As a former student and recent graduate, the 2 main performance analysis programs that I (and i’m sure lots of students) used were Dartfish and SportsCode. I must admit I was a SportsCode guy for most of my university but once learning the ropes with Dartfish, I must admit I had a Dartfish phase, although they both have their strengths and weaknesses and uses in particular situations.
SportsCode
The main features that I liked about SportsCode were:
- Ease of coding window setup.
- Simple creation/editing of movies.
- Neat analysis features.
The one thing about SportsCode that did annoy me slightly was that if I wanted to analyse a particular player and their performance, I would need a button for the player and another button for successful/unsuccessful indicators, time indicators, etc. This is synonomous with most softwares but with SportsCode, you had to press the player button then the action button, then edit the length of the clip. This seemed to add time to how long the analysis took. Also once the analysis was completed, exporting it out to analyse the data with the edit list just didn’t give all of the data that I wanted. However this is where dartfish came into its own!
Dartfish
The main features that I liked about Dartfish were
- Easy exporting of data into excel
- Coding buttons that could be turned on and off when needed.
- Stromotion!
Although the coding window setup in Dartfish could be slightly more tricky than SportsCode, once you get it sorted, it doesn’t need changing and the time spent will pay dividends. I particularly like the fact that if looking at time periods in games, I could click for example the 1st half button on and when the 2nd half begins, I could just click the 2nd half button and it would automatically change to 2nd half. This feature could be changed to whichever player/team is in possession, etc. Also when the data needs to be exported, it is a simple task of exporting the data into excel, formatting the data into a table and being able to look at different players/teams data in different time periods, etc. This was probably the main thing that I liked about Dartfish and the feature I personally found most useful.
In Conclusion, both Dartfish and SportsCode have their uses and pros + cons but both are excellent examples of performance analysis software. I am still undecided which is my favourite…………………but i’m sure everybody will have their own opinion.
Graham Cobden,
The Chester Analyst
May 22nd, 2012 at 10:44 AM
Hi Graham
Interesting Article ! I see your comparing version 6.5.2 of SportsCode – in V8 you have a Statistical Window that you can build to look exactly as you want and give out the data you want.
Also making the most of Exclusive and Activation links gives you much more freedom in your live analysis.
If you need any info on the above – feel free to contact me.
Steve
steve.jenkinson@sportstec.com
May 22nd, 2012 at 4:25 PM
Hi Graham
I used both Dartfish and Sportscode when I was a student. I found that with Sportscode running on a Mac it was a far more stable operating system and did not give me a blue screen at vital times during capture! Maybe Dartfish should run there software on Mac OS?
As for the exporting of data I could easily export the matrix from the Sportscode timeline to excel and then use macros to create my reports directly from the matrix data. Or using the edit list with a pe-formatted excel document it is possible to produce some very usable outputs. Once setup they can be used for multiple edit list imports.
As you mentioned, I to found the Dartfish code window to be tricky when first setting it up, but as with most things if I spent some (considerable) time on it then it could produce the outputs I was after.
In my opinion Sportscode is the best performance analysis software for a number of reasons, especially with some of the functionality that is now available that wasn’t during my student days.
There is a good chance that my above statement will raise a few questions from others, but having used both I know which I find easier, more productive and certainly more intuitive.
Regards
John K
June 1st, 2012 at 8:09 AM
Hi Graham
Good article.
How do they compare in cost?
Do you or John K know the cost two Software packages?
Regards
Stevo
June 1st, 2012 at 4:57 PM
Hi Stevo
Not sure on the Sportscode prices, they are not published on the website, but I know the Nacsport stuff has some prices on their website.
You get what you pay for in my opinion and if given the choice I would go Sportscode every time.
Sorry if this is not much help but maybe try contacting Sportscode direct if you want some pricing. Then you will be able to compare features as well as cost. jenks09 has an email address in his post and it is an @sportstec.com address so maybe a good start.
Regards
John K