How to make video clips for players

You've watched the match and tagged the moments that matter. Now the players need to see them. Not the full ninety minutes, which most of them won't open, but a few short clips that each make one point. Clips that players watch on the bus to training, and that change something on the pitch.

This guide covers how to choose those moments, how long a clip should be, how to title it, when to put several moments in one video, and how to get it to the right players. The method works with any tool. The second half shows how to do it in Enlyo.

Why do fewer clips work better?

A player who gets thirty clips watches the first three. A player who gets three watches all of them, and probably twice. Every clip you add makes the others less likely to be seen.

So the job isn't to show everything you found. It's to choose what the players most need to see before the next match, and leave the rest in your own notes.

1. Start from the message, not the footage

Before you cut anything, write down what you want the players to take away. One or two sentences per group:

• The team: "We left too much space between the lines when we pressed."
• The back four: "Hold the line when the ball goes backwards."
• One player: "Your first touch out of pressure was good. Look up before you receive."

Each sentence becomes a small set of clips. Anything that doesn't support one of the sentences stays out, however good the moment is.

2. Pick a few moments

For each message, pick the moments that show it most clearly. Three to five per message is plenty. Look for:

• A clear example of the problem. The one where nobody could argue about what happened.
• A clear example of it done right. Players learn as much from seeing the good version, and it's usually in the same match.
• Moments from different phases, so the point doesn't look like a one-off.

Skip the moments that need a long explanation to make sense. If you have to talk for a minute to set up a clip, it belongs in a recorded explanation instead. See how to give video feedback to players.

3. How long should a video clip be?

Most points fit in 10 to 30 seconds. Start the clip just before the thing to watch happens, so the player has a moment to see the shape, and end it once the point is made. A clip that starts with a throw-in forty seconds before the goal hides the point in the build-up.

If you tagged with a time window, your bookmarks will already be roughly right. Trim the start and end before you cut the clip.

4. One message per clip

A clip that shows a good press, a bad pass and a missed run teaches nothing in particular. Give each clip one thing to look at, and say what it is in the title.

Compare:

• "Clip 7" tells the player nothing.
• "2nd half, 64'" tells them when, not what.
• "Watch the gap between 6 and 8 when we press" tells them where to look before it starts.

Use the description for anything more: the minute, who to watch, and what you'd like them to do differently. Keep it to a line or two.

5. Mix what went well with what to fix

A set of clips that only shows mistakes is a set players stop opening. A study of video feedback at a professional football academy points out that negative reactions to video feedback, such as anxiety, embarrassment and lost confidence, can make players resist the feedback and fail to learn from it. Put the good moments in too, and say so in the title: "Good: we win it back within five seconds." It shows the squad what you want, not just what you don't.

For individual players this matters even more. One clip of something they did well and one of something to change is a conversation a player is happy to have.

6. When should several moments go in one video?

Sometimes the point is a pattern: every corner against, every time you played out from the back under pressure. Instead of eight separate clips, put the moments into one summary: a single video that plays them one after the other.

Order the moments by what you want to show, not by the match clock. Start with the clearest example, finish with the one done right. You can show the same moment twice, once at the start and once at the end.

Summaries also make a good match highlight video for the whole squad, or a pre-match video of the next opponent's set pieces.

7. Send it where players already look

The best clip is useless in a folder nobody opens. Agree with your squad on one place where match video goes, and use it every week:

• The squad's shared space for what everyone should see: the match, the team clips, the summary.
• Straight to one player for individual feedback. Not everything belongs in front of the whole squad.
• A link for players who won't sign up for anything, and for parents or a player from another team.

Keep the staff's own material, such as scouting and selection notes, in a separate place the players can't see.

Send the clips while the match is still fresh, before the next training session, so the players have seen them when you talk about it on the pitch.

Common mistakes

• Sending the full match and hoping. Players won't search ninety minutes for the point you meant.
• Clips without titles. If the title doesn't say what to watch, the player watches the ball.
• Only the mistakes. Players stop opening the clips.
• A different place every week. WhatsApp one week, email the next, a drive the week after. Pick one.

How to make clips for players in Enlyo

In Enlyo, every clip starts as a bookmark. Tag the match with your buttons (see how to tag a match), then turn the bookmarks you kept into clips.

From bookmark to clip. Trim the bookmark to the stretch you want, then create a clip from it. When you create a clip, you choose where it lands: any channel you belong to, and any folder inside it. A clip doesn't have to stay with the match it came from. Give it a title and a description that say what to watch.

A clip covers exactly the stretch of its bookmark, and that's fixed once it's cut. So trim first. Editing a clip later changes its title and description. A clip stays playable if the match it came from is deleted.

Summaries. The summary editor opens with the match's bookmarks on one side and an empty timeline underneath. Click a bookmark to add it. Drag segments to change the order, and use the same bookmark more than once if you like. Trim each segment against a filmstrip of the footage, without changing the bookmark it came from. If you filmed from more than one angle, pick the angle per segment. The preview plays the summary before you create it. The editor is a desktop tool; on a phone you pick the moments from a list instead.

A channel per squad. Every match, clip, review and summary lives in a channel, and the channel decides who sees it. Make one for the first team and one for the U17s, and players see what's shared there. Readers watch, contributors add, admins manage. A staff-only channel keeps your scouting out of the players' view.

Or share one clip. Share a clip with a player by email, at can view or can edit. They'll need a free account, and the clip lands in their shared with me channel without opening the rest of your library. Or switch the clip's link to anyone with the link: it plays in any browser, no account needed. Switch it back to restricted and the link stops working for everyone at once.

Players watch free. We charge for storage, not for players, and every plan has every feature, the free one included. A dot on each clip shows a player what they haven't opened yet. See all the features and the plans.

More on sharing video with players

• Sharing clips with players: channels, links and who sees what.
• Video feedback for players: when a clip needs your voice.
• Clips for your sport: football, field hockey, basketball, rugby and volleyball.