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I have a pre-recorded video file of a sport game and I need to add a scoreboard on top of it. Imagine a basketball game where the score is changing dynamically and quite often so there are a lot of modifications that must be done on the scoreboard.

I'm trying to find a painless way to do it as using something like Adobe Premiere, for example, would require a creation of a separate title/label for each change in the score board and then a lot of back and forth deleting and adding new titles on the sequence line. It's doable but it takes a lot of time and I'd rather have a tool that would allow me to do it in real time while watching the video. Any suggestions?

2 Answers 2

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Have you ever heard the expression: 'Good, fast and cheap. Pick any two.'?

A good and fast way would be to hire a professional post-production studio capable of layering over the video a scorebdoard graphic, and layering over the graphic a character-generator input. You sit in the chair behind the editor and tell him what scores to input and when. The new edit master would have your scores popping on in sync with the action. This will not be cheap, but you didn't say that you want 'cheap.'

You could also use a programming environment like Flash to layer-on the scoreboard and add sequential cue-points to the video. Then you'd write some code that would insert the proper score at the proper points.

This is, potentially, cheap and good. But you'll need to get some programming skills and that won't be fast.

I think that a better idea would be to realize that good video work, like all good craft, is NOT painless. Just do the work. And, by the way, Adobe After Effects would make this job almost fun.

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  • I'm looking for do it yourself solution so option one won't do the trick for me. Writing code - I need to do it in real time while watching the video so that solution won't cut it as I'll have to watch it at least two times. Adobe After Effects - same thing, I don't think there's a painless way to do it in real time and going frame by frame and inserting titles/lables is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. I'm just hoping to find out of the box software solution that's available out there but it seems that nothing like this exists...
    – mmvsbg
    Apr 18, 2014 at 8:07
  • @mmvsbg I think Craig was suggesting for the coding side that you build a tool that would support adding them through scripting. This would be time consuming up front but then quick and easy to use. There would be a lot of up front cost and difficulty to build it though.
    – AJ Henderson
    Apr 18, 2014 at 14:31
  • Part of the Flash/Actionscript approach would be to code real-time interaction. So the code allows you to type in the score and hit ENTER to make the score go up on the board WHILE you're watching. Easy! Just takes a year or two of programming chops.
    – Craig
    Apr 18, 2014 at 16:17
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    By the way, i'm curious: how many times does the score in your video actually change? I imagine that in the time it takes to write and read a few of these posts you could change a bunch of scores with an out-of-the-box compositing tool.
    – Craig
    Apr 18, 2014 at 16:23
  • I've considered coding it but that would indeed take same time and I asked the question here in order not to re-invent the wheel but alas. I need the score board for a few different sports and the most intensive changes are in snooker and darts. Something changes there basically after every shot so I need a very robust software that would allow me to react in real time.
    – mmvsbg
    Apr 18, 2014 at 19:30
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Check out Derivative's TouchDesigner. Its a real-time compositing and rendering software that we use in our studios. It's used worldwide for really complex projects, so you could easily make a little patch in that where you could make 2 UI buttons and link those to some incrementing numbers, then composite the numbers onto the video and record it. Then you could watch the video, click the buttons, and have the output at the end when you're done.

It's a visual programming language, so you get the benefits of being able to make simple programs without doing full on programming.

It's a little difficult to wrap your head around the first time you open it, but there's a very active community that could help you out, and a free, educational licensed version of the software you can use if you're not making any money on the project.

Link to software: http://www.derivative.ca/

Link to community forum: http://www.derivative.ca/Forum/

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