Some movements are too fast and too busy to judge in real time. A minute of footwork holds dozens of steps, lunges, and recoveries, and by the end you remember an impression, not a count. Tagging fixes that. You step through the video and drop a label, like "lunge" or "short recovery", on the exact frame where each one happens. Afterwards you can jump straight from one to the next, count them, and compare the first half of the drill with the second.
Why tag a video at all
Watching a clip tells you how a rep looked. Tagging a clip tells you how a whole session went. It earns its time when:
- The movement is complex. Fencing footwork, a gymnastics routine, a volleyball rally, a combination in boxing. Too many parts happen too quickly to hold in your head, so you mark them one at a time on the frame where they happen.
- You want a number, not a feeling. "Your lunges got shorter when you got tired" is an opinion. "8 of your first 20 lunges were short, and 14 of your last 20" is a fact the athlete cannot argue with.
- You need to find moments again. In a long recording, the three reps worth showing are buried somewhere. Tag them once and you never scrub for them again.
- You review the same drill over weeks. The same labels on every session make sessions comparable, in the app and in a spreadsheet.
Where Tags came from: fencing footwork
We built Tags while analyzing fencing footwork drills with a fencing coach. Footwork is a hard case for video review: the steps are small, the lunges are fast, and the recovery after each lunge matters as much as the lunge itself. Watching at full speed, nobody could say how many lunges were in a drill, let alone which ones fell short. Stepping through frame by frame and labeling each action, "step", "lunge", "recovery", "jump", turned a blur into a list we could count and check. That is why the first two tags in a fresh install are step and jump. Rename them to whatever your sport needs.
How to tag a video in Coach Video Analysis
- Load the video and tap Tags in the toolbar. On a Mac, press T.
- Set up your labels. Tap Add to create a tag and Edit to rename, reorder, or delete tags. Your tag list stays the same from video to video, so you set it up once per sport or drill. Renaming a tag does not change tags you already placed.
- Find the moment. Scrub, or step frame by frame, to the frame where the action happens: the front foot landing, the hand leaving the bar, the racket meeting the ball.
- Tap the tag. It lands on that frame. A short confirmation with the tag's name appears over the video, so you can keep your eyes on the athlete instead of the buttons.
- Keep going down the timeline. Each tag shows as a marker on the timeline, as a label on the video when you are on its frame, and as a row in the tags list with its time.
To review, tap any row in the list to jump to that frame, or use Prev tag and Next tag to hop through them in order. Swipe a row to delete a tag you placed by mistake. Tags save automatically with the video. Open the same video later and they are back on the timeline, with nothing to export first.
When two videos are loaded for side-by-side comparison, tags go on the first video.
Keyboard shortcuts for fast tagging
With a keyboard, tagging becomes a one-hand job: one hand steps through frames, the other presses number keys. This works on a Mac and on an iPad with a keyboard attached.
- 1 to 9: place that tag at the playhead. The number is the tag's position in your list, and it stays put as you use it, so the same key always means the same tag. Drag a tag up in Edit to give it a key.
- ↑ / ↓: previous and next tag.
- ← / →: step one frame. ⌘ plus an arrow skips 5 seconds.
- E: edit the tag list. Esc: leave Tags.
- ⌘ / on a Mac shows every shortcut on screen.
Count and keep your tags
Tap Export in the tags list and choose:
- Save as CSV for a spreadsheet. One row per tag with its time, frame, and label, in time order, so a pivot table or a simple count per label gives you the totals for the session. The file also names the video it came from.
- Embed in video file to save a copy of the video that carries its tags inside it. Open that copy in Coach Video Analysis on another iPhone, iPad, or Mac and the tags are already on the timeline.
You can also drag a tags CSV onto the app to load it onto the matching video. If the CSV was made from a different cut of the video, the app warns you instead of placing tags on the wrong frames.
Five tips for tags that stay useful
- Keep the list short. Nine tags or fewer means every tag has a number key. If you need more, you are probably describing technique, which is a job for drawing and angles.
- Tag the same instant every time. Decide whether "lunge" means the moment the front foot lands or the moment the back leg finishes pushing, and stick to it. Consistent frames make times between tags meaningful.
- Give mistakes their own tag. "Lunge" and "short lunge" as two tags let you count the error rate directly, instead of re-watching every lunge later.
- Use the same labels across sessions. Then this week's CSV and last month's line up in one spreadsheet.
- Follow tags with a comparison. Once tags have found the best and the worst rep, clip them and put them side by side. The count tells the athlete what happened, and the comparison shows them why.
Tag video in Coach Video Analysis
Your own tag list, tags placed on the exact frame, markers on the timeline, jump to previous and next, number-key shortcuts, CSV export for counting, and tags embedded in the video file. Plus side-by-side comparison, slow motion to 1/16 speed, and drawing and angle tools. iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Try it before you pay, then a subscription unlocks everything.
