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Playbooks & PlaysPlayback Controls

Playback Controls

Once you’ve built a multi-step play with trails and annotations, it’s time to watch it in action. UltiStackr’s playback controls let you animate your plays, step through them frame by frame, or slow everything down for a detailed breakdown. Whether you’re reviewing a play yourself or presenting it to the team, playback turns a static diagram into a moving picture.

The Playback Bar

The playback controls are located at the bottom of the Play Designer. They appear whenever your play has more than one step. The controls include:

  • Play/Pause button
  • Step Backward button
  • Step Forward button
  • Slow-Play toggle
  • A step indicator showing which step you’re currently viewing (e.g., “Step 3 of 6”)

Play and Pause

The Play button starts auto-playback from the current step. When you press play:

  1. Player tokens animate along their trails from the current step to the next
  2. Once the animation completes, the play advances to the following step
  3. This continues through all remaining steps
  4. Playback stops automatically after the last step

Press Pause at any time to freeze the animation at its current position. Press Play again to resume from where you stopped.

Hit Play during a team huddle to give everyone a quick animated walkthrough. It’s much faster than explaining “then the cutter goes here, and the handler dumps it there, and then…”

Step Forward and Backward

For more precise control, use the step navigation buttons:

  • Step Forward advances to the next step, playing the transition animation
  • Step Backward returns to the previous step, reversing the animation

This is useful for:

  • Reviewing a specific transition in detail
  • Going back and forth between two steps to study the movement
  • Walking through the play at your own pace during a teaching session

You can also jump directly to any step by clicking on it in the Timeline Sidebar. This skips the animation and immediately shows the selected step’s positions.

Auto-Play Through All Steps

When you press Play from Step 1, the entire play animates from start to finish. The auto-play sequence:

  1. Starts at the current step
  2. Animates each transition between steps
  3. Pauses briefly at each step so the viewer can absorb the position
  4. Continues until the final step
  5. Stops automatically

If the play has branches, auto-play follows the currently selected branch path. To watch a different branch, select it in the Timeline Sidebar before pressing Play.

Auto-play follows whichever branch is currently selected. To present multiple options to your team, play through one branch, then go back to the decision point, switch branches, and play through the alternative.

Slow-Play Mode

Slow-Play mode reduces the animation speed so you can watch every detail of the movement unfold. This is especially valuable for:

  • Teaching new players who need extra time to process what’s happening
  • Analyzing complex multi-cut sequences where several players move simultaneously
  • Studying defensive rotations where timing between players matters
  • Identifying spacing issues where players might be crowding each other

Enabling Slow-Play

  1. Toggle the Slow-Play button in the playback bar
  2. The animation speed is reduced
  3. Press Play or Step Forward to see the slower transitions
  4. Toggle off to return to normal speed

Slow-play is your best friend during film-session-style breakdowns. Run a play at normal speed first so the team sees the overall flow, then rewind and run it in slow-play to break down each movement.

Step-by-Step Navigation

For precise control, use Step Forward and Step Backward to move between discrete steps in the play:

  1. Use Step Forward to advance to the next defined step
  2. Use Step Backward to return to the previous defined step

Each press moves you to the next or previous step position. Stepping does not pause at interpolated positions between steps — it jumps directly to the next discrete step in the sequence.

Playback with Branches

When your play has a play tree with multiple branches:

  • Playback follows the currently selected branch in the Timeline Sidebar
  • At a branch point, the animation continues down the selected path
  • To switch branches, pause playback, select the desired branch in the sidebar, and resume
  • Each branch plays back independently with its own transitions and timing

Presenting Branches to Your Team

A good workflow for presenting branching plays:

  1. Start at Step 1 and play through the first branch to completion
  2. Rewind to the branch point
  3. Switch to the second branch in the Timeline
  4. Play through the alternative path
  5. Discuss the decision point and what triggers each branch

Tips for Effective Playback

  1. Normal speed first, slow-play second — Give the team the big picture before diving into details. The overall flow of a play is just as important as the individual cuts.

  2. Pause at key moments — Stop at the point where the handler needs to make a decision, or where the cutter’s timing matters most. Use that pause to ask questions or highlight the critical read.

  3. Use step navigation for Q&A — When a player asks “wait, where am I in Step 3?”, jump straight to that step instead of replaying from the beginning.

  4. Combine with annotations — If you’ve added text labels or arrows, they’ll be visible during playback, reinforcing the key concepts as the play animates.

  5. Practice presenting plays — Run through the playback a few times before presenting to the team. Know where the key moments are so you can pause and explain at the right times.

What’s Next

  • Sharing Playbooks — Share your animated plays with your team so they can review them on their own devices
  • Managing Playbooks — Organize, duplicate, and control access to your playbooks
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