Import gps data file. What is Date Format?

EDIT POST - UPDATE.
Ok, The date/time field needs to be in seconds. So, I multiplied the calculated HH:MM:SS time by 86400 (number of seconds in a day). It now displays correctly. But my video clip commences 40kms or so into the journey.
I have three video clips from GoPro, which because the battery ran out, have time gaps.
So, Can I start a video clip from a set time in the gps file?
I planned to add Track Maps for each set of clips, with different Display Object Properties Time Segments. But that doesn't seem to work.
One problem sorted, another needs help please.


Hi

I have been using RaceRender3 (Ultimate Edition) for tracking my motorcycle ride routes and displaying route in video.

I use a GoPro Black7 but unfortunately the GPS data is quite poor.
So, I have a cell phone app, TrackMe which does a really excellent job of recording my locations. The output track is excellent.

However, RaceRender3 does not recognise the times in each record/row.

My content, pulled straight to Google Earth and RouteConverter is excellent.

How can I get RaceRender3 to recognise the date/time of each record?
What is the date/time format that RR3 is expecting?

The raw gpx export shows as 2020-08-7T04:18:49Z
I have tried a yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss format eg. 2020-08-07 04:18:49
I have tried a decimal day format, as used in MS Windows, eg. 44050.179734
When those files are imported to RaceRender3, the config shows a file time length of 0.213 seconds!
The actual duration of the merged gpx files is
Time Diff
Start End Duration
04:18:49 09:25:18 05:06:29
The file has 379 records.

This is very frustrating as I had hoped that simply importing a gpx or kml file from TrackMe output would be suitable.

This is only the first of a few problems with respect to displaying gps data, but I want to get this sorted out before moving on.

RR3 documentation states
RaceRender's data features require certain data to be provided in the input file, and in a form that it recognizes.
So, what form of Date/Time does RR3 recognise?

Also, RR3 documentation states
GPX, TCX, and FIT data will only work if the session is logged as a set of "track" points (not waypoints, etc), and each of those points includes a timestamp in the standard format.

Google Maps, Google Earth (see below), Open Maps, RouteConverter (see below), all read the gpx file from TrackMe with no problem.
I am asking the app developer the same question.

I am hoping that someone here will know what date/time format RR3 expects.
I can manipulate in Excel with little effort, but need to know.

Thanks for any help.

Paul Davies

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RaceRender tends to be pretty lenient with regards to time formats. I think you're reading this documentation page which also has:

Quote:

---

GPX is a somewhat loose format, so there may be variations that do not work with RaceRender, and non-standard or "extensions" data may not be picked up. Generally speaking, the file must begin with an <?xml> tag, and for GPX, each track point should look similar to the following example:

<trkpt lat="39.602613" lon="-105.020217">
<ele>1624.77</ele>
<time>2011-06-02T14:28:35Z</time>
<speed>31.2</speed>
</trkpt>

The time tag is always required. The elevation and speed tags are optional, but recommended.

---

which seems to mostly match the raw export that you mention (except your day field is only one digit? maybe that was just a bad copy/paste?).

Can you provide the exported CSV that you're using in RaceRender either by attaching it here or through a Google Drive/Dropbox link? I can see if I can get it to work.

For what it's worth, most of my time formats are in "seconds since epoch" (which actually isn't specifically mentioned in any documentation page that I've found) and have a first column of seconds since the start of the session as recommended by this documentation page, but that shouldn't be required in all cases.

Hi HB
Well, I have got the 'total route' GPS file to display. I came to the same conclusion and had set time to seconds since day dot (I assume equals 'epoch'). All recording took place on the same day, but calculating from epoch does allow me to make a continuous time record, if recording goes past midnight.
My file records are as example below (attached, for ref, even though that problem is solved).

Position Time Latitude Longitude Elevation
Position001 3805935529 25.0857972 55.1491517 -22.79999924
...
Position239 3805947314 25.30087257 56.12920495 404.1378734
Position240 3805947345 25.29393577 56.12219449 391.1879194
Position241 3805947375 25.29215778 56.11785136 384.1585153
...
Position379 3805953951 25.08771226 55.14938821 -11.92160974

The negative elevation values are ok. Desert is often below global average sea level (If I want more accuracy I can adjust for local sea level variation. I'll do that later ;).

I could also add a 'second since session zero' as well.
So, that does solve that part of the problem. ie. The data does display (the white track map in attached screenshot).
Thanks for pointing me in that direction :D.

My second question is...
How do I get my individual video clips, that are often not sequential (ie. there are gaps between end clip one and start of clip two, etc) to show my position on the 'total route' track map.
I have joined the video clips for the display.
You can see (from the white track map, detail in the tool bar below the preview window) that the total journey time is 05hrs 07mins 02secs. At the screenshot time, the preview is 04min 23secs into the video. The green arrow shows progress along the 'total routes' track map.
You can also see (from the RaceRender exported individual video clip GPS data, in blue) that each of the clips is also showing the same progress in time! (each video clips is 8min 52secs in length, so it looks as though each is part way through the route). This is not what is needed.
The first video starts at approx 3 hours into the session.
I have made an example that shows, more or less, what I would like to see.
Hopefully it makes sense. My actual position displayed on the total routes track map, maybe with the individual clips highlighted.

Also, within this question is nested another...
The RaceRender exported individual video clip GPS data shows a different Time reference to that which I calculated by multiplying days by 86400 and adding the time in seconds.
So, is the time origin that RR is using, the Unix 1st Jan 1970? It seems that the TrackMe file is using 1st Jan 1900. I can recalculate and get the correct times, so that the files are in the same decade ;-) .

Again, If you can offer a solution, that would be great. It may just be a couple of menu options I am missing...

Kind Regards

Paul

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Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roc Doc

Hi HB
Well, I have got the 'total route' GPS file to display. I came to the same conclusion and had set time to seconds since day dot (I assume equals 'epoch'). All recording took place on the same day, but calculating from epoch does allow me to make a continuous time record, if recording goes past midnight.
My file records are as example below (attached, for ref, even though that problem is solved).

Position Time Latitude Longitude Elevation
Position001 3805935529 25.0857972 55.1491517 -22.79999924
...
Position239 3805947314 25.30087257 56.12920495 404.1378734
Position240 3805947345 25.29393577 56.12219449 391.1879194
Position241 3805947375 25.29215778 56.11785136 384.1585153
...
Position379 3805953951 25.08771226 55.14938821 -11.92160974

The negative elevation values are ok. Desert is often below global average sea level (If I want more accuracy I can adjust for local sea level variation. I'll do that later ;).

I could also add a 'second since session zero' as well.
So, that does solve that part of the problem. ie. The data does display (the white track map in attached screenshot).
Thanks for pointing me in that direction :D.

My second question is...
How do I get my individual video clips, that are often not sequential (ie. there are gaps between end clip one and start of clip two, etc) to show my position on the 'total route' track map.
I have joined the video clips for the display.
You can see (from the white track map, detail in the tool bar below the preview window) that the total journey time is 05hrs 07mins 02secs. At the screenshot time, the preview is 04min 23secs into the video. The green arrow shows progress along the 'total routes' track map.
You can also see (from the RaceRender exported individual video clip GPS data, in blue) that each of the clips is also showing the same progress in time! (each video clips is 8min 52secs in length, so it looks as though each is part way through the route). This is not what is needed.
The first video starts at approx 3 hours into the session.
I have made an example that shows, more or less, what I would like to see.
Hopefully it makes sense. My actual position displayed on the total routes track map, maybe with the individual clips highlighted.

Also, within this question is nested another...
The RaceRender exported individual video clip GPS data shows a different Time reference to that which I calculated by multiplying days by 86400 and adding the time in seconds.
So, is the time origin that RR is using, the Unix 1st Jan 1970? It seems that the TrackMe file is using 1st Jan 1900. I can recalculate and get the correct times, so that the files are in the same decade ;-) .

Again, If you can offer a solution, that would be great. It may just be a couple of menu options I am missing...

Kind Regards

Paul

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I think RaceRender mostly uses time since 1970 (see https://www.epochconverter.com/). I think it can use time since 1990 as well for at least some formats. I also think "seconds since session zero" would be helpful since that gives RaceRender an anchor to base everything off of without needing to rely on the date itself, but it looks like you've got the data in a working condition anyway, so maybe it's not currently needed.

You could tackle this two ways: If you're just working on an individual video at a time (which is what I would recommend), then you can just resize the various track map pieces to fit on top of the full session map. It might be difficult to get it to line up, but hopefully it would match. You can also uncheck the "Vehicle Position" checkbox about halfway down on each Map's Object Properties to turn off the dot on the map. After lining everything up and then turning off the dots for the second/third/full data, you should have something similar to your expected picture. This would obviously only work for one section/video at a time.

if you're trying to line up all the videos back-to-back, then you could try using the Synchronization Tool or Side By Side option. To get the GPS data to line up with the video (and not all play at the same time), you'll need to use either the "Synchronization Tool" (which allows you to adjust an individual Input File against the current frame displayed by the video), or my personal preference: the "Side By Side" which allows you to shift the time of an Input File relative to another Input File. So, in your example, I would click "Side By Side" (just below the Input Files in the middle right), select the Reference Input as the first video, and the Sync Input as the full session data. You'd then need to move the slider on the left to match the data against the video. This probably wouldn't be an issue for the first video's data since both it and the first video should start at 0:00:00 in the RaceRender project timeline, but I'm sure you would need to adjust the second and third videos (as well as data) relative to the first video, and obviously the full session data as well. Note that in the project timeline, if a data file has either already ended or has not yet begun, its data will not be displayed. You can side step this in a CSV file by copying the last line and adjusting the time to be WAY after the original last line. You could also do the same for the first line to have the data start earlier (but you may need to adjust many of the other rows if they are relative to the first row/session start).

One other tool that may be useful is that each Display Object (such as a map) has an option at the top for "Add" or "Del" which can divide up the timeline and have RaceRender treat the object differently at different times. For instance, once you complete the first video (and have edited the last row of data to go on for an extra 2 hours), you can click "Add" and then uncheck the Vehicle Position option so that the track map will remain blue, but you no longer see the red dot sitting at the end once the timeline reaches that position. This will not affect the map before that point in the timeline. So, the map would show the position all the way until the end of the first video and then stop showing it afterwards.

Hopefully one or more of these will be helpful.

Wow. Thank you so much for the reply.
That's given me a few options to try and routes :-) to follow.
I will place a session zero time at column1 of the total and clip csv files.
Hmmm, If I want to place my position on the video clips, I might try adding start and end rows equal to first and last rows of the total route file. Turn off track map 'lines' and just leave dot, turned on or off for each clip.
I will explore further.
I do notice that the display object editor only allows changes to start time, not end time.
Ok, a bit of experimentation ahead.
The versatility of the product is quite amazing though. Nice!
I shall reply to the post later, when I have tried out a few options.
Kind Regards
Paul

Ok. Thanks so much for the advice. It has taken a while but I have now worked out a method that works. It is a process that involves excel editing of GPX and CSV files, then some Side by Side Synchronising. I follow with the detail in pdf.

https://forum.hptuners.com/images/attach/pdf.gif