Today (October 2018), I am really proud to announce that our AP Capture portable Sports Mast, for high-quality IP Camera capture and control, has been chosen by The FA to be a part of their performance analysis arsenal! Alongside this, we also developed the AP Joystick software that is now used heavily by The FA with their AP Capture IP Cameras as part of their video analysis workflows.
The FA has an impressive performance analysis and insight department, that is headed up by Rhys Long (formerly with the Welsh Rugby Union and British & Irish Lions). On Monday 8th October, Jon Moore travelled to St George’s Park (The FA’s national football centre) to meet up with Rhys and deliver 3 of our AP Capture portable Sports Masts. Equipped with our 4K IP Cameras attached to the masts, The FA will make use of elevated filming positions for the different environments their teams will travel to for many overseas fixtures. The footage being captured will then be utilised in the many different performance analysis workflows and tools that are being used throughout The FA, to provide England’s finest with the best chance for success.
St George’s Park is home to England’s 28 national teams, with top-class facilities including 13 outdoor pitches (one a replica of the Wembley surface) and a full-size indoor 3G pitch. Currently, a large amount of the pitches are also accompanied by fixed IP Cameras. These cameras are fed back into the performance analysis centre in St George’s Park, where Rhys and his team of analysts can capture the footage to use for their analysis and review processes.
To answer Rhys’ requirements for more integration with the team’s existing world-class processes and workflows, we developed the AP Joystick software to help the team control their IP Cameras. By using AP Joystick on their Macs (with the physical joysticks we supply), the FA analysts are able to maximise the pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) movement patterns of their IP Cameras whilst capturing live into their analysis software (Hudl Sportscode) at the same time.
In 2019, we released our updated AP Capture Sports Mast Integrated Box, which now comes as standard with the Sports Mast solution. The FA wanted to benefit from these new boxes, with our updated battery system, pre-wired connections for ethernet and microphone input, along with the new laptop tray to sit on top of the box (rather than the mast as previously).
In these pictures, you can see two of the Sports Masts and new boxes next to each other, with the ethernet connections from both boxes (and therefore both IP Cameras) linking up to the Mac running AP Joystick, to control the camera movements whilst capturing both feeds live into Hudl Sportscode.
This is similar to the setup of Dublin GAA, who position their two AP Capture Sports Masts for a side on and end on view but are still connected back to a central AP Capture laptop (or Hudl Sportscode Mac with AP Joystick) to capture and control both feeds at once. Read more about that here.
We are dedicated to continually developing the AP line of products and solutions (AP Capture, AP Viewer, AP Wireless, AP Live, AP Scoreboard, AP Stream, AP Joystick) and are extremely pleased to be providing The FA with AP Capture and AP Joystick, which are now used within their performance analysis workflows.
We would like to thank The FA and Rhys Long for their trust in AnalysisPro and of course to wish all of the National teams the best of luck in their upcoming fixtures and competitions!
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