Watching Videos of Yourself

[Tarv]

So, I filmed a set between myself and a friend of mine for the first time ever and it's kind of crazy how much stuff I was missing and how much watching a video helps with picking stuff up. That being said; there's nothing more painful than watching yourself screw up on video. "Ughhh, why did I even do that? Past me was so dumb. You idiot why did you try to nair when she was that close to you? Augh, why did you roll from the ledge so early? I can't believe I missed that easy edgeguard. Nooo, that was a for sure kill and you blew it."

I suppose you can chalk it up to learning from my mistakes but every mistake I see is like a little mini-stab. I imagine it's infinitely more painful for someone watching their GFs set at a big tournament and seeing their mistakes. Anyways, in the interest of making this an actual topic of discussion when you watch videos of yourself what do you look for? What do you try to take away from watching them?

 

[BTmoney]

I wish I had videos. I never got a chance to record serious matches.

I think it's very important though, really just as important as being technical (and by technical all I mean is that you should be able to do anything that will improve your immedate options/option coverage [i.e. a grounded opponent is on a platform above you, instead of full hopping and fast falling on the platform you should waveland on to it, shorten your side B with space animals and etc.])

 

[Arcadia157]

I usually look for stuff like what ended up getting me killed. Was it the small things like a tech skill flub or was it something bigger like I was being read and combo'd all over. I also look for where I miss edgeguards and what I could've done better to get it. But you're right about how painful it is to watch yourself lose all over again. Dem feels...

 

[standardtoaster]

You should watch your sets as much as you can. I mainly focus on why or what I could have done to follow up on something, failed edge guards, failed recoveries, and being hit a lot (if you are).

 

[Mahone]

So, I filmed a set between myself and a friend of mine for the first time ever and it's kind of crazy how much stuff I was missing and how much watching a video helps with picking stuff up. That being said; there's nothing more painful than watching yourself screw up on video. "Ughhh, why did I even do that? Past me was so dumb. You idiot why did you try to nair when she was that close to you? Augh, why did you roll from the ledge so early? I can't believe I missed that easy edgeguard. Nooo, that was a for sure kill and you blew it."

I suppose you can chalk it up to learning from my mistakes but every mistake I see is like a little mini-stab. I imagine it's infinitely more painful for someone watching their GFs set at a big tournament and seeing their mistakes. Anyways, in the interest of making this an actual topic of discussion when you watch videos of yourself what do you look for? What do you try to take away from watching them?

It's really good you're taking the time to review your vids. I always tell people to critique their matches because i think its the best/fastest way to get better, but even though people won't admit it, most people don't really critique their vids, thinking "oh, i was obviously playing bad here, look at X and Y tech skill error i made that i wouldn't do normally. I'll just play better next time and critique that vid".... trust me, that vid will never come, so don't think like that

My advice is to always critique your videos even if you think you were playing bad

Obviously you want to look for tech skill mistakes or times where you should have chosen a technically more demanding option but didn't and then work really hard on those when ur by yourself, but im sure you knew that.

I find that a super helpful tool is to watch the matches in 1/4 speed. Even if its annoying to find out how to play back the video in that way, it helps more than you'd ever imagine


i know on youtube you can just google "html 5 youtube", join the trial and then the vids will have time options when you click the gear thingy, but if the matches aren't on youtube just find the settings in your media player

i guess one tip would be to look at like a combo or edgeguard that worked and think about if that was the simplest and most guaranteed way to do it... it can be hard to improve on this kind of stuff since its tempting to think results-based and say "well i killed him, so let's move on to when i got hit"... its important to look at stuff you did correctly and make sure you optimize it

if you really feel like it, you can watch the match completely from your opponents point of view and you will probably realize what they are going for and a lot of general ideas of the mu too... for example, if im watching jiggs vs fox and i decide to watch from my opponents pov (fox) i might notice that he tries to catch me out of the air a lot with full hop nair and that he does it when im X space away, or when i jumped Y times... and then i'll realize that this is a common idea of the mu and i can even see this in high level fox-jiggs matches and if i want i can then decide to watch hbox or someone and see how they beat it if i can't think of how to do it myself

 

[Tarv]

Wow! This is fantastic advice Mahone, especially the last bit. I'd never really considered doing that. Thanks man, I appreciate it.

Thanks to the rest of you too.

 

[pokemongeof]

I usually look for missed techs or l-cancels, and think what can i do next time to avoid a mistake.

Also i think, "wow. I was such a scrub back in the day"

 

[Jayk]

Yeah, I was able to record myself like, for 4 games back in October and they helped me so much and I can't record myself again and those videos are useless now cause I'm way beyond them and

 

[NightShadow6]

You're already on the way to a better player. Watching yourself you can think of new options that you wouldn't during the heat of battle.

 

[ManoxMano]

There's billions of ways to watch a video, and you gotta decide what you feel is your weakest area when it comes to playing smash.
You can watch a vid for missed skills, did I airdodge instead of wavelanding, things like that
Did you play to the MU? Was your lack of knowledge in the area lead to your downfall?
How well did you adapt to your opponent? How much were you considering your opponents actions during the fight?
How predictable are you? Do you approach the same way every time, or did you try something new?

I can go on and on and on. But if youre watching a vid, you gotta look for something. Because if youre not then you are actually wasting your time, making useless comments that dont get you anywhere. You gotta decide if it is a serious problem or if it's nothing big, like you cant make a big deal out of missing one waveland in a game, it happens to everyone, even the best of players. It may look like the reason you lost that stock but think about the real reason you lost the game, because more likely than not there is an overarching problem that surrounds the entirety, and if you find that problem that will get you far, much more far than remarks that have no serious connection to each other

You have to remember what you were thinking about during the actual game. If your mind was garbage than that can affect your game way more, and you gotta think about the right things, like thinking about the next moves or your opponent, not focusing on how to missle cancel or something. I mean if you do that you can unlock a whole new facet - improving your game mentality will get you far

 

[Tarv]

i know on youtube you can just google "html 5 youtube", join the trial and then the vids will have time options when you click the gear thingy, but if the matches aren't on youtube just find the settings in your media player

I'm having trouble getting this to work. I joined the trial but the gear still only displays quality settings. Any help in this would be immensely appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Mahone]

can you send me the link to your match

not all videos have the option, although im not sure what the exact reason for this is

 

[Tarv]

My own match isn't on Youtube but I was trying to get a closer look at this match: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPmbgBp9dQ&t=7m38s

Thanks

 

[Mahone]

ya, that didn't work for me either, sorry i don't know why all vids don't work

ur gonna have to google for some answers, id be interested to know if u find out

 

[Tarv]

Hrmm... So far google has not been too helpful in the matter. Only answer that I've been able to find is that it's in beta... Which isn't really an answer. However, I have noticed that pretty much all of the older melee videos have variable playback speed capabilities while a large majority of the newer ones do not. For example most of the matches from like Genesis 2 or early have the playback speed function but nothing from Apex 2013, NCR or KoC2 does. If I had to take a wild guess the html5 player probably isn't compatible with whatever video conversion software people use to take videos from twitch to youtube. Just a guess though, I'm not really sure at all. Because it seems like every match that came from a twitch.tv stream doesn't have the variable playback speed capability. Again though, mostly just uneducated speculation here.

 

[Bones0]

Use this YouTube downloading software, and from there you can just slow it down in VLC or whatever media player you're using. With VLC, you can use + and - to quickly increase or decrease the playback speed, set points A and B to loop a small segment repeatedly, and you can even open View -> Advanced Controls and play the video frame by frame.

 

[Tarv]

This is fantastic! The tools in VLC are exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. Thank you Bones

 

[Tee ay eye]

Hrmm... So far google has not been too helpful in the matter. Only answer that I've been able to find is that it's in beta... Which isn't really an answer. However, I have noticed that pretty much all of the older melee videos have variable playback speed capabilities while a large majority of the newer ones do not. For example most of the matches from like Genesis 2 or early have the playback speed function but nothing from Apex 2013, NCR or KoC2 does. If I had to take a wild guess the html5 player probably isn't compatible with whatever video conversion software people use to take videos from twitch to youtube. Just a guess though, I'm not really sure at all. Because it seems like every match that came from a twitch.tv stream doesn't have the variable playback speed capability. Again though, mostly just uneducated speculation here.

you're right

at first i thought the html5 plugin was a godsend (and it was, when it worked), but i've seen it work on a grand total of ZERO videos from the major tourney video uploaders (VGBC, CT, Jaxel, IPW, etc), so i caved and decided to go back to downloading + VLC