How to make a countdown highlight reel of the best points in a match

Last updated 2026-08-18 · 6 min read

What is the short version?

A countdown is a different edit from a highlight reel. A highlight reel can be chronological; a countdown has to be ranked, which means every candidate point has to be compared against every other one before a single cut is made.

1. Go to Vizard Agent and upload the full match recording.
2. Ask for a countdown and say how many points.
3. Say the shape and whether you want rank numbers on screen.

What do you need before you start?

The recording and the count. Vizard Agent finds the rallies and ranks them itself, so you are not marking timecodes, and the useful thing to add is any point you already know has to be in there, because your memory of the match is information the footage does not carry.

• The full match. Long is fine. Vizard Agent scans it in windows.
• How many. Fifteen is a good number for a countdown; ten is tighter.
• The sport. Says what counts as a good point.
• Any must-includes. A specific rally you want ranked in.
• The shape. Vertical for a feed, wide if it is going on a channel.

What do you type into Vizard Agent?

Say "countdown" explicitly. Vizard Agent treats it as a ranking instruction rather than a stylistic one, which changes the whole method: instead of picking good moments as it goes, it collects candidates first and compares them against each other.

Prompt

Variants worth knowing:

• Rank numbers on screen. Almost always worth it; a countdown without them reads as a list.
• A specific player. Ask for their best points only and the ranking narrows to those.
• Slow motion on the top three. Ask and Vizard Agent will treat the final entries differently.

What does Vizard Agent actually do?

Here is the order Vizard Agent worked in on a real badminton countdown. The pattern to notice is that it does not accept its first pass: after finding twenty-four candidates it went back and looked again at the best ones more closely.

1. Probes the recording and checks the project history.
2. Extracts sample frames across the whole match and builds contact sheets.
3. Reviews the sheets in order to locate where the rallies sit.
4. Extracts start, middle and end frames from each candidate rally into labelled sheets.
5. Reviews the candidates in batches and compares them against one another.
6. Re-checks the strongest rallies at high frame rate, closer in, to confirm what actually happens in them.
7. Scans eighteen further windows it had not yet covered, in case a better point is hiding there.
8. Reviews the additional candidates and folds them into the ranking.
9. Ranks the top fifteen, renders the numbered cards and cuts the countdown from worst to best.

Step 7 is where the reel earns its title. Stopping at the first twenty-four candidates gives a good reel; going back for the windows that were skipped is what makes "the best fifteen" a claim rather than a headline.

What does the result look like?

From the run this page is written from, probed on the delivered file: 1080x1920, H.264, 30fps, 197.14 seconds, AAC audio. Vertical, a little over three minutes, fifteen numbered entries cut from a full match recording and ordered to finish on number one.

Three minutes for fifteen points is around thirteen seconds each, which is the right budget for a rally: enough to see it develop, short enough that the countdown keeps moving. Vizard Agent paces the last few entries slightly longer.

When does this not work well?

Ranking is a judgement, and Vizard Agent makes it from what is visible in the footage. Anything that made a point great for the people in the room but does not appear on camera is outside what it can weigh.

• Context does not show up on screen. A point at match point is more dramatic than an identical point at 3-1, and the footage does not say which is which unless the scoreboard is legible.
• One fixed camera flattens everything. With no cutaways, a long rally and a short one look similar in frames.
• Fast sports need frame rate. Vizard Agent samples closer in on the top candidates for exactly this reason, and low-quality source still limits it.
• Your favourite point may not rank. Say it has to be in and Vizard Agent will place it.
• A countdown needs enough good material. Fifteen entries from a one-sided match will include filler.

How do you fix a result that came back wrong?

Argue with the ranking. Vizard Agent keeps every candidate it found, the contact sheets and the high-frame-rate checks, so moving an entry up or swapping one in is a re-cut against work it already did rather than a fresh scan of the match.

• "The rally at 41 minutes should be number one." Reordered, and everything below shifts.
• "Number nine is not that good." Swapped for the next candidate in the list.
• "Make it a top ten." Trimmed from the same ranking.

How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?

By hand this is scrubbing a full match, noting rallies in a document, going back to compare two you cannot both remember clearly, and rebuilding the numbered cards every time the order changes. Vizard Agent keeps every candidate on file, so reordering costs a render rather than an afternoon.

Common questions

How many entries work best? Ten to fifteen. Beyond that the lower entries stop feeling like highlights.

Does it put the numbers on screen? Yes, if you ask. A countdown without them reads as an ordinary reel.

Can I insist on a particular point? Yes. Name roughly when it happens and Vizard Agent will rank it in.

Does it work for other sports? Yes. Say the sport and what counts as a good moment in it.

What if the match is two hours long? Fine. Vizard Agent scans it in windows rather than watching it end to end.

Can the top three be in slow motion? Yes. Ask and the final entries get treated differently from the rest.

Can it use commentary audio? Yes, if the recording has it. Vizard Agent keeps the original sound under the music so the crowd and the commentary still carry the moment.

Will it find rallies I did not mark? That is the point of the second scan. Vizard Agent goes back over the windows it had not covered specifically to catch points nobody flagged.

Can I get a wide version for a channel? Yes. Ask for both shapes and Vizard Agent cuts them from the same ranking rather than ranking twice.