Hockey is the sport where you often cannot see a face at all. Helmet, visor, and a shift that ends in forty seconds mean the number is the only identification you get. That makes the roster file less of a convenience and more of a requirement. SnapCaption builds it in about a minute for Photo Mechanic and GalleryID Desktop.
Free. No account required to build and download a file.
Every sport breaks a roster file in its own way. These are the ones that bite in NHL.
Face recognition is not much use behind a cage and a visor. If your file maps numbers to names accurately, you can caption a frame you could not identify by eye.
Six players change every forty-five seconds. There is no window to look someone up mid-period, which is exactly when a shortcode earns its keep.
An injury brings someone up from the minors the same day. Pull the roster on game day rather than trusting a file from the last homestand.
The export is not locked to one program. The same NHL roster file loads into Photo Mechanic and into GalleryID Desktop, with identical shortcodes either way.
Edit > Settings > Set Code Replacements > Load, then pick the file. The shortcodes are live in the caption fields immediately.
Code Replacement is the name Camera Bits, Inc. gives the feature in Photo Mechanic's own documentation, which is why this file is often called a code replacement roster file.
Attach the same file as a roster and the identical shortcodes expand while you caption. Nothing about the export changes.
GalleryID Desktop goes further than shortcodes — it identifies athletes by facial recognition and writes the names into the photo, so there is no code to type at all. See GalleryID Desktop
The h is the prefix you assigned the home club, 31 the sweater number. Both clubs go in one file with separate prefixes, so nothing needs swapping between periods.
You choose the columns. The export is a tab-separated file, so anything that reads a tab-delimited roster can use it.
32 teams, kept current from in-season sources. Pick any two and build one file for the whole game.
In Photo Mechanic, go to Edit > Settings > Set Code Replacements, click Load, and select the file. GalleryID Desktop attaches the same file as a roster and the identical shortcodes expand while you caption.
That is the point of working from sweater numbers. If the number is legible in the frame, the shortcode gives you the name, position and club without needing to recognise the player.
Yes. Give each club its own prefix and export once, so home and visiting numbers never collide.
Names are written in US-ASCII, which matters in hockey more than most sports given how many rosters carry European spellings.
Pick your teams, set your codes, download the file. Free, and no account required.
Open the roster builder