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NCAA FB Code Replacements?

Samuel Lewis, Photographer

	Miami \| FL \| USA \| Posted: 10:13 PM on 08.26.10
	->> I tried Mike Stone's code replacement for NCAA FB and it doesn't seem to be working. Is anyone aware of any other code replacement systems for college football?

Jason Watson, Photographer

	Palo Alto \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 10:38 PM on 08.26.10
	->> I'm working on it... stay tuned.

Dennis Wierzbicki, Photographer

	Plainfield \| IL \| USA \| Posted: 9:57 AM on 08.28.10
	->> Jason - just in case nobody's told you recently, THANKS for this!

Steven Bisig, Photographer

	Seattle \| WA \| USA \| Posted: 12:02 PM on 08.28.10
	->> I was searching for the same thing, Thanks Jason!

Louis Lopez, Photographer

	Fontana \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 12:15 PM on 08.28.10
	->> Both Jason and Mike have paypal donation buttons on their sites. Show your appreciation and send them a few dollars.

Dennis Wierzbicki, Photographer

	Plainfield \| IL \| USA \| Posted: 2:39 PM on 08.28.10
	->> Louis, you are correct, and "done", but it's still nice to publicly thank Jason (and Mike) for this incredibly useful tool

Louis Lopez, Photographer

	Fontana \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 8:01 PM on 08.28.10
	->> Yes, of course. I mention the donation because I would like to have them continue their efforts in this great service.

Jason Watson, Photographer

Palo Alto | CA | USA | Posted: 12:46 PM on 08.29.10

->> I've got a *BASIC* version of NCAA Football rosters up and running:

http://www.jasonowatson.com/code/ncaaf

It is important to note the following:

* Rosters are now available for 244 FBS - Division IA and FCS Division IAA teams.

* Rosters are provided as they appear on ESPN.com -- as of now, there are some teams who have not yet assigned numbers to incoming freshmen (see http://espn.go.com/college-football/team/roster/_/id/43/yale-bulldogs for an example). These entries will have have "0" for the number. My scripts grab the roster from ESPN.com in real time -- thus as ESPN makes updates, the tool automatically updates. ***Make sure to check and edit your final files as appropriate.***

* There is currently no duplicate number checking - I am working on a solution to this and should have it ready this week. In addition to providing the "o" and "d" tags as an option, that Mike Stone developed, I'm incorporating some new really good ideas/feedback from folks to help solve the problem of duplicate numbers.

* There are no head coaches (yet)

* There are no stadium names (yet)

* There are no refs (not sure if I can pull this off for NCAA Football)

* New feature: including mascot names for each team (please let me know if there are any errors with any of these). So, in the past, Mike Stone had "Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck (12)"... that is now "Stanford Cardinal quarterback Andrew Luck (12)" by default. I'm working on a flag to allow you to go back to the old version should you choose (in progress).

Otherwise, the same functionality as the NFL.

@Louis - thanks for the donation plug -- it's much appreciated :-)

Next sports in the queue to add are NHL and NBA... should be ready in the coming weeks.

As always, please let me know via jason@jasonowatson.com if you have any suggestions, ideas, bugs, typos, etc.

Cheers,

Jason

Steven Bisig, Photographer

	Seattle \| WA \| USA \| Posted: 9:37 PM on 08.29.10
	->> Thanks for doing this Jason. I will donate on payday. Cheers!

Bryan Hulse, Photographer

	Nashville \| Tn \| USA \| Posted: 10:37 AM on 09.02.10
	->> Jason! This is SO AWESOME! I am going to donate soon too. I've used your stuff for 2 games now and will do 2 more by the end of the weekend. Thanks SO MUCH for doing this!

Brad Barr, Photographer

	Port St. Lucie \| FL \| USA \| Posted: 3:11 PM on 09.02.10
	->> This is super useful!! I just did my own for next weeks game, and it took me an hour per team, even after cut n pasting the roster from the website. After all that mucking about, this still looks better (end result)! I will def donate to your site!! Thanks Jason!

Brad Barr, Photographer

	Port St. Lucie \| FL \| USA \| Posted: 3:14 PM on 09.02.10
	->> Just a quick question. How do you guys handle teams with duplicate jersey numbers? ie NC State has about a dozen, and many of those are actually triplicate. Anyway to sort that out when id'ing the players?

Jason Watson, Photographer

	Palo Alto \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 3:25 PM on 09.02.10
	->> I'm working on a solution for the duplicate players. Hope to have ready tomorrow.

Samuel Lewis, Photographer

	Miami \| FL \| USA \| Posted: 10:49 AM on 09.03.10
	->> Mike Stone's solution was to append an "o" or "d" for duplicate numbers (which presumably was based upon the logic of whether the player's position was offensive or defensive in nature). Until Jason has the solution working, it should be easy enough to edit the code replacement file for the dozen or so duplicates.

Brad Barr, Photographer

	Port St. Lucie \| FL \| USA \| Posted: 2:22 PM on 09.03.10
	->> I thought of that....but nc state has 3 #55's all of which are on defense obviously...none are red shirt freshmen....kind of stuck. Plus tbh, I wouldnt know which one was the one in the picture either. I guess if they announce who "made the tackle" for example, I can audio note it for later.

Colin Hackley, Photographer

Tallahassee | FL | USA | Posted: 3:13 PM on 09.03.10

->> I use the position abbreviation (qb, db, etc.) given on the flip card to differentiate multiple numbers. Example: f7qb

@Brad Barr for triple numbers sometimes hunting down or e-mailing the SID may be in order if the position abbreviation doesn't work. Duplicates are often trimmed for the travel team but not reflected in the early rosters submitted to the ESPN website.

When in doubt leave that number out of the code. After you say "Huh?" when the code doesn't yield a player's name it will force you to refer to the roster, ask another photog familiar with the team, or pick another frame! (grin)

Patrick Fallon, Student/Intern, Photographer

	Columbia \| MO \| USA \| Posted: 3:30 AM on 09.04.10
	->> Thanks Jason!

Jason Watson, Photographer

Palo Alto | CA | USA | Posted: 5:23 AM on 09.04.10

Dennis Wierzbicki, Photographer

	Plainfield \| IL \| USA \| Posted: 8:56 AM on 09.04.10
	->> Wow, Jason, great job. I personally prefer to be notified when a duplicate exists, and will change the caption on the fly (options: yes/no/yes), but I'll see how well this works. This will come in very handy later today! Thanks again!

Steve King, Photographer, Student/Intern

	Ann Arbor \| MI \| USA \| Posted: 7:50 PM on 09.05.10
	->> Jason, I like the DUPLICATE option, since that came into play yesterday and made it easier to deal with after the fact instead of worrying about it as I shoot. I was used to using the TPteam12 naming convention instead of team12, but I got over that 3 captions into the process. Thanks again for all the work you put in.

Gil Batzri, Photographer, Assistant

	Oakland \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 1:24 AM on 09.06.10
	->> Jason this is awesome stuff good job!

Dennis Wierzbicki, Photographer

	Plainfield \| IL \| USA \| Posted: 10:35 AM on 09.08.10
	->> FWIW, I used the "DUPLICATE*" method this past weekend and it worked very well. I prefer it to Mike's o/d way of handling duplicate numbers (what I used last year). Nice work, Jason. One word of caution, though, you still need to pay close attention to your captions, not only to delete the improper player/number, but also be sure to delete the word "DUPLICATE" and all the *'s :)

AJ Mast, Photographer, Photo Editor

	Indianapolis \| IN \| USA \| Posted: 11:18 AM on 09.08.10
	->> A little tip I use (when I remember) Before Xmitting a big batch, run a Find for "DUPLICATE***" to check you got them all.

Jesse Beals, Photographer

	Tracyton \| WA \| USA \| Posted: 1:39 PM on 09.08.10
	->> Can somebody explain how this works to me? I have kinda herd bits and pieces on how this is done but I am still trying to figure it all out. I am assuming you can load the rosters into photomechanic before a game to help speed your captioning time I just never done this before.

Jason Watson, Photographer

Palo Alto | CA | USA | Posted: 2:08 PM on 09.08.10

->> Jesse,

You've got the general idea. If you create a roster for a game from my site (or on your own via Excel, etc.) you basically are creating a text file that is loaded into Photo Mechanic. The structure of the text file is:

CODE{tab}Whatever you want the code to expand out to.

On a Mac (I don't have PM on a PC to explain), go to:

Edit -> Settings -> Set Code Replacements

You'll see a menu to add / edit / remove files. This is where you load the text file containing the codes that you would like to replace.

At the bottom of the page you will see a box for "Delimiter character:" I've set this to "" (without quotes). So, whenever I type:

CODE I get the text string that's associated with that code.

Step-by-step, using a real world example, go to NCAA FB code replacement page at http://www.jasonowatson.com/code/ncaaf

For the home team prefix enter "u" (without quotes) and select USC Trojans. For the visiting team prefix enter "v" (without quotes) and select the Virginia Cavaliers. Go ahead and leave all the other options on their default settings (you can play around and customize later) and click the "Create Roster" button.

This will generate a page with a link that says "[Download Roster File]". Click this link and you will download at text file containing all the codes for those two teams.

Inspect your roster file to make sure everything is accurate.

Go into Photo Mechanic, to the code replacement settings menu described above and add the text file you just created.

Then, open an image. In the caption field (or any other field you wish), type v2 and you should see that the code expands out to:

Virginia Cavaliers wide receiver Jared Green (2)

type v2#2 and you should get

wide receiver Jared Green (2)

v2#3 should give you

Jared Green

I recommend generating a roster for a game you've recently covered and then trying it out on your stock. I think you'll find it saves a ton of time -- you just have to be careful and make sure you read and re-read your captions for accuracy as the rosters are only as good as the data that's presented by ESPN.com (and not always 100% accurate).

Playing with the settings and options on the code generation page will give you codes that behave differently. To generate things in the Mike Stone style of code replacements, turn off short code / long name and turn off mascots (for NCAA FB).

Feel free to contact me at jason@jasonowatson.com if you have any further questions.

Regards,

Jason

Jason Watson, Photographer

	Palo Alto \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 2:18 PM on 09.08.10
	->> Unfortunately, all of my backslashes were taken out of my last post... I've set my deliminator character to the backslash character. Thus all of the code examples above should be BACKSLASHcodeBACKSLASH. Where BACKSLASH is the backslash character and code is the code example. Sorry about that.

Thomas Boyd, Photographer

Portland | OR | USA | Posted: 2:30 PM on 09.08.10

->> I know tons of shooters swear by code replacement, but I have to say, with the inaccuracies, and hassle involved setting it up, it hardly seems worth it.

Having said that, I'm still thinking of trying it even though I use Aperture.

I heard from Seattle shooter Stephen Brashear that code replacement will still work even though the jersey number is entered in another program like Aperture or Lightroom.

Since I use Photo Mechanic to send via it's powerful built-in ftp client and check my captions anyway after exporting from Aperture, I could simply enter the jersey number in Aperture and supposedly PM would replace that code with the name. That's sounds pretty cool.

Even so, I'm still not convinced it would save that much time. I'll test it and find out.

I appreciate everyone's post here. This is why ss.com is such a valuable resource.

Kevin Novak, Photographer, Assistant

	Bel Air (Baltimore) \| MD \| USA \| Posted: 2:35 PM on 09.08.10
	->> Thomas, Back when I used to shoot Navy football, code replacements were a godsend. Envision typing "tpn10" versus "Navy quarterback Kaipo-Noa Kaihauku-Enhada" about a dozen or more times. Kevin

Jerry Lai, Photo Editor, Photographer

Chicago | IL | USA | Posted: 3:15 PM on 09.08.10

->> Jason,

Thanks for putting this together. While the photographer in me loves this tool, the photo editor in me absolutely hates it. I kind of wish people would go back to typing things in long hand, although that opens up the door for spelling mistakes.

I'm not saying everybody is like this, but in general I have noticed that it has made photographers very complacent. But if you use code replacement, you must read EVERY caption for accuracy instead of just blindly punching in numbers and assuming it is correct.

Jason's code replacement tool should help that, but it's not fool proof. I can't tell you how many captions I still read this weekend where a wide receiver was sacking a quarterback, or a tight end was tackling a running back. While I guess in theory those situations could happen in a game (like on special teams), it's not very likely.

I also had a case on Saturday where somebody sent in the caption and the word ***DUPLICATE*** was still in the caption. I can't begin to tell you how bonkers that made me when I saw that.

On a semi-related note, baseball code replacement can be kind of wonky too. Players don't play the same position everyday. For example, I think code replacement lists Minnesota Twins player Michael Cuddyer as a right fielder, but he's been playing first base for quite some time while Justin Morneau is out with injury.

The point is, make your editors happy. READ READ READ and RE-READ your captions before sending in. These silly caption/code replacement related errors not only reflect poorly on the organization you work for, but yourself personally.

David Campbell, Photographer

	Shorter \| Al \| USA \| Posted: 3:45 PM on 09.08.10
	->> I love code replacements. I have several I have written for people I have to shoot at my job. Jason these are great, thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mark Almond, Photographer

Birmingham | AL | USA | Posted: 5:05 PM on 09.08.10

->> Thomas,
Another advantage to code replacement is that misspelled names in captions are almost a nonexistent for me now. My eyes are getting old and reading 4-point type on a flip card in low light is tough. I make my own code replacement files by cutting and pasting from the teams' websites before the season. I double check them against the flip card before the game. It is a lot of work but it pays off when you have to send twenty or so pictures with error-free captions at halftime.

Brad Barr, Photographer

Port St. Lucie | FL | USA | Posted: 5:20 PM on 09.08.10

->> "and hassle involved setting it up, it hardly seems worth it."

What hassle? it takes about 2 minutes to download the file from Jasons website...another 35 seconds to tell PM where the file is...then you just type in the player numbers, and it spits out all the pertinent data about them.

Try it. Its not even close in speed to typing all that yourself, and the spelling is much more likely to be correct than when you are flying thru a bunch of names you dont know.

Put it this way...it is worth doing even if you had to type out the list yourself before the game. Jason has taken all that work out of the equation.

Trying to get your stuff captioned is the one bugaboo about shooting sports, and this just cut the time more than half.

Thanks Jason!

David Manning, Photographer

	Athens \| GA \| \| Posted: 6:35 PM on 09.08.10
	->> Thanks Jason. Used it today while editing pictures for file photos.

Jason Clark, Photographer

	Northport \| Al \| USA \| Posted: 11:29 PM on 09.08.10
	->> I have been doing my own code replacements since Stone's site was not working. I also did them for my Nascar races. So I know how aggrevating it is to make them and i appreciate your time and efforts. I will be supporting you myself. I already have mine loaded for this weekend, but will be stopping by soon. Kudos!!

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