Clip film is where a coach turns a two-hour recording into the twenty or forty plays worth keeping. The recording never leaves your computer: the browser plays it straight off your disk, you mark the plays, and only the marked plays are cut out and uploaded to the game.
A Mac or Windows computer is quickest. Chrome or Edge are best because they can remember your film and your clips folder; Safari and Firefox work but ask you to pick the file each time.
On a phone, Clip film works too: tap Start play and End play as you watch, and use Start here and End here to retrim the selected play. Keep Sideline open with the screen on while it cuts and uploads, and use Wi-Fi for a whole game. If it stops partway, open the game again: your marks are saved and plays already uploaded stay done. A Sideline phone app that does this in the background is coming.
Open the game and the film
- Open Clip film in the top menu.
- Create the game with Create and clip, or pick an existing game.
- Select Choose game film and pick the recording. Any file that plays in a browser works: a phone recording, a GoPro file, or the export from an AI camera such as XbotGo, Veo, or Trace.
In Chrome and Edge, the next time you open this game a Reopen button brings the same file back with one click.
Mark the plays
The film plays at 2x by default; use the speed menu for 3x or 4x when scanning between plays, and 1x or 0.5x when you need to be precise.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| I | Start a play here |
| O | End the play here |
| Q | Just missed it: grab the last 8 seconds plus 3 after (both adjustable) |
| Space | Play or pause |
| ← → | Back or forward 5 seconds (with Shift, 1 second) |
| , . | One frame back or forward |
| Shift+I / Shift+O | Move the selected play's start or end to where you are now |
The bar under the video shows every marked play; click one to jump to it. In the list below, each play has − and + buttons to nudge its start and end by half a second, Preview to watch just that play, and ✕ to remove it.
Plays are numbered in the order you mark them, and the number becomes the clip's title (Play 001, Play 002...). Sort order in the list is by time in the game, not by number.
Your marks are saved as you go
Marks save to your account, not just to this computer, so you can start on a laptop and finish on a desktop, or an assistant coach can pick up where you left off. The text next to the play count tells you the state: Saved to your account, Saving..., or Saved on this computer only, will retry when you are offline. Marks made on another computer appear when you come back to the tab.
If the same play is edited on two computers, the most recent edit wins, play by play. A play deleted on one computer stays deleted.
Marks are times, so they only make sense against the recording they were made on. If you open a different file than the one the plays were marked on, Sideline warns you.
Cut & upload
When the plays are marked, select Cut & upload. Each play is cut out of the film in the browser and uploaded to the game; a few upload at once while the next ones cut. The status on each play goes from Waiting to Cutting to Uploading to Uploaded. Leave the tab open until it is done.
Trim a play after it has been uploaded and it shows Trimmed since upload. The next Cut & upload swaps the video under the same clip, so its tags, awards and play type stay.
Exact or Fast
The menu next to the button chooses how plays are cut.
- Exact frames (default) starts every clip on the very frame that was on screen when you pressed I. It re-encodes the play using your computer's hardware, about a second per play, at the film's own quality.
- Fast copies the video untouched, in a fraction of a second, but a play can start up to a second before your mark, on the nearest keyframe the camera wrote. Lossless, slightly loose.
HD and everyday copies
With Exact, every play goes up twice:
- an HD copy: the film itself, untouched, at the resolution and quality your camera recorded (4K stays 4K). This is what you see when you zoom in.
- an everyday copy at up to 1080p. A minute after upload, Sideline turns it into the 720p phone copy that plays by default (and a smaller Data saver copy).
That means more to upload after each game, roughly the size of the plays in the original film plus a little, so a 4K game takes longer to go up. It runs in the background while you keep cutting.
Plays uploaded before HD copies existed show ✓ Uploaded without · HD. Open the film and the button offers Upgrade N uploaded plays to HD: it re-cuts them and swaps the video under each clip, keeping every tag and award.
Exact needs a browser that can encode video; where it cannot, Fast is used and you are told. If an Exact cut fails on one play, that play is retried as Fast.
Keep the clips on your computer too
Tick Also save clips to a folder on this computer and every cut play is also written, in HD when the play has an HD copy, to a <film name>_clips folder inside a folder you choose. The first time, a folder picker opens at your film; pick the folder the film is in and the clips land next to it, which is what most coaches want. Sideline remembers the folder; later runs just ask permission to write. Change folder picks a different one.
With the box ticked, plays that are already uploaded but not yet on your computer are cut again for the local copy, and the button reads Save N plays to this computer. Each saved play shows On this computer.
In browsers without folder access, the box reads Also download each clip and each play arrives as a download instead.
Stitch a highlights reel
Stitch highlights joins every marked play, in order, into one file, <film name>_highlights.mp4, in the same folder. It is written to disk as it is built, so a whole game's reel never has to fit in memory. It uses the Exact or Fast setting: Exact is frame-accurate, Fast may open each play a little early. A full game stitches in well under a minute on Exact.
The reel is for you and the families: share it however you like. It is not uploaded to Sideline.
Tips
- Mark generously and trim later. A play that starts two seconds early is easy to nudge; a play you never marked is gone.
- Do the marking pass at 3x with Q for anything you did not see coming, then a second pass at 1x through the list with Preview, nudging starts and ends.
- Two coaches, two computers, same game: both mark, both see each other's plays, one presses Cut & upload.
- Keep the game recording. Marks are saved; if you ever want to re-cut or stitch again, open the same file.