Video, Music, and all the Tech to Record Games

Here’s all I do for tech for my daughter's softball games.

Music:

I use a ECOXGEAR Speaker. It works well with the bluetooth on my phone. It can hold a charge for the whole weekend of tournament games. Once a year, I need to replace the battery, I replace it with this battery. Otherwise, I just make sure the speaker is charged every weekend.

The speaker is waterproof and can easily sit through the wind and rain. I try to keep it in the shade when it is super hot, otherwise it holds up really well.

Walk-up Songs:

I use the app Walkout DJ. It has a place for me to put a walk-up song for each girl. It has a place for inning breaks, for pre-game music, and for situational songs. You can also add in player announcements, although our players never use it because they walk to the plate so quickly. 

I use my phone and I buy the songs from iTunes. You could just download them if you have iMusic. But I’m not a consistent subscriber, so I just buy the songs.

We do a walk-up song for each girl and then if they want to change, they let me know and they have to keep it clean.

Here are all the songs currently in my inning breaks and in my pregame playlist.

Pregame Playlist

Inning Break Songs

Current Walk Up Songs (Not all clean lyrics, but 15 seconds of walk up is clean)

Video:

Mevo Start

I use a Mevo Start camera to record the games. All games record to a micro disk. I also livestream the games through SidelineHD to a team YouTube channel.

SidelineHD

We use the free software SidelineHD to clip all the at bats and defensive plays for our players.

I 10/10 recommend SidelineHD. Awesome customer service, awesome service easily recording and clipping all the plays.

The way it ends up, we need a device for the Mevo to work, so I bring an iPad for it. We also have the Mevo app on my friend’s phone so that if the iPad battery dies or gets overheated then we have a backup.

Heat and Wifi

These are the two biggest problems we’ve run into with tech.

Here’s how we manage it.

I have an ice pack that the iPad sits on in extreme 100 degree day heat. This keeps the iPad cool and helps it from overheating.

I keep an adjustable back baseball cap over the camera to keep it shaded. If we are in pouring rain, we’re usually not playing and I take the camera down.

Sometimes wifi sucks. So I always record the games to a memory card. Mevo allows you to record to a memory card and stream to a service at the same time. If the streaming isn’t working, I just record to the memory card.

I keep all the games in a Dropbox folder and share it with everyone on the team. We recorded 90 games last season and it took about 1TB of space to store all the games, So I store them for the season then offer anyone to put them on a flash drive and then erase them from my storage.

GameChanger

We score our games on GameChanger because our coach likes the stats the best. We have a few parents that help score.

However, the scoreboard needs to be done for the video and is separate from GameChanger, so we always score the game on Sidelinescore which is part of SidelineHD. It keeps the score and keeps track of the batters and lets us tag players for defensive plays. 

So at a game we have the Mevo and an iPad. We have the music using an iPhone bluetooth. We have another phone keeping the video score. We have another person scoring the game on GameChanger on a phone.

I have extra batteries for everything and extra cords.

We also have a ScoreStix that will keep track of the score for anyone to see.

Our assistant coach keeps score in a paper book too.

Extras-

We have a standing umbrella we keep so that if we need extra shade coverage for me and the tech then I can sit under it.

We use a microphone to keep the wind out of the sound with this holder.

We use lynkspyder to hold the video camera and microphone on the fence.

We use a battery holder to keep the battery covered and dry and on the fence.

I have a folding stepstool to put up the camera. It also doubles as a cover or stand for the iPad.