Ing. Justýna Frommová, a student of FIT CTU, in her diploma thesis Automated cutting of beach volleyball match videos focused on the automation of data and video processing for match tactics preparation of elite teams in beach volleyball. She combined her studies with her passion for the sport she herself plays competitively. In cooperation with the company Beach Data, she created a system that automatically analyzes match videos.
"I was interested in how the dates for the top teams at the World Cups are prepared and how the preparation for the matches is done. I approached Václav Berčík from Beach Data with the idea of automatizing these processes and my proposal was met with enthusiasm. We agreed to combine the research with my diploma thesis," says Justýna Frommová. Beach Data specialise in data collection and analysis for tactical team preparations.
So far, the data is collected and the videos are manually cut by scouts, mostly current and former volleyball players. However, this process is time and money consuming. In her work, Justýna Frommová has developed a system that automatically recognizes game exchanges and removes inactive parts of the footage, such as pauses between exchanges or team time-outs. The result is significantly faster match analysis and data preparation. This process saves up to 50% of the scouts' routine work and allows them to focus on more detailed analysis using their volleyball experience.
To automate video cutting, Justýna Frommová used a neural convolutional network (EfficientNet) with a classification head that can recognize the beginnings and ends of exchanges based on frame analysis. Based on this data, she created a program that defines time tracks and automatically cuts the video in production according to them.
The results of the diploma thesis are ready to be implemented in the Beach Data application. Even after the completion of her diploma thesis, Justýna Frommová continues to collaborate with Beach Data on a research project TAČR that solves the full automation of video information collection for professional beach volleyball. The data preparation including videos is already available as an annual license and among the clients are also world champions Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner, American teams or the Canadian Beach Volleyball Association.
Justýna Frommová and her teammate Jaroslava Marcelová took the fourth place at the Czech Beach Volleyball Championship 2024. "Tactics play a key role in beach volleyball and it is because of data and videos that we can improve the preparation of teams for matches, as we also tried it at this year's championship," Justýna Frommová concludes.
The plan for the future is to expand the system to help teams not only with creating strategies, but also with analyzing game patterns and individual player performance to support their improvement in specific game activities.
