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NBA Highlights – Search for video of NBA plays

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Re: NBA Highlights – Search for video of NBA plays

#31

Post by forevercrashing »

mistermann wrote: post #28
slyfocks wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just from a cursory glance at the results, it seems like they're simply providing a naive search on the play-by-play descriptions that the NBA provides (e.g. http://data.nba.net/data/10s/prod/v1/20161212/0021600366_pbp... ). No computer vision behind-the-scenes magic, unfortunately.

> No computer vision behind-the-scenes magic, unfortunately. Theoretically, it shouldn't be terribly technically difficult to attach a few sensors to each player to get a relatively hi-res 3D representation of each player's position throughout the game, should it? Annotating the action accurately, not so easy, or might there be some trick?

This sort of happens already in NBA games. There's a system called SportVU that tracks XY positioning of players and XYZ positioning of the ball in real-time. Here's a decent article that describes it in more detail: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670059/moneyball-20-how-missile... . Unfortunately, the data is proprietary.

Re: NBA Highlights – Search for video of NBA plays

#32

Post by kareemm »

mistermann wrote: post #27
Matetricks wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't build this, it's a site that's been trending on my news feed. Two people in my network built it over a weekend.

I would tell those 2 guys to build this out including parts that should be there but they need the data, etc, targeting it as a value-add service that Disney can sell to ESPN subscribers. Done properly with multiple sports over multiple years and consistent annotations, I would think sports fans would go nuts over this, wouldn't they? (Any sports fans here?) Like, think of the ability to jump immediately to the video…

I used to work at ESPN.com. My job application was a proof of concept of a similar idea, but because it was 2002 and wasn't possible to build technically it was designed to show that I could code and think creatively about consuming sports online.

When I took the job, the realities of licensing footage hot hard: the leagues were not keen on letting a third party like ESPN have historical, searchable footage like this available on demand. The leagues were still figuring not how to make money from digital and rights to their games are the biggest asset they have.

Things have changed since then but the tl; dr is that from 2002-2005 the reason this wasn't built by ESPN was not technical or due to a lack of imagination, but a business reason - it was prohibitively expensive / impossible to get licensing rights from the leagues.

Re: NBA Highlights – Search for video of NBA plays

#34

Post by clairity »

forevercrashing wrote: post #31
mistermann wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No computer vision behind-the-scenes magic, unfortunately. Theoretically, it shouldn't be terribly technically difficult to attach a few sensors to each player to get a relatively hi-res 3D representation of each player's position throughout the game, should it? Annotating the action accurately, not so easy, or might there be some trick?

This sort of happens already in NBA games. There's a system called SportVU that tracks XY positioning of players and XYZ positioning of the ball in real-time. Here's a decent article that describes it in more detail: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670059/moneyball-20-how-missile... . Unfortunately, the data is proprietary.

my impression, from having talked with people who analyze the data from sportVU, is that the raw data is fairly useless and most of the useful data crunching happens overnight after each game.

with that said, bluetooth beacons, along with 3 bluetooth receivers for triangulation, could be used for inexpensive player tracking, but the data would be noisy and not as accurate (probably ~1 ft resolution or so). i've actually been wanting to put such a system together to determine how good it might be.

Re: NBA Highlights – Search for video of NBA plays

#35

Post by maruhan2 »

kareemm wrote: post #32
mistermann wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would tell those 2 guys to build this out including parts that should be there but they need the data, etc, targeting it as a value-add service that Disney can sell to ESPN subscribers. Done properly with multiple sports over multiple years and consistent annotations, I would think sports fans would go nuts over this, wouldn't they? (Any sports fans here?) Like, think of the ability to jump immediately to the video…

I used to work at ESPN.com. My job application was a proof of concept of a similar idea, but because it was 2002 and wasn't possible to build technically it was designed to show that I could code and think creatively about consuming sports online. When I took the job, the realities of licensing footage hot hard: the leagues were not keen on letting a third party like ESPN have historical, searchable footage like this…

I can see it working. Especially if it's community driven. Like use AI/machine learning to create the foundation for recognizing what event corresponds to which scene, and then have viewers be tagging or writing comments while the video is rolling

Re: NBA Highlights – Search for video of NBA plays

#36

Post by alwayseasy »

orthoganol wrote: post #33

"All NBA Plays"? For example, this well circulated failed dunk attempt by Curry from earlier this season is not there: https://streamable.com/mntc

Found it. The queries have to match the naming of the video so I searched "Miss Curry Lakers": https://3ball.io/miss-curry-lakers/0021600238_233

Re: NBA Highlights – Search for video of NBA plays

#37

Post by rockostrich »

orthoganol wrote: post #33

"All NBA Plays"? For example, this well circulated failed dunk attempt by Curry from earlier this season is not there: https://streamable.com/mntc

It seems like it only included plays that create stats for players (with the occasional "missed" play). For example, for the Knicks-Kings game Brandon Jennings's half court and-one that was disallowed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmzQS5XxkOs) doesn't show up either.

Re: NBA Highlights – Search for video of NBA plays

#38

Post by iamatworknow »

rlau26 wrote: post #4

Where is all the footage from? Is this allowed by the NBA? The quality of the footage is quite good. This seems to be just searching the clip title. For example, if you search 'curry 3' ('curry three' returns nothing), it'll return things like "Curry 2' Finger Roll Layup (6 PTS) (Iguodala 3 AST)" or "Curry REBOUND (Off:0 Def:3)". If it could match the search query with play-by-play data, now THAT'd be cool.

>Is this allowed by the NBA?

The NBA may be the only US pro sports league that actually doesn't mind having highlights compiled and shared online. In fact, the current commissioner has said, "We’re incredibly protective of our live game rights, but for the most part highlights are marketing."[0]

[0]http://www.si.com/nba/2015/03/01/mit-sloan-sports-analytics-... (number 30)

Re: NBA Highlights – Search for video of NBA plays

#39

Post by pmontra »

If you search for a player's name and the word pass you get all the videos with that player and that word in the title. That includes the ones where the pass was made by somebody else and the ones marked as bad pass, which are probably not what I'm interested in.

A suggestion: limit the search to the substring of the title between commas. It seems to always match a player with his play.

Re: NBA Highlights – Search for video of NBA plays

#40

Post by rockostrich »

lintroller wrote: post #2

This is a fascinating tool but I can't imagine this will exist much longer after the NBA's lawyers find it.

I'm not sure they're doing anything wrong. They're just using data from the NBA's public sitemap. The videos are served by the NBA themselves.
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