one screen to work on the other. I also keep a few external hard drives available for saving and backing up as well.
Happy to answer any questions you might have, and all of the software packages mentioned are easily Googled.