Check out this full tutorial for a complete overview of Play3 by Metrica Sports. Make sure you activate subtitles in your own language:
Alternatively, you can follow the written tutorial below to create a playlist with visualizations:
Play3, the faster and more professional way to get your video-analysis work done, and as always, in a simple and easy way. Let’s start!
Create a New Workspace
The first thing you want to do is create a New Workspace. Choose a name and then select the folder where you would like to save it in your computer.
This is the default layout, but PLAY 3 is a modular software, which means you can change the placement of the panels to your preference. Choose how it best adapts to your screen size and to your typical routine. You can also move panels to a second screen, which is a perfect tool to present your videos from within the app!
Meet the Play3 Panels
The Organizer is where you’ll add and manage your media, such as Video files, Slides and created Containers or imported Containers from Play2 or Cloud. This is the video canvas, where all your videos will be displayed. This is the timeline, where you work on your clips by adding your annotations. This is the Visualizations window, where you will choose which visuals you want to add to your video. And this is the Elements window, where you’ll be able to change how your annotations look.
Let’s see how they all work together!
Organizer Panel
The Organizer panel, is where you import and access all your videos and containers. If you click on the PLUS button and select the first option, you can import your clips straight away. Let’s choose 2 or 3 clips and click Open. Here they are.
You can create a Container to keep your Organizer tidy and move any clips you want inside them. Let’s rename the container and drag and drop the clips inside them. Just like that.
If you want to add more clips inside this container, you can right-click on it and import them. You’ll find many more options here, including the Export as Video for when you finish your work.
You can create as many more Workspaces as you wish in new tabs, this is a cool way to organize different projects in the same window, meaning you’re always ready to change your edits, and you’re also able to copy clips from one workspace to another, easily.
The New Slide option is where you can create titles to start your presentation with a full-screen image or to separate your videos by categories, adding the slides in between the differently categorized clips.
You can also work with Full Matches. Import the game, just like you would a short video. You can use the Space bar to play and pause your video. You can scroll the mouse wheel back and forth on the video canvas to move it frame by frame, a great way to look at plays in detail. Furthermore, you can also zoom in by holding the ALT key and scrolling on there you want to focus.
You have a menu to change the speed of the video replay but using the shortcuts is so much smoother. Use the J key to go backwards and the L key to go forward. The more you press it, the more speed you add to the replay. This is very useful to review plays in a very short time.
If you want to cut short clips from your full game, you can choose to record a clip by pressing the R key to start recording, and then press it again to stop recording. You can also Save an Event by pressing the S key. You can change the duration of the clip you would like to save in this menu, in Save Event Settings. Choose how much time you want to save before and after you press the key.
If you would like to save it in folders, so you already have your clips organized by actions, you can create several containers, for example, one for attack… and one for Defense… and when you choose to save that event into one of the folders, just make sure its selected and use the shortcut CMD+SHIFT+S to save directly into that folder.
Now you can open your Video Canvas as a separate window and move it to a Second Screen, this allows you to present your work on another window more comfortably while adding changes to your timeline.
Editing
Field Tracking
Let’s start editing our clips! Double-click on the video file you want to open it in the timeline. Know that you can trim the size of your clip by clicking and dragging the start and end bars just like that, in case you need it.
Depending on the plan you have subscribed to, you can Track the Field automatically by choosing it here in the Field Tracking menu, or simply by clicking on the video bar and clicking process. The shorter the clip, the faster it’s done.
You can click on Improve to perfect certain parts of the video. Remember, the Field Tracking works best when most of the white lines are visible and the footage is as steady as possible, recorded from the central part of the stadium.
You can also do the Manual Field Tracking by choosing at least 4 reference points until the software picks it up. Once you press Process, you can confirm how accurate it is by selecting the option Show Field Tracking Hint or simply by using the shortcut letter I in your keyboard.
Field tracking can be used for many other sports as well, you can choose yours in this menu and proceed in the same way you’ve just seen work.
Player Tracking
Let’s start adding visuals to our video. In the Visualizations panel you’ll find all the cool visuals available separated by folders. Let’s choose the Ring #1, all you have to do is click on the plus button and the annotation will be added to your timeline, and you’ll see it pop in the video canvas.
Choose the player or players you want to highlight and in your Elements panel right here, click Process Player Tracking. This will pin the visual to the player for as long as you want it to last, then press Stop.
You can also track the player manually by matching the player position and the tracking box. This process is now much easier and accurate to do because you can move time frame by frame, scrolling in the video canvas with your mouse wheel or trackpad, just like that. You can now track the players much easier with this cool new feature.
Customizing the visual
Once you’ve added an annotation, you can entirely change how it looks. Let’s zoom in the timeline by holding the CMD key and scroll back and forth with the mouse wheel or the trackpad. Notice that the Ring is composed of several elements that you can change to your preference.
To make editing easier, you can zoom in the video canvas by holding the Alt key in your keyboard and scrolling the mouse wheel in the area you want to focus. This allows you to make sure your visuals look exactly as you want them, even when their on the far side of the screen.
When the annotation is selected, the Favorites tab is open by default in your Elements panel. Here is where you will change the looks of your visual. In this particular annotation, you have 3 elements, an Outer Ring, an Inner Ring and a Spotlight.
Let’s change the Units Quantity of the Outer Ring and also the Gap Length. Let’s change it as well for the Inner Ring. Now let’s choose another color for them, pick the one you want from the color grid or the spectrum, change the opacity to your liking or just press the color picker tool and select your teams' jersey color.
You only need to pick it once because you can save that color as a preset for future edits. Let’s change the color of the Inner Ring as well. Now we have a much different looking Ring than the original one we’ve selected.
These are the main settings of each element, the ones you’ll want to change more often, but you can add or remove them. If you click on the All tab, you’ll see all the settings available and by clicking the Star icon, you can add them to your Essentials tab. You can also remove them in the same way.
Presets
Once you’ve finished editing your visual, you can save it as a Preset. Just right-click on the annotation in the timeline and select the option. This will save your new custom-made visual to your own Preset Folder which you can rename, both the Preset Visual and the folder.
Now, every time you want to add that same visual again, just click on it, choose the player and track it. How fast is that?
Not only do you have the default and preset folders, but you can also Add to Favorites and keep those nice-looking visuals you’ll use very frequently in one single folder, for quick selection.
Remember, you can change any visual you want to your preference and save it as a preset!
Let’s go over to the Drawings' folder in the Visualizations panel and choose the 2D Rectangle. Create a shape on the video canvas, just like that. Now we’ll go to the Text folder, add a 2D Text annotation and move it inside the rectangle.
On your Elements panel you have many Fonts to choose from, and if you download new ones they will be automatically added to the software, so you have complete freedom on how your text looks.
Grouping
Before we change how it looks, we can already group these two visuals together. Notice you have 2 options. In this case, we want the rectangle and the text to move as one, so it’s smarter to Group it as Parent, this way you can scale it as one single element.
In your Text settings, you have an option called Fit to Parent Bounds. When selected, you’ll make sure the Text will always fit inside the rectangle whenever you add more words or change the font size. Remember, you only need to edit this one time because once you save it as preset, it will save with all these attributes enabled.
If on the other hand, you wish to create a visual that doesn’t necessarily need to be scaled or moved together, for example, an image here, another there, a text here. Then the Standard Grouping is the best choice, this will save you space on the timeline and make it easier for you to copy and paste it somewhere else.
You can use the typical shortcuts in PLAY 3 such as CMD-Z to undo actions… CMD-C and V to copy and paste annotations… CMD+A to select all elements in your timeline or your Organizer… And every available shortcut is displayed in the menus as you open them, so it’s easy to remember them.
Timeline actions
For annotations that don’t have tracking boxes, usually text boxes or images, you can extend the annotation bar in the timeline by simply grabbing it and extending it to the moment you want it to end.
Alternatively, you can Snap it to the place of your needle by right-clicking on the annotation and choosing Snap In Time to Current to trim the beginning, or Snap Out Time to Current, to trim the ending. You can do this with several annotations, let’s say we want to trim these 3 annotations - I’m selecting several at the same time by holding the SHIFT key - and now choosing or using the shortcut for Snap Out Time to Current.
Chroma Key is added automatically to your videos, but you can improve or check its accuracy by selecting its settings in the menu above your timeline. You should see the field completely painted, if not, you can just click on the patches of the field which are not covered to perfect your chroma. You can also delete the colors if you make a mistake, right here in the elements panel.
Let’s create a Pause. Just right-click on your timeline and select the option. You can make it longer or shorter by grabbing and dragging the bar. Let’s add an arrow, in our Visualizations panel, in the Drawings folder, we’ll choose Arrow #1 and draw it in our video canvas, dragging from the place we want it to start to where we want it to end. We can copy and paste this same arrow right here and now add a circle right here.
You choose which annotations start first by positioning them in order, so this arrow will start first… then this other arrow plus the circle come in… now I’ll click at the end of the Pause and select the 3 annotations holding the SHIFT key. Right-click and Snap the Out Time to make sure they finish in the same moment. You can edit and perfect these details at your preference. If you find the Pause is too long, then click on the moment you want it to end, select the annotations plus the Pause, and Snap the Out Time to Current.
You can delete any annotations you want with the shortcut CMD+Backspace or Group them to save space in the timeline with CMD+G. Remember you can zoom in your annotations by holding CMD and you can move right and left in the timeline by holding SHIFT.
Export
Now you have complete control over the final output of your video presentation. Once you’ve finished editing your clips, select the ones you want, in this case, we can choose the folder and choose Export as Video. The first option asks you to choose the location where you want to save your work.
You have plenty of settings you can choose to edit, but most importantly, you’ll want to check your frame size and the quality of your video. Changing these settings will give you an estimate file size here in the bottom-right corner of the export window.
Choose to export with or without Audio by selecting or deselecting the checkbox. When you're ready, press the Export button, and it will be added to your Export Queue.
The export process is done in the background, so you can keep working as it exports if you wish to. If you want to share your work with your analysis partner for continuous edits, choose to export as a container so he can keep adding more detail to the presentation on his own computer.