Combine Several video captures and retain GPS data

[yoja21]

Im in the same page, i race hare-scramble for 1.5 - 2hrs and i usually have more than 6 files about 4gb each, you can add speedometer and other stuff to each video then put them together, what we cant do and is my biggest problem is that we cant have is the whole gps path and info like total miles and thats exactly what i want, i think its something causing trouble to a lot of gopro customers, however i was able to do it once with dashware, i merge all the videos with gps data files and made 1 video for the whole race with the whole path and total miles, it was a pain because it took me like 6 hrs to make it.

[camerone60]

I'd like to know how people are handling this as well. I understand why it's split into 17 minute files, but why can't the software handle that gracefully? Surely it's just a matter of storing some metadata somewhere to track what files are part of a continus stream, then present it as such in the desktop environment? Give users the options to render out the single whole viedo with overlays?

[aragon1006]

Hi @camerone60

Were you able to try the steps listed by fishycomics?

You may also try using RaceRender or Dahsware.

Thanks!

Ej

[camerone60]

Nope... I've tried Dashware, and it gives me an error "Data extraction/merge failed." when I first open the files for merging. It then manages to merge all the files into a single video, but loses all the GPS data. I can see there's CSV files extracts with this data, but even adding it in doesn't produce any data to be used in the overlays.

[orientalsniper]

I'm in the same boat, we need an option to record as a single file, my card is already formatted as exfat, I don't care about data corruption, either let us record as a single video or enable Quik to combine video files.

[antons852]

I'm using Race Render for such videos.
It does the job almost perfectly! Combining all parts of the video and overlaying GPS data)

One thing is that it can't combine data from several videos (e.g. if you stopped and resumed recording again).

[marce4453]

I had the same problem recently, it's a massive PITA. The data is in the files but each file is self contained, so the full map and times aren't persisted across the files. (rather each file contains its own map segment and own start/end times from zero). 

I ended up writing a quick and dirty app to combine the Dashware CSV files into one data file, to be used with the merged video. You can't just append the files, you need to keep accumulating the numbers for time and distance so that it represents a single start-end run for the length of the combined video.

The app is nasty but it works. I've put it here if anyone wants it. It will work with the 6 black and 7 black, nothing else. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6y7qgich0ue4vij/GoPro%20CSV%20Merger.rar?dl=0

Basically:

1) (prerequisite) Put the hero 6 and 7 GPMF.XML profiles from the quick install into C:\Program Files\DashWare\DataTool\DataProfiles

2) Use dashware to merge the video files. It will complain about data extract / merge failed, but it will produce a merged video and it will extract the individual CSVs containing the telemetry data to the same folder

3) Use my app to merge the CSVs

4) Use the merged CSV as the data file for the merged video

You can then either export the merged video with telemetry gauges from dashware, or use dashware to make a green screen overlay of just the gagues.

I'm stunned at how crap the GoPro experience is. The file naming confention is idiotic, the telemetry is a mess and every time I think I'm turning the camera off I'm just switching it to photo mode. The hardware is pretty good though, I'll give it that.

[légio57]

Hi,

thanks a lot for the programm, I'll try it this week and let you know.

Regards,

Julien