VIRB Wish List

My wish list is that virb edit can upload movies directly to youtube:) new version does not even handle that.

My wish list is that virb edit can upload movies directly to youtube:) new version does not even handle that.

I am personally not particularly interested in downloading directly to YouTube from Virb Edit, but just to contribute to the discussion with my direct experience I did a couple of tests.

First test with a (very) short clip, about 30 sec, movie with overlay. Woked without any problem, here it is:
http://youtu.be/roAVA4o6Dvo

Second test, longer video (15 min) with overlay and background (copyright free) music. No success. Video preparation completed OK, upload failed. Error code: Invalid credentials.

Another wish, about smoothing/averaging and calculations.
Certain items, measured or calculated, have inherently erratic "behaviors", for example power and slope (this one because of the inherent approximation/error in altitude). It would be very useful to selectively apply a smoothing/averaging factor to those items, expressed for example in seconds. For instance I would apply an average over let's say 5 sec to power and 10 sec to slope. The average would be a running average, before or around the time. For power it could be the 5 seconds before, for slope could be an average of the 5 sec before and the 5 sec after the time.
That feature was one of those I was using with Dashware, creating a "calculated" item.
If Garmin introduces the concept of calculated items, and the capability to associate that item to a particular overlay part, then the possibilities become limitless. You then can apply math operators (+ - * / sin cos ^ avg etc. etc.) on one or two or more items calculating whatever you like. Few examples I have already used with DashWare: average power over the last 30 sec, VAM (ascending speed in m/h), power zone, power in %of FTP (Functional Treshold Power), HR in % of max HR, HR in % of FTHR (Functional Treshold Heart Rate).

I have two very simple wishes: A widget to display the distance progress and another widget to represent the altitude profile (like the one seen in the dashboard at runtime). In both cases it would be nice to manually set the starting number so several clips can be chained -or just let Virb Edit do it automatically-.

I have two very simple wishes: A widget to display the distance progress and another widget to represent the altitude profile (like the one seen in the dashboard at runtime). In both cases it would be nice to manually set the starting number so several clips can be chained -or just let Virb Edit do it automatically-.

Great idea ... often on a couple of hour bike ride there may only be a couple of minutes of interesting stuff (for example the high speed descent etc). It would be great to snip those best bits out like you can now with Virb Edit, but as you say keep the overall ride stats. A distance progress so you could see that the clip was 8 miles into a 40 mile ride, the overall altitude profile with the video snip highlighted as a segment on the profile and the same for the map overlay also.

The problem is I am n0t sure this will be that easy as VIRB Edit will have to keep track of all the individual GPX files even after snipping bits out to keep the overall stats and profile.

A challenge to the developers :D

I'd like to see improvements to the Loop Mode.

It would be great if it was possible to add time to whatever you have the camera set to - for instance, if you have the camera set to record a 5 minute loop, and then realize that the thing you want to record took over 5 minutes, at this point there's no way of overriding that 5 minute save. Some other cameras have ways of adding time to the loop by hitting a button or two. Can we have this too?

Also, sometimes when I'm recording in loop mode, nothing happens, and I'd like to cancel the Loop recording without actually saving it. Can this be added?

I realize the priority is to make the existing software reliable, then faster, so if these items on the Wishlist could be implemented sometime down the road, after the priorities are taken care of, I'd be happy.

I've made my own wish list for the VIRB (Elite). Wishes for VIRB-Edit is a whole different story.

Proposal 1:
Option to automaticly turn the display off after 2 / 5 / 10 seconds / 1 minute or "never"
(my old camera Drift X-170 had this option, I has it shut off the display after 1s most of the time)
Saves the battery.

Proposal 2:
Keep the display off when the VIRB is activated from the remote.
Saves the battery.

Proposal 3:
Use "Tones" to indicate start recording, stop recording, taking picture(s) if they are loud enough I might hear this confimation.
Makes the camera more easy to use.

Proposal 4:
Alternative Loop recording: record increments of 5min of video until the uSD is full, than start overwriting the oldest segment. (This is the way the RoadHawks do it, the segments overlap 10 frames in order to never miss a second)
New feature (IMHO better loop mode that the current one).

Proposal 5:
Security issue for the Elite.
As the Elite has internal sensors, use these to detect a crash.
In case of a crash, save the last bit of video and make it read-only.
In this case you could use it in legal issues.
New feature (more and more camera's have this option)

Proposal 6:
Time and Date stamp video, could be used with proposal 5
(like RoadHawk Ride and many others)

Proposal 7:
New option to use external power to turn the camera on/off and start recording.
First set the operation mode (recording 5min video segments / take a picture every ... seconds).
Than turn the external power operation on.
When external power is applied the camera should turn on and start recording (video/pictures)
When the external power is turned off the camera should stop and save the recording and turn off.
In this way you could permanently connect it to a vehicles powersupply and start recording when the vehicle is operated. (like RoadHawk and other camera's)

The problem is I am n0t sure this will be that easy as VIRB Edit will have to keep track of all the individual GPX files even after snipping bits out to keep the overall stats and profile.

We have to do that to allow for distance/duration gauges in general. The currently planned implementation of that will only work if you don't turn off your VIRB in between recordings, because the VIRB records FIT data for the entire time it's on and we use that to automatically put the tracks together and maintain accurate distance/duration data across gaps in your recordings.

Ouch. So if we turn it off to change out the battery during a long recording session, then something won't work right when we join them together? Or does video 1 go with fit 1 and video 2 go with fit 2 and everything just works?

SCHINDER: It'll work; they'll just have separate tracks. That means that the new distance/duration fields would reset between the two videos in that scenario.

You could fix distance/duration by joining the recorded GPS logs together in another application and manually replacing the track on both recorded videos. Distance/duration numbers would be a bit made up then as there would be no GPS data recorded between clips.