Three Tools to Help You Coach Better

Posted August 26, 2010 by Kim Burnham
Under  • Tips & Tricks

Along the way, we’ve had some great articles that explain how certain tools used alongside your video can help you win. Sure—they’re not brand new articles, but they’re still as relevant now as they were then.

Let’s ask the question we know is on all coaches’ minds:

How can I use my video to help my team and athletes improve?

We’d love to show you.

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Break Down a Football Game in 30 Minutes

Posted August 19, 2010 by Mike "Mav" Aveni
Under  • Tips & Tricks

Mike Aveni is the assistant football coach at Silver Lake High School in Kingston, Mass. Coach Aveni has spent many years coaching football and is extremely familiar with the work that comes along with breaking down game film.

Whether you are a seasoned veteran or you’ve never analyzed a game before – you can’t truly appreciate the work it takes to breakdown a game play-by-play until you’ve stayed up ‘til 3am doing it yourself. It’s no easy feat. In this post, I’ll lay out the steps we use to make game breakdown a lot easier and faster. In a matter of 30 minutes of shared time amongst 4 coaches, your data is entered on every play and you are ready to meet as a staff and game plan.

Here is exactly how I divide up our coaching staff to enter data on Hudl.com for both our own game film and when scouting opponents. It’s no longer dumped on the coach with the best computer skills which means no more 3am nights for me.

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Common Questions About Storage Limits

Posted August 12, 2010 by Sarah Armstrong
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Business

One of the distinguishing factors between the Silver, Gold, and Platinum packages in Hudl is storage hours for your opponent scout and practice footage. Those numbers can be a bit confusing, if they come with no explanation.

We’ve put together a list of the most common questions we get regarding storage limits. Hopefully this will help explain exactly how those storage hours work in.

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Camera Covers:  From No Budget to Top of the Line

Posted August 07, 2010 by Greg Nelson
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Technology

As fall camp starts up, the last thing on a coach’s mind is worrying about their Friday night camera set up.  You should, however, allot some time during fall camp to check all of your camera equipment and make sure it is in tip-top shape come time for your first game.

It is important to prepare your camera equipment to be used in all types of weather.  We have a solution for every budget to protect against rain, sleet, and snow!

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Finding the Right Tutorial

Posted July 29, 2010 by Sarah Armstrong
Under  • Tips & Tricks

If you frequent our support and tutorials pages, you’ve noticed we’ve given them a face lift. Before, we made you skip around from page to page looking for the information you needed. Now, we have it all conveniently located in one spot. We think this will make your searches easier so you can get your question answered, and get back to your video.

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It’s Time To Get Crackin’ in Hudl Again - Are You Ready For This Season?

Posted July 14, 2010 by Kiley Story
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Coaching & Athletics

We have gotten quite a few calls about making payments, and adding new schedules and players for this next season.

To make your lives easier, and ours, we have created this checklist to make sure you are ready for this season. So start marking them off as you go!

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Make Your Own End Zone Camera System for $800

Posted June 09, 2010 by Mike Johnson
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Guest Post

Mike Johnson is the d-line coach and video coordinator at Lakeville North High School in Lakeville, MN. He’s been sharing these step-by-step instructions to coaches around the country who have some DIY skills and are looking for an affordable, top-notch end zone camera system. The plans are free - all he asks for in return is pictures of your final product and tips on how to make the plans even better. We love it!

I know many of you are in the same situation we were in at Lakeville North - we understood that an end zone view of our games would be a huge benefit for the team, but getting that angle of video was no trivial task (especially on the road). The challenges:

• Working with pressbox video only makes it tough to give athletes the feedback they need (especially our linemen)
• Buying a “professional” end zone camera system was too expensive ($3,000-$6,000)
• Using a scissor lift is expensive, cumbersome, and not possible at away games
• Installing scaffolding is a pain, can be an eyesore, and only helps at home

The answer for us was building our own system that was affordable, reliable, portable, and easy enough I could do it without a mechanical engineering degree and with parts I could order or pick up easily. I want to thank all of the coaches that I have worked with on this design.  My current design is a mixture of my ideas along with suggestions from the other 40+ coaches that built their end zone camera with these tips. Read on to check out, in detail, how it’s done.

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Top 10 Things to Focus On During Football Film Study

Posted June 01, 2010 by Greg Nelson
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Coaching & Athletics

Between my work at the University of Nebraska as a student assistant and as an assistant coach for a local high school in Lincoln - I’ve spent many hours pouring over film. I have my own style of analyzing video, but I was interested to find out what you look at during your film sessions.

I took a poll of our Hudl coaches to find the top ten things to focus on when studying film.

Survey says:

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Summer Football Conditioning Tips

Posted May 26, 2010 by Tony Sanchez
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Guest Post  • Coaching & Athletics

As coaches, we see the calendar year a bit differently. From a program management standpoint, there are three seasons or phases in our calendar year — not four.

We’ve got:

• Spring  January - May
• Summer June - July
• Season August - December

During all seasons we are working, but these three phases dictate what needs to get done during those months. They tell us how we need to train and what we need to focus on to prepare for the next phase.

Summertime is really it’s own entity that we take seriously as a coaching staff at Bishop Gorman. Here is where we plan to focus our time over the next two months:

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Where are My Highlights?

Posted April 29, 2010 by Kiley Story
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Features & Updates

You may have noticed recently that we have made a few changes to the way highlights work in Hudl.

With the joining of Hudl and MaxPreps, highlights can now be found on MaxPreps.com and on your team’s public page. Our recent update had some big new features, including the ability to decide which highlights coaches want to show on these pages.

Because we like to put the power in your hands, we’re letting you manage what video can be included in your highlights. Check out the rest of this post for more details on how all of this works.

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Hidden Hudl Gems: Google for Hudl Help, Customize your Camera Angles

Posted April 14, 2010 by John Wirtz
Under  • Tips & Tricks

This is the second part of a series of blog posts we are doing to showcase some of the unseen stars in Hudl. These are the features that our coaches fall in love with when they stumble across them - but sometimes you just don’t stumble into the right place at the right time. Check out the first post in the series for more hidden gems.

Read on to learn the fastest way to find help on Hudl and how to take full advantage of multiple camera angles.

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Back By Popular Demand: Hudl Training Sessions

Posted April 05, 2010 by Bryant Bone
Under  • Tips & Tricks

Coaches: are you just getting started with Hudl and looking to learn the basics of Hudl Video Editor? Or are you a seasoned Hudl veteran looking to get the most out of the system? Whatever your experience level, we’re excited to announce more weekly Hudl training sessions, led by members of Hudl’s expert support staff.

Register for as many as you want and feel free to get your whole staff involved. The first session is tomorrow evening at 7pm CST. If you can’t make it, don’t worry, we’ll have three more sessions in April and will be announcing our May sessions in the coming weeks.

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Hidden Hudl Gems: Sorting, Adding Clips to Playlists with Drag and Drop

Posted March 13, 2010 by John Wirtz
Under  • Tips & Tricks

Not everything can be front and center. We always do our best to make sure coaches can find what they need in Hudl - but in the interest of keeping pages clean and easy to use, the occasional handy feature gets a little tucked away. That’s why we have training sessions, tutorial videos, and now these posts.

Here are a few features that you might not have found yet and how they can make your coaching life easier:

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If You Can Play It On Your Computer, You Can Use It In Hudl

Posted February 02, 2010 by Matt Mueller
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Technology

One of the challenges we faced when we built Hudl was designing a system that wouldn’t limit our users or force them into specific video formats. We know you don’t just get video on digital tape, so we wanted to build a solution that let you use whatever video you have in the format you have it.

As many of you know from using Hudl, we have conquered this task. Since we designed our own capture tool (and didn’t rely on someone else’s system for capture), we let you have complete control over what video formats you want to use. Hudl handles WMV, AVI, MPEG-2, and DVDs (just to name a few) without any extra work, but that just scratches the surface of what you can and will be able to do in Hudl.

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Learn Hudl from the Experts at a Free Online Training Session

Posted February 01, 2010 by Bryant Bone
Under  • Tips & Tricks

Coaches: we’ve updated the training sessions for the 2010 season

Coaches: are you just getting started with Hudl and looking to learn the basics of Hudl Video Editor? Or are you a seasoned Hudl veteran looking to get the most out of the system? Whatever your experience level, we’re excited to announce the first ever Hudl Online Training sessions, led by members of Hudl’s expert support staff.

Register for as many as you want and feel free to get your whole staff involved.

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Things Coaches Hate: Paying Hundreds of Dollars for Remotes

Posted January 14, 2010 by Matt Mueller
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Technology

We spend a lot of time talking with coaches about things that we could improve with their coaching lives. One of the things we heard over and over was that the remotes used to control video right now are too expensive (meaning it is a luxury to have one or two) and they break easily (meaning even if you were fortunate enough to have one, you no longer do). It didn’t make sense to us that after you spent thousands of dollars on an editing system that you also had to spend hundreds on each remote to control it, so when we created Hudl, not only did we want to make sure we designed a cost effective video editing solution, but we made sure that we found a remote that was both affordable and reliable.

This lead us to integrate with the Microsoft Xbox 360 controller. Xbox 360 controller had a lot of benefits over other remotes: you could use the wireless version, it integrated easily with Internet Explorer, it only cost $50, and if you threw it across the room chances are it would still work. Further, since you can get an Xbox 360 controller from any number of places, you didn’t have to worry about us needlessly marking up hardware just to make a quick buck at your expense. Who knows - you might already even have one in your house!

But just like every other area of Hudl, we didn’t just stop once we found something that worked. In an upcoming release, we have a new remote called the Smart Pointer that is cheaper and will work on any computer (Mac or PC) in any browser without the need to do install Hudl’s advanced features!

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How to Browse the Web Like a Pro

Posted January 11, 2010 by Kyle Murphy
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Technology

Have you ever gone to your favorite sports site for the 10th time in a day and been frustrated when there wasn’t something new to read? That’s not an efficient way to browse the web. You’re a coach. You should be browsing like a pro.

I want to show you how RSS can save you a ton of time by bringing the best coaching and sports news, updates, and resources directly to you.

Watch the quick explanation video from commoncraft. Then, I’ll help you setup Google Reader to follow your favorite content.

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Using Hudl to Give Rock Star Clinic Presentations

Posted January 08, 2010 by John Wirtz
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Features & Updates

Now that high school and college football season has wound down, it’s time for clinic season to ramp up. For all of our coaches preparing to speak at clinics across the country, Hudl can save you some serious time and help you put together a presentation that will blow away your audience.

We just released the ability to download your presentations so you can easily give them with or without an internet connection. And, we just added the ability to use Hudl with the Smart-Pointer remote ($39 on Amazon.com), so now you can use an Xbox 360 controller or the Smart-Pointer to walk your audience through your slides and video.

Hopefully this post will give you some useful pointers on how to make a sweet clinic presentation in Hudl - a process that will be a lot easier than trying to create and present with a DVD or PowerPoint.

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Every Sport. Every Team.

Posted November 24, 2009 by Kiley Story
Under  • Tips & Tricks

Hudl offers significant discounts to schools that sign up with multiple sports. The first sport is full price and the next two sports are each half price. Any additional sports beyond those are free!

Check out the different packages we offer to see which one fits you: www.hudl.com/signup

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Saving You Time: Start Encoding Your Video without an Internet Connection

Posted November 20, 2009 by Matt Mueller
Under  • Tips & Tricks

While I’m sure all of you would love to have every game at home, road games are part of playing sports. Since some of those road games are a long bus trip away, we have had quite a few coaches ask us if there is a way them to start encoding their video in the Hudl Video Editor during the bus ride home. That way Hudl could start uploading the video as soon as they have an internet connection which would save them some time during publishing.

Since we love to find ways to make our coaches more efficient, we are currently trying to find a way to work this into the publish process. Fortunately, we found a nice, easy workaround that lets you do this now. In fact, it is really just a one step process. Once you have captured your video, all you need to do is click the Export button and choose Export to WMV.

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Pittsburg State Women’s Basketball Priming for Jayhawks Matchup with Hudl

Posted October 29, 2009 by Kim Burnham
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Coaching & Athletics  • Partners

On Sunday, November 1, the Pittsburg State women’s basketball team will tip off their 2009-10 season against the Kansas Jayhawks at historic Phog Allen Fieldhouse. To prepare for their matchup with a Division I opponent, Head Coach Lane Lord (2009 WBCA Regional Coach of the Year) and staff are using Hudl daily.

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Hudl Contest

Posted October 28, 2009 by Kiley Story
Under  • Tips & Tricks

Coaches, do you have an amazing story about how you’ve used Hudl this year to take your team to the next level?  Let us know and you will be entered into a drawing for prizes!

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Highlight DVDs

Posted October 27, 2009 by Kiley Story
Under  • Tips & Tricks

Coaches, are you looking for a way to say thanks to those Seniors for all their hard work over the last few years? Thank them by creating a personalized DVD filled with jaw dropping season highlights as well as their own highlights!

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Using Text Messaging and Email to make Hudl an Uber Coaching Machine

Posted October 14, 2009 by John Wirtz
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Coaching & Athletics

We love hearing coaches telling us that Hudl has helped their athletes watch more video, learn more from it, and really enjoy doing it. Ultimately, that’s what Hudl is all about - helping athletes improve. We’ve heard of athletes watching the game together at Hudl pizza parties, texting coaches as soon as they get home asking when practice video will be on Hudl, and creating and sharing their own video notes to teammates to highlight an opponent’s weakness. We’ve recently seen a handful of coaches go a step further in Hudl and use text messages and email combined with Hudl video notes in pretty creative ways to get their teams even more engaged in learning off the field.

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