Documentation

Welcome to the Backstop TV documentation. Below you will find comprehensive guides on setting up your games, utilizing advanced statistics, executing real-time broadcasts, and mastering scorekeeping with our modern iOS application.

How-To Guides

1. Setting Up a New Game

Creating a new session and connecting rosters to the game logic.

  1. Navigate to the "Games" menu in the iOS app and tap "New Game".
  2. Name your game (e.g., "Team A vs Team B") and optionally assign a global "Time Limit".
  3. Select the Home and Away teams from your saved database. The system automatically cues their most recent active rosters.
  4. Tap "Start Event" to initialize the scoring engine and open the broadcast view.

2. Importing a Lineup (CSV/TSV)

Quickly setting up teams using pre-existing spreadsheets.

  1. Navigate to the "Teams" menu and select or create a new team.
  2. Tap the "Paste CSV / TSV" button to import tabular data directly. Format the columns for Jersey, First Name, Last Name, Bat Hand, Pitch Hand, and Position.
  3. The app intelligently detects duplicates. If a match is found, you can manually merge them securely onto the correct team database to prevent double records.
  4. To export your adjusted rosters back to a spreadsheet, tap "Export CSV".

3. Broadcasting & Recording a Video

Streaming your games with our native compositing pipeline.

  1. Tap the Gear Icon to open Video Settings. Select your hardware's highest possible resolution and choose the target stream output capabilities.
  2. In the bottom-right Tech Stats panel, tap "GO LIVE" to configure your RTMP/YouTube hookup, or tap "REC" to save a 1080p MP4 recording locally to your iPad.
  3. Use the camera cycle icon to switch between internal iPad cameras and external USB-C UVC capture cards smoothly.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if I make a mistake while scoring?
Simply tap the UNDO button in the bottom corner. The undo stack captures the complete context of the game state (inning, count, outs, scores) allowing you to securely reverse any action. Note: There is no "Redo" function, so verify your edits before continuing!
How does the game timer work when a time limit expires?
The timer displays passively but does not force a hard stop on the app itself, giving you flexibility over the inning transitions. You can set the timer to count up or down. If altered mid-game, it propagates the overridden target logically backward to the game setup instance globally.
Does Backstop TV support offline scorekeeping?
Yes. Scorekeeping and local video recordings do not require an active internet connection. Features that rely on the internet, like uploading to Google Drive or streaming RTMP, will be bypassed locally if a connection drops out.

Scorekeeping & Action

In-Game Controls

Action buttons on the right panel drive the core game engine mathematically:

  • STRIKE: Adds a strike (auto-calculates strikeouts based on a 3-strike rule).
  • BALL: Adds a ball (auto-calculates walks on a 4-ball rule).
  • FOUL: Grants a strike only if the batter currently has less than 2 strikes.
  • OUT: Automatically logs a standard out without advancing plays.
  • HIT: Base logic assumes a ground rule advancement for both the batter and runners.
  • WALK / HBP: Evaluates forced runners and advances them autonomously.

You can also quickly manually add or remove base runners by directly clicking the base diamonds.

Spray Chart & Fielding

Visual Hit Tracking

Drag the baseball into the field view to calculate dynamic metadata such as launch angle and hit depth. Dropping the ball opens a contextual menu allowing you to define the exact play structure.

  • Hit Selection: Choose Single, Double, Triple, or Home Run mappings explicitly.
  • Bunt Outs: Assign a specific out classification that accommodates advancing sacrifices safely.
  • Error Attribution: Acknowledging fielding errors calculates defensive ERA liabilities and stops hitter attribution for reached bases natively.
  • Automated Sacrifice Stats: Sac Flys and Sac Bunts are algorithmically detected and tagged if runners advance efficiently.

Roster & Lineups

Team Management

Manage your rosters centrally across games via the global Player Picker, assigning existing unaffiliated players or registering new athletes contextually. Team Rosters inherently define batting orders and jersey numbers when importing into Game Lineups, ensuring total conformity. Advanced deduplication strategies protect database integrity when importing CSV lists.

Once a lineup is loaded, on-screen runners correspond accurately to their jersey and identity, showing graphical Base Runner Diamonds right inside the lineup view so a coach knows exactly where their active players are on the basepaths.

Analytics, Sharing & Exporting

Play Log & Box Score

Access the Play Log (clipboard icon) to track extensive analytics per play, tracking exact Quality At Bats (QAB), RBIs, Connection hits (🥎), and hit geometry (📐). Use horizontal filter bars to segment events by explicit play classifications or uniforms in real-time.

The Game Box Score (chart icon) renders dynamically generated traditional baseball tables calculating running AB, R, H, RBI, BB, K, AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS and full Pitching metrics for both teams.

Exporting Data:

  • CSV / TSV Stats: Extract tabular reports analyzing hitting and pitching effectiveness directly out to local folders or emails.
  • Play Log Summaries: Copy raw chronological play text efficiently directly to the clipboard to share in SMS messages or emails.
  • PDF Scorecards: Automatically compile dynamic statistical glossaries tied to the tracked players and output formatted, physical-ready printouts showing score totals and pitch counts.

Video & Tech Stats

Production Diagnostics

The Tech Stats panel empowers operators to monitor real-time rendering conditions, outputting live Frames Per Second, Stream Uplink Bitrate, Disk Utilization, and Camera Resolutions efficiently.

Under Video Settings, Backstop TV has decoupled the hardware input processing from the broadcasting output pipeline natively. The engine mathematically ascertains the highest required framerate across components, telling your camera hardware to operate at maximum capability while gracefully skipping frames in-memory for the outputs that do not require 60fps (preventing GPU thermal overload).

Google & YouTube Live

Automated Connectors

Unlock the native YouTube and Google Drive integrations via Settings → Credentials directly.

  • YouTube Brand Account Native Support: Sign in securely restricting generic profile scopes so organization Brand Accounts can attach directly properly.
  • YouTube Live Broadcast Engine: Once signed in, you can create new YouTube Streams defining DVR tracking, auto-stops, and audience metadata. Watch concurrent viewers update natively in the Tech Stats panel. During game conclusion, the Auto-Chapter subsystem calculates hit trajectories and scoring outputs, formatting YouTube video chapters on-the-fly inside the video's description.
  • Google Drive Exporter: Use the native folder picker to navigate your Team's Drive root. At the end of a session, if configured, Backstop TV builds an asynchronous background thread that natively uploads your Game's PDF Stat book, CSV stat matrix, and JSON Event Source ledger precisely into the designated Drive folder securely.

Notes & Announcements

Real-Time Overlays

Using the megaphone icon, broadcasters can execute immediate communication lines contextually:

  • Audience Updates: Overlay raw text dynamically across the broadcast scoreboard for all viewers.
  • Coach Notes: Annotate game logic in the logs natively, preserving tactical choices securely offline.
  • Broadcast GroupMe: Sync external chat identifiers and instantly push ad-hoc system updates remotely into external group chats with URL placements natively configured.