Codimg – ‘The Investigative Tool’

Growing up, I watched Inspector Gadget (do you remember the theme tune?). Today, some of the far-fetched and futuristic technological ideas are now very familiar in everyday life; technology has flourished and become a fundamental tool in all our lives and most of us embrace it every day.

This short blog will look at Codimg – a play on the words ‘Coding images’ and how it can be used as an ‘investigative tool’ and applied to almost any industry and used by any practitioner. Something you would expect Penny and Brain to be discussing with the Inspector himself.

Codimg as an investigative tool can give you answers to your questions – What is happening? What is going well? Where can we improve? Who is doing what? Why is that happening?

Use of video analysis in sport is now very common place and expected – but what about outside of sport?

When you see a photograph or a video with yourself in it, who do you look at first?… Yourself…. you analyse yourself immediately. The same principles apply to using video analysis; it gives you a chance to see yourself in action, something to review with a manager, tutor, coach, etc. It enhances your knowledge to improve, as well as increasing knowledge on the subject in order to make overall better decisions. Video analysis becomes the investigative tool for your subject, building intelligence to increase productivity and processes.

Companies invest a lot of time and money into staff and the methodology of how things are done. Using Codimg as an investigative tool can uncover the layers that you as the manager/team leader/supervisor/coach/director want to know and give you substance to build upon and improve performance.

With that said, this may be the reason that the use of Codimg video analysis is on the rise!

For example – our colleagues in Holland are working with a food manufacturing company who use Codimg to investigate the methods and processes being carried out by their employees. They filmed and analysed video footage of the processes of a department. They identified areas of improvement, they made changes based on this new knowledge and found a significant rise in productivity… and, a rise in productivity is always a good thing!

Our colleagues in Spain are working with high profile doctors, introducing video analysis to medical simulation. They have users in performing arts, language studies, emergency services, behaviour analysis for conditions such as ADHD, and even things like productivity when making an IKEA chest of drawers.

Our colleagues in France work with users in banking training, flight simulation and the fire service.

Here in the UK we have seen the amazing study on Torquay Academy and applying video analysis to teaching practices when using the teaching model – ‘Teach Like A Champion’. We have also seen users in the eSports industry apply the software for investigative research on opponents and themselves.

The point is that Codimg can become an investigative tool in a multitude of industries! What about CCTV analysis? Police training? First Aid training? Legal training? Sales training? Chainsaw training? It can simply be applied to anything!

So how does it work?

Firstly – Codimg allows you to break down a video for review. Customised templates can be created to suit the industry and the practitioner – everything orientates around this template of buttons. The buttons are pressed when the notable action happens and are then ‘coded’ into a timeline of events. These are broken down into ‘Categories’ – the notable action that’s happening, and ‘Descriptors’ – adjectives to the notable action, which gives you an extra layer of detail i.e. good and bad.

Lily has entered a speaking competition. To earn points in the competition she must speak loudly, clearly and concisely, stood with a firm posture. These become Lily’s ‘KPIs’ (Key Performance Indicators). Lily’s coach gets a pen and paper and writes down the KPIs. She develops an idea of what her template will look like and the practicalities of pressing the template buttons in real time.

To show you the principle, I have made up this example for you –

Lily’s coach uses Codimg to create a simple template to monitor Lily in practice –

Here we have some KPIs important for a speaking competition, but these could be customised to suit any industry. Food manufacturing could be broken down into the tasks of that department for example. Medical simulation could list the important criteria a medical practitioner must do well to qualify. First Aid could follow the DR ABC principles, Teaching can follow a specific teaching model i.e TLAC, and so on….

Overall, the expert is the coach, manager, lecturer, tutor etc. You as the expert will know what you are looking for and therefore implement that expertise into your template.

Lily and Lily’s coach can now investigate what Lily does well and what may need more practice. Her coach can film Lily live when practicing or in a competition and give instant visual and audio feedback. Lily can see a table of stats showing what she is doing well and what is the most common issue for improvement.

Clicking the numbers will show the actual video to Lily, so clicking ‘Clarity’ (which is a Category) and ‘Improve’ (which is a Descriptor) will show Lily a part of her speech where her clarity needed improvement, whilst building intelligence on trends and tendencies of her subjects for her coach.

Well…. guess what?! Lily won the competition!

This was good news for Lily’s coach. This meant that Lily’s coach had more people who wanted her coaching – let’s call her Jane.

Jane had three new recruits to enter the next competition and now a team of four. She can evolve her template to suit.

Now, Jane can code the group if they practice together or one after another, or, if they enter the competition as a group. Jane can easily analyse all the speakers from this one template.

Jane can easily click from left to right to code the actions, but! ….

As Jane is coding – something important happens that’s not on her template! It’s fine, by pressing CTRL, she can quickly create a clip and enter her coaching points on it, without needing a specific template button.

Also, notice the red dots next to the Volume, Clarity, Posture, Fluency, Good, Okay and Improve buttons?

Well, this means Jane has turned the buttons into descriptors. The speaker now becomes the Category and what the speaker does now becomes the descriptor.

This adjusts how your matrix looks – you now see every speaker on the left and their specific actions and outcomes across the top.

This is great for individual or group feedback, or for investigating trends and tendencies of a subject and the data that is present, similar to the way the food manufacturing company in Holland reviewed their processes to increase efficiency and productivity.

So what else can Jane do with this data in the software?

1. Jane could create a visual dashboard of graphs and charts. The data from the coding will self-populate into the dashboard for another way to review the actions. Clicking the graphs will load and play the specific moments.

2. Jane can also add notes to each clip and then create a presentation in an independent presentation window. These presentations can be played from within the software if presenting the findings to a group, or, exported with PowerPoint slides and pictures.

3. Jane could add drawings and telestrations to the presentation using the KlipDraw tools.

4. Jane could compare clips side by side.

5. Jane could upload these to an online platform i.e.. Sharimg, so her speakers can log in from anywhere and view her clips online.

6. If Jane was using another software, she could import the XML of data into Codimg so nothing is lost.

These clips are now in the can!

Jane can save and order each timeline so she can monitor how her students are doing as time goes on. Clever naming formats with the DATE, COMPETITION, and SPEAKER allow her to easily find the data in the search bar. Files and folders are exactly as she wants them. She can share best practice with other students and use the information to make better quality decisions.

We are all about ‘Shoot, Analyse, Share’ at AnalysisPro.

So how can Jane achieve these performance analysis workflows whilst getting good quality footage?

The easiest and cheapest way is to get the Codimg app on your iPad! Codimg View is only £105 (+vat).

Jane can use Codimg View to film (using the iPad camera) and tag those important moments as they happen, by creating the template in the app or importing to the iPad from the Codimg software.

Jane found the iPad slippery and was getting wobbly footage when she held it, so she invested in these components to turn her iPad into a filming station. She can get great audio with it and controlled filming movements.

For competition time, Jane sets up a conventional camera using an AverMedia device to capture and code live into Codimg on her laptop. Within the software, she can even live stream clips and stats to other devices over a wireless network as she is coding.

Jane would like to explore the IP camera option one day too (Internet Protocol), where Codimg can directly capture from IP cameras on the same local network.

And sometimes, Jane doesn’t want to code live at all, she just wants to film and then code the event later. That’s fine, she can just ‘register from file’ and just take her time….

Well that’s it from Jane now, I think I owe her a drink!

To conclude, Codimg is an investigative tool that can be applied to any industry. It allows you to build quality information to make better decisions. Whether it’s a medical training room, police training centre, sales office or a speaking competition, there is room to use Codimg video analysis as an investigative tool; just like how Inspector Gadget used his technological, farfetched tools to save the world!