Getting ready for a game
The work that decides how your deadline goes happens before kickoff. Two things need to exist before the first frame arrives — your code replacement file and your XMP templates. Set those up and the rest of the day is the same whether you shoot into DeadlineFTP, Deadline Editor, or both.
Set up in this order Both products
Both of these are shared configuration — build them once and they are there on the desktop and in the browser, on whichever machine you end up working from.
The shortcuts that turn h30 into a full caption. Generate it from the two rosters, or bring your own. Do this first. It isn't only a typing convenience — it is the vocabulary that audio transcription is matched against, so it has to exist before your images land, not after you notice the captions are wrong.
Credit, copyright, location, the agency-specific field sets — the metadata that should be true of every frame from this game. Set the template before the game starts and it is applied as you work, rather than being something you retrofit to four hundred frames afterwards.
Building the code file from the roster
Pick the matchup and Deadline generates a shortcut for every player and
head coach on both benches — home prefixed h,
visitors v, followed by the jersey number.
Roughly a minute's work for a full game.
| Type this | You get |
|---|---|
| event | Lakeview Riverside St. basketball |
| h | Riverside State Ravens |
| h30 | Riverside State guard Marcus Vale (30) |
| h4 | Riverside State center Dominic Boyle (4) |
| v11 | Lakeview forward Andre Whitfield (11) |
| hhc | Riverside State Head Coach Teresa Nunn |
| vhc | Lakeview Head Coach Bill Ackerman |
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Positions are spelled out. The feed's G becomes guard, PF becomes power forward. Sports the feed doesn't tag with a position build without one — no double space, no dangling comma. -
College naming follows the wire convention. Player captions use the school name, not the mascot: Riverside State guard Marcus Vale (30). The event line shortens further, to Riverside St. -
Everything stays editable — for the walk-on who isn't in any feed yet, or the number that changed at warm-ups.
How the frames arrive
This is the one place the two products genuinely differ. Everything after it is the same work in the same shape.
The camera sends frames as you shoot them. They land in the gallery seconds later with thumbnails already made, ready to caption from a phone or a laptop — or by someone else entirely, back at the desk.
Pull the card and ingest to the desktop, with the full-resolution originals in front of you. The usual choice when the edit matters more than the first ten seconds.
Caption Both products
Three keystrokes for a full caption — or none at all, if your hands are busy.
h30, v11, hhc. Each shortcut carries a long form, a short form and the bare name, so one code can fill a full caption, a credit line, or just a name field.
Record a voice memo naming the play. The transcript is matched against your code file and the codes expand into the same full caption text.
| “h30 pulls up for three over v11 late in the second half” |
| “Riverside State guard Marcus Vale (30) pulls up for three over Lakeview forward Andre Whitfield (11) late in the second half” |
This is why step one is step one. Your codes and team names are fed to the transcription as vocabulary before it runs — without them, h30 comes back as “hay thirty” and nothing matches. A code that isn't on today's roster is left exactly as spoken rather than guessed at.
Edit, then deliver Both products
Cull, tone, finish the metadata, send it. The XMP template you set this morning is already applied, so this is a check rather than a chore.
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A client gallery your editor can open on a phone, with ratings and colour codes carried through from your edit. -
Export via FTP or SFTP — straight to the agency or client destination. -
Metadata that survives the trip. Captions and credits are written as IPTC and XMP, including the agency-specific field sets that get files rejected when they're missing.
Thirty minutes, screen shared. Bring a matchup you're shooting this week and we'll build the code file and the XMP template live, then send a captioned frame end to end.
Book a demo