A database of every trick hit on video

[Jeremy]

I just had what I think is a great idea . Similar to the video records page, we should create a table on .org of every trick in footbag that is on video. Of course we could presumably never have a complete list, but over time we could create a reasonably comprehensive list. I imagine a table with something like - move names (covering multiple move names), Job's Notation, adds (with where they come from), and link to video. What would be ideal would be Youtube videos of individual tricks - but we could add time codes if we can't find a video.

[C-Fan]

This is a good start:

http://www.youtube.com/user/FootbagJapan

[rjadamson]

It seems like there are several entities that have attempted this, and I've always wondered why they've never really worked together on it (or advertised it very well for that matter). I think just consolidating every Shred Global trick tutorial with all of the others out there would be a great jump start.

How many professional (I guess they don't have to be top tier, but good form and general athleticism is a plus) players have high speed cameras? Jay Boychuk's 300 frame/sec camera is perfect for this sort of project.

[Jeremy]

Perhaps some kind of meta database tracking the quality of videos, but not displayed on the main page would be useful. I agree it would be great to specifically film high speed high resolution videos, but we could start by just collecting what already exists. I feel like my life gets busier every day, so I'm hoping to not be too involved in the hard yards, and mainly promote it as a great idea and help out when I can

[Jeremy]

I've created a page

http://www.footbag.org/reference/-/Free ... ove_Videos

As you can see, just one video so far, but feel free to add more.

Here is a brief tutorial

Click edit, scroll down to the appropriate add value and alphabetical order. Each trick should be separated by "|-". Make sure that's the case.
Then write in the following:

|-
|(Move name)
|(List of other names)
|(List of adds for the move)
|(Job's Notation)
|[(video link) video link] <--- actually in square brackets - ignore all other brackets.
|-

If you're unsure, you can just copy and paste an existing listing, and then change the text. Please remember to include a description of the changes you've made, even if they're minor.

[jay7]

I filmed some 250->500 videos of single tricks for Shred Global once. If Dale has the file still, and, you'll have basically every "normal" trick from 3->6 adds.

*edit*

I still have the files. Tons, and, tons of tricks. Presumably, I could make it say, 5 sections of video, and then give time codes per trick?

While it isn't necessarily HD and in sunlight, it is indoors and consistent, so, it might look decent.

When I'm back from gallivanting throughout the joys of warm weather, I might take a crack at uploading...

[Muffinman]

That's always something that I thought was "important" for this kind of project -- filming everything in front of a consistent white backdrop (ideally of course). That's what I tried to accomplish almost 10 years ago on Hackrifice before anyone else really had so many trick video demos available. Of course (web) video quality standards have changed a lot since then too and it was all amateurly home-rigged. Also, slow-mo (in addition to regular speed) is important, high-speed or not.

I think something that could add to this kind of project would be an optional additional entry for "invention shown" clips when applicable.

Ianek had uploaded over 500 single trick videos to Fourkast too, but as far as I can tell that has been removed just like my archives...


This project is something that I wished for when I first started playing and .org only had, like, 10-ish video demos. Oh wait... that hasn't really changed, has it? .org...

[Jeremy]

@Jay - that would be awesome. Ideally I think 1 video per trick, but especially in the case where single videos don't exist, time coding is definitely better than no video.

@Erik - if people specifically film tricks that would be great, but there is also so many already available that we could create a really good database without going that far. I'm not too concerned about inventions, but if you want to add those to trick listing, I have no issue with multiple video links for some tricks.

I've done a small update anyway, so there's now 37 tricks (I think) in the database. What I added was reasonably random (it began as the list in order from the ShredGlobal Youtube channel but I started skipping a few to get more important tricks first), but I think it now gives a better indication of what I'd like to see. Feel free to add more tricks and correct any errors.

[Fade2black]

I still have the Boychuk files, and was getting around to indexing them when Polini though it was something he could handle. Between the hackrifice files footbagfinland, the Japan demo, my current files, and the Boychuk collection, we could really finish it off. I would really love someone of Erik Chan's caliber to help index these... I took the stanford crypto footbag trick list (google it if you have never seen it) as the marker for major tricks, and had the rough draft page ready to go. Seeing a handful of legends talk about getting this project is motivating. I will help however you guys think is appropriate.

[Fade2black]

P.S...
Penske owes me 10 massive tricks for losing a Silva - Weidman bet, and I am pretty sure Somolinos has expressed interest in submitting tricks if someone adds a title screen and slowmo to it....and I have the entire Boychuk collection uncut sitting on the shred global YouTube ...

[Jeremy]

That would be really cool, cheers. I don't think this is a project that could ever be "finished," but I know what you mean. I guess the key thing as the list gets big is that there needs to be many names covered in the main name and alternative names. I don't care which is put as the main name, but it should be easy for people to ctrl+f and then find whatever trick they're looking for as long as they type one of the correct names. I think there needs to be a little cleaning up of what's there too - there's lots of info missing from some of the stuff that I think Ianek added. I can't stress enough how helpful it is to fill out the edit description when making edits too, and only edit one trick at a time.

[Jeremy]

I've fixed up Job's and adds for everything, but please look for errors. Also I realise a lot of tricks are missing, so if you have individual videos of you hitting tricks that aren't here, please feel free to post them in this topic and I can update. I'm getting a new camera next month, so I'm going to try to film all the missing ones then (since that will be much better quality than my options at the moment).

Note that this an attempt to have every move, so don't worry about how obscure your tricks are!

[Strix]

I dont know if it is needed or matters anymore. But after going to B.Lynn's Stanford Footbag page, I attempted to follow the link for trippderelict's list of moves. The page is not in existence anymore but I did find this page. Although it appears most of that has been replaced by Lynn's list anyway. Just thought I would share the finding.

Compared to Lynn's list vs the .org list, .org has a long way to go. Quick question, Is Lynn's list a complete list of all known moves to date or is it incomplete also?

[Jeremy]

Looking at those lists, I just wanted to point out that the key point of my list is that I'm only listing tricks where there is a video. I doubt any list is complete, or that you could know whether it's complete.

[Strix]

Given that there is what 30K moves and counting. I would say yeah any list would most likely remain incomplete. I know your list is only for moves with vids.

But thats not to say while using the existing text lists of moves to compare to your list that one could find moves that need videos made for them. That was my only interest.

[janis]

Great idea. A while ago I wrote some code for a footbag trick database back on one of my old websites. Basically the idea was to have a catalogue of tricks with videos and links to relevant pages for trick tips with the goal of having it all be searchable. I'll see if I can find that code and if there's anything salveagable from it. I know that any in any re-incarnation it would need a much better interface for users to add content.

[janis]

I've been thinking about this a lot and I've started to do the technical design for the backend. Hopefully I can get enough time to put this together (it won't be a small undertaking to make this in a way that doesn't suck). Once the backend is past the proof-of-concept stage I'll post again.

Something else that needs to be said is that if I do end up deciding to commit a ton of time and effort to this project I really want everyone to be very aware of the concept of bikeshedding. See: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson% ... triviality.

[Muffinman]

Hey Jeremy.
What's the best way to contribute to this? To go into "edit" and edit the CSS/Wiki code directly? I don't really have time right now, but this is something I would love to be a part of. I never really looked, but assumed it was worked on really extensively. A quick look at the page shows that there is just so much work to be done. It could be such a super useful resource.
This is the kind of thing I'm into and it makes me happy that it's integrated into .org.

[janis]

Basically I really like what Jeremy is trying to accomplish here with this and I think that by using some ideas from software engineering we can make this task of creating and maintaining such a list a lot easier.

I've arranged some webspace and I'm going to open source any code I write on a github public repository so that people can contribute to that more easily in the future. I'm aiming to get a working proof of concept up as soon as I can. The crux of my idea is that I want information to be as easy to find as possible. One of the main reasons I think that approaching it from the angle of making a database is good is because it will more conveniently allow people to search for various different moves and components than just using a text based search. It will also allow easier updating of tricks by the community, getting the design right will make maintenence much easier in the long term.

One thing that would really help is if someone would be willing to explain some aspects of the descriptive move system that was being developed. I think some of the concepts there will be valuable from the point of view of internally storing some information about each trick.

Later on there's the potential to do a lot more things with this database if the project gets more mature and a lot of tricks end up getting entered in it (for example automatically calculating shred 30 scores, suggesting similar tricks, etc). First though the priority is just to get something working.

[Jeremy]

Hey Jeremy.
What's the best way to contribute to this? To go into "edit" and edit the CSS/Wiki code directly? I don't really have time right now, but this is something I would love to be a part of. I never really looked, but assumed it was worked on really extensively. A quick look at the page shows that there is just so much work to be done. It could be such a super useful resource.
This is the kind of thing I'm into and it makes me happy that it's integrated into .org.

Hi Erik,

Ideally you would indeed click edit and edit the code directly. Wiki code is pretty easy to use, and you could try copying and pasting an existing entry and juts updating the relevant details.

The other way people could contribute is by posting videos of tricks not on the list in this topic, and then hopefully somebody who does have time could do the updating.

If Janis can come up with a better system, I'd be all for that, although I definitely want to maintain something on .org. It probably wouldn't be hard to to integrate something with .org, although it depends a lot on whether particular people let us, or tell us to wait until the update, which is what I'd been doing since 2004. Unfortunately I don't have the access or ability to help with that, so this is my main option, since I'd prefer to be doing something, and have something available, as opposed to continuing to wait, even if all this work is superseded.

Edit; I should add, if people are interested I posted a tutorial on updating/adding tricks a few posts ago.