Badminton Bible worthwhile?

If you cancel the subscription during the trial period then they won't take any money. I don't think that they'll let you download their videos though. :| If they did then other people who haven't subscribed would also be able to watch them.

 

If they would let you download them, then you could just do that and then cancel the subscription, all in the trial period, which would result in free videos.

That being said, I agree that the articles are hard to understand for a beginner (so maybe the videos would help you visualize the written stuff). But, it does provide some valuable advice, and after reading it I knew some stuff before my coach told us about it.

 

Full disclosure: I run the Badminton Bible, so I'm obviously biased.

It's useful to get your feedback here. When you say the articles are hard to understand, what do you feel makes them difficult to understand?

• Are they too long?
• Are they too detailed?
• Is the writing style difficult to understand?

Is English your first language?

The videos are not available to download. I may reconsider this at some point, but I think it's likely to stay that way.

They should work fine with a slow broadband connection, but they will not work on a dial-up connection (a modem).

That's correct. The first payment is taken one month after you sign up. If you cancel before that, you will pay nothing.

Maybe I should write a "basics" series of articles, which are focused purely on giving simple advice to beginners. These simple articles could offer "learn more" links to the more detailed ones.

I've been considering this for a while. What do you think?

 

IMO this is a good idea.

 

The videos are a lot better than the articles for learning the correct shots. It is easier to watch someone and then imitate them than try and read an article and then carry something out. However the articles have a great use in explaining strategy.

I don't think there is anything bad about the articles if you know a bit about badminton before hand. It is just very difficult to explain something in a book which is better shown in video.

I would thoroughly recommend the videos. They are good for beginners up to far more advanced players. Or indeed anyone in between looking to gain the correct technique for shots.

 

I've just upgraded from a 512Mbps connection to something faster. On the slow connection it was possible to watch some of the badmintonbible videos (with a few pauses) but not all of them. Some seemed to work better than others. It was frustrating that they don't buffer in the same way as YouTube. But it's still worth signing up for your free month and seeing if some of the videos work for you.

 

Thanks Alex, that's useful feedback. I assume you mean 512 Kbps, as 512 Mbps is a complete monster of a connection.

On the newer (HD) videos, the lowest and default bitrate is 400 Kbps. I chose this because I thought it should work on almost any broadband connection. Maybe I should revise this. If anyone else has experience of watching the videos on a slow connection, please let me know.

I'd be particularly interested to hear the kind of slow-down you're getting. Is it buffering, where you get that "video-is-loading" spinner graphic? Or does the video play continuously, but look "choppy" -- i.e. the frame rate is low?

In the longer term, I may implement pseudo-streaming, which is the delivery method used by YouTube. This is not offered by many CDNs. I did look at Streamzilla, but their monthly fees are far too expensive for the current size of my business. I think Akamai may do this too, but they are also beyond my financial reach for now.

At this point, people usually ask, "Why not just put the videos on YouTube?" Answer: because (1) nobody would pay for them and (2) I believe it violates YouTube's terms & conditions to charge for videos using their API.

So: apologies for the shortcomings of the videos, and please do keep the feedback coming!

 

Oops, yes, I did mean kbps. Of course when you get a connection quoted as 512kbps, that's the maximum speed on a good day. In practice mine usually averaged around 425k when I bothered to test it. So I guess that's why the 400k videos would work sometimes but not always. If you wanted to make a lower bandwidth option, I imagine it would be possible to compress the audio stream some more while keeping the picture quality pretty much the same.

The kind of slow-down was the buffering that you describe, typically stopping once every five to ten seconds. Pseudo-streaming will be a great thing once you get it to work, but it's understandable if you prefer to spend more time actually making the videos!

BTW, as the collection of videos gets larger, you might want to have the "videos index" page sorted, either alphabetically or by topic.

 

Hi Gollum,
as a slight aside, I noticed a broken link the other day, I think it was to the 'pan handle' grip page - tried to notify you thorugh the site but not sure it went through.

 

I did tryout the subscrtion on a freetrial but was slightly disapointed to be honest, so cancelled it after my free trial.

I was expecting more on smash technique like elbow positiong and also as most people play doubles, the doubles tactic and strategy and best ways of returning double servers. On the positive side, I found short backhand service video, explained in great depth and was excellent.

 

I'm not sure when you cancelled, but I do now have a video about the elbow positioning that goes into some detail.

I'm glad you liked the backhand serve video. That's an early example of how I want to develop coaching topics in a structured way. Of course, that's just the basic low serve; there's plenty more to cover.

I can totally understand how you might feel disappointed with the range of topics covered at the moment. We're still very much getting this business off the ground, learning how best to present the content, and filling out the range of topics. I could potentially cover a large range of topics very superficially in a short time; but that has been done elsewhere, is of relatively little use to players, and just isn't my style.

Topics such as doubles tactics and service return are important and I do intend to cover them.

That would make sense. I think I could drop the 360p video bitrate without much loss of quality, and maybe the audio bitrate a little.

Yes, I think I should do that soon. I was planning on leaving it until I could implement some kind of tagging system (which works better for large amounts of non-hierarchical data), but I should probably just put in some simple organisation as a stop-gap measure.

Oh crap, I completely forgot about that. You did email me, and it got lost amid a flood of "development" emails. Thanks for the reminder!

 

Hi Gollum, I think you run a fantastic site over at Badminton Bible, I've been watching the videos pretty much everyday at least one or two - specifically footwork orientated ones, and I genuinely cannot believe how much of an improvement there has been in my game. Thanks for this!

Do you take requsts for the next types of videos to upload? I have a few topics I'd love to see you cover! Btw I also found the articles very useful, especially doubles tactics - I found myself realising alot of unthought of mistakes - like unnecessary use of clears where a smash is an option.

Keep up the great work!

 

Thanks for the encouragement -- it means a lot to me. Your comments caught me at a bit of a low, as it happens, and really cheered me up!

It's fantastic to hear that the videos have helped you make a big improvement in your game. This is what I love about coaching, but as the website-based coaching is at a distance, I don't get this kind of feedback as often. When I do get it, it helps reaffirm why I'm doing this.

Absolutely yes, I do take requests. I may or may not be able to act on them right away, of course.

That might sound strange, but for some topics -- especially the ones covered in the articles -- I've already done plenty of research and can script a video relatively quickly. On other topics, I feel happier if I can first do some research, rather than just relying on my existing understanding from coaching. Depending on how pressed I am for time, this can take too long.

What would you like to see?

Excellent!

I do mean to get back to writing more articles too. I've just had rather a lot going on of late...

 

Hey buddy,

I just wanted to reaffirm what I said on the board. Definitely do NOT stop your hard work, even if from a selfish point of view - I've just been trying to sort out my brush net kills!

In all honesty though, I've been a serial lurker on various badminton sites, and you have done such a good job that there are references to BB all over the net now.

Without being big-headed, I've gone from being recreational to having some of the best movement at my club (which is decidedly not so great I admit!) - or so I was told by the longest serving active member.

So you definitely are making a difference. I'm up in Glasgow, and Ray Stevens coaches up here, but if i'm being honest with you, at the National Badminton Academy it's all a bit intimidating - everyone is yonex-clad machines haha! Like I said, I'm just finally starting to take my game seriously after playing recreationally for a number of years, so your videos really help to iron out long standing problems, or at least to start me thinking about them.

I'd love to get a video that builds on the elements of movement - you mention hitches etc and I kind of understand, but sometimes I'm not sure when to use chasses, steps, hitches etc. That and a wee vid on the age old favourite - tumbling net shots hah, that would be great!

I wasn't sure I'd get the articles, and at first I didn't but once you've been through the videos, they make alot of sense, so you should keep that part of the site as well. Anyways, hope you get over your stuff and get back to your excellent BB work!!

 

Been a long time fan of BB, just signed up for a free trial. To be honest I like the articles better since they provide deeper insightful analysis of everything. But perhaps that's just me. Anyway, I'm gonna leave my subscription for a few months as appreciation for Gollum's work. Keep it up!

 

That's brilliant progress! I'm delighted to have helped, but don't forget: ultimately your improvement is down to you.

Coaches facilitate; players achieve. That's how I see it, anyway.

This is a big topic: when to use which movement, and why? I'd really like to explore this topic, as I feel it's under-developed in the literature. Although it's not possible (or desirable) to teach a completely rigid set of footwork patterns, I feel coaches (including myself!) are often more vague than we need to be.

Because of the lack of external coaching sources here, I'll need to do a lot of research first.

I may be able to do that for May or June. Thanks for the suggestion!

That's what I was aiming for: I want the videos and articles to complement each other. Video and text each have their strengths; I'm trying to learn how to make the best use of each medium.

The key words there are "trying" and "learn".

Thanks for the feedback!

As I get more familiar with using video, I may try carrying over some of the deeper analysis into video -- in cases where it seems beneficial. This idea has been in my head for a while, but as with everything, it's a matter of priorities.

In particular, I could imagine doing some really neat stuff with tactical analysis, videos, and computer graphics. The trick would be using graphics to aid comprehension, as opposed to using them to show off (BE know all about the latter...).

I'll need to get After Effects working again for that: unfortunately, my current HD video format breaks Adobe After Effects CS4, and I want to avoid transcoding if possible. CS5 may have fixed this, but it's a lot of money...

 

Yes, I'm using Premiere Pro CS4 to edit the video. It's a very slick program.

What Premiere can't really do is apply additional effects work on top of video footage. Okay, you can apply a few simple effects such as colour correction or slow-motion, but you can't really composite computer graphics with the video.

After Effects is good at that sort of thing. I was using it before to draw shuttle trajectories and target areas, and to show "green ticks" for correct techniques and "red crosses" for bad techniques. So I was editing the video in Premiere, and then exporting a clip to AE and applying additional effects. Because the two programs are linked, the AE clip then showed up in Premiere.

Unfortunately, the 1080 50p footage from my Panasonic HDC-SD700 uses a proprietary encoding with inter-frame compression. Apparently, After Effects requires full frame data, and this was causing the videos to be mangled whenever I used After Effects.

I've read reports that CS5 fixes this problem, but I cannot test it without buying the upgrade. It's really annoying, but I'll probably just have to shell out for CS5 hoping that it will work.

Or maybe I can find someone with a copy of CS5 to test it for me. Now there's a thought...