Where are photos downloaded to?

You have to do that on your own. It's not done automatically.

If you open basecamp, with your VIRB connected, it will download them and put them in a safe place it can only find :mad:.
But you can try this place: C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\Garmin\BaseCamp\GeotaggedPhotos
It's a hidden folder.
And if you have a separate boot drive and a separate data drive this is the place you don't want to have your photo's.

@Pa3fbo - thanks for the info. But I don't use Basecamp..... But I do have separate boot, program and data drives.

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Let me see if I've got this right; the Virb can take photos - but the Virb software will not download them. And this rather-important information has been kept 'secret' - I don't remember reading about having to manually copy / move photos from the Virb anywhere in the instructions; were we users just supposed to guess this?

The more I use Virb Edit, and the more questions I ask here - the more I understand that Virb Edit is *nowhere near* a complete solution; there are just SO many things which it should do - but does not. I get the feeling that the programmers (assuming that there is more than 1 programmer?) are straight out of programming school, with zero programming experience, and (even worse!) they have probably NEVER actually used a Virb to record anything; they have NEVER actually used their own software in the real world. They probably test the individual parts that they themselves are responsible for writing - but have NO idea of how the application works as a whole. They don't even seem to know what it SHOULD do. Not terribly confidence-inspiring...... :(

At this rate, it's gonna take them *YEARS* to bring it to maturity.

Just my personal impressions....

You're probably close.
Make one thing, break something that worked OK.
The way I see it is that Garmin made a camera and thought that it was nice to have an editing program too, just as they were to launch the camera.
Than the developers needed to make a program.
So they are far behind in developing and looking at other programs as PowerDirector and Pinacle that are still improving you're probably right about years of development to go.
The camera itself only seems reasonable stable after the 3.70 firmware although some improvements should be made, like the photo button that behaves different on the remote as on the camera.
It also doesn't help for the Edit guys that the Firmware guys implemented things (PAL 25fps) without notifying the Edit guys that this was about to happen.
This created some issues with track and video getting out of sync, 5 frames per second missing is a lot missing in the end.
I have Basecamp on my system just because MapSource can't read the .FIT files.
Putting things in databases only make things complicated and slow and you can only put things in the database that the program understands.
So if you collect for a project several types of files (html, pdf, doc, xml, xls, jpg, bmp, open doc formats, and so on) they can't be all in one database, and why should they, they're fine in a windows folder.
Still both Basecamp and VIRB Edit want to store the data they understand in a database.
Also I believe that DATA should be on a DATA drive/partition, not on the BOOT drive/partition, DATA needs a regular backup, the BOOT only if you change something that can't be reinstalled easily.

With the hardware/firmware it's the same all over again, just like with the GPS. It looks like they live in a world of their own without contact with the real world.
At least the developers of VIRB Edit are in contact with the users, but their probably are bound to some company policies that tie them down.

What, it's a hardship to copy files from one folder to another?

VIRB Edit is a (limited) video editing program with the nifty GPS/ANT+ track trick, so I'm not surprised, and actually quite happy, that it doesn't deal with stills. I've had a digital camera for 14 years (I was late to the party), and I long ago came up with methods to deal with still photos. I don't want another. For example, the VIRB shows up as a typical camera in iPhoto, and if I had all of the automatic things turned on, I'm sure they would work to automatically get photos off of it.

@schinder

What, it's a hardship to tell the users of the software you have written that it's not clever enough to download photos as well as all the other stuff it DOES download; they must do this manually? And what's so difficult about getting their software to download a few photo files as well as the video & data, anyway? Is that also a 'hardship'?

Once again, I'm detecting an attitude of, "Mine works fine for me - so if you don't like yours, it's YOUR problem!" from you...... You know, as opposed to actually being helpful by suggesting actual solutions to our problems?

If there's nothing to see here - just move along......


I'm actually quite pleased with the Virb Elite I have - I updated it to the latest firmware as soon as I got it, and haven't had many problems with it - and most of those were more related to my ability to use it as opposed to actual hardware / firmware problems. It does seem to record video at good quality and has a number of features that the competition don't.

Garmin also had the *brilliant* idea (and I'm not being sarcastic!) of taking the data collected during an activity and combining it with the video produced - as far as I know Garmin were first with this. This is easily the single biggest reason that I bought Garmin as opposed to any other manufacturer. That, and image stabilisation.

Clearly, they have at least SOMEONE with a brain in their heads on their staff.

So WHAT is their problem when it comes to the execution of these ideas?

As you know, there are a lot of things wrong with VIRB Edit. I'd rather have them working on fixing the primary function of VIRB Edit rather than wasting time adding new features that are of very limited value. For example, replacing the GPS/ANT+ track in VIRB Edit (an unfortunate necessity since the altimeter can't be calibrated and under 3.7 it drops ANT+ sensors all too often), which should be trivial, since it's just lining up one time series with another, instead takes a lot of time in the OS X version because the track and video misalign (by exactly an hour usually, so it's clearly a bug). There are other video features that would be nice to have. Yet Another Way to deal with still photos shouldn't be high on their priority list, since dealing with that is easy.

@schinder

What, it's a hardship to tell the users of the software you have written that it's not clever enough to download photos as well as all the other stuff it DOES download; they must do this manually? And what's so difficult about getting their software to download a few photo files as well as the video & data, anyway? Is that also a 'hardship'?

Once again, I'm detecting an attitude of, "Mine works fine for me - so if you don't like yours, it's YOUR problem!" from you...... You know, as opposed to actually being helpful by suggesting actual solutions to our problems?

If there's nothing to see here - just move along......


I'm actually quite pleased with the Virb Elite I have - I updated it to the latest firmware as soon as I got it, and haven't had many problems with it - and most of those were more related to my ability to use it as opposed to actual hardware / firmware problems. It does seem to record video at good quality and has a number of features that the competition don't.

Garmin also had the *brilliant* idea (and I'm not being sarcastic!) of taking the data collected during an activity and combining it with the video produced - as far as I know Garmin were first with this. This is easily the single biggest reason that I bought Garmin as opposed to any other manufacturer. That, and image stabilisation.

Clearly, they have at least SOMEONE with a brain in their heads on their staff.

So WHAT is their problem when it comes to the execution of these ideas?

No, the point is if you have a computer you should know how to copy and paste files from one folder to another. It applied to Windows, Mac, Linux and every other operating system. It's not really rocket science. If you or anyone cannot understand that concept then that is something you need to learn to do as it's very common with phones, cameras, CDs, and so on. The photos and videos are taken in the same folder on the Virb. Copy the photos to a folder on your PC and be done with it if you want to save them, done. The previous person has a valid point.

@Scottdrmyers

Actually, the point is not whether I know how to copy / paste files - the point (besides the inability of the dedicated software to do this - despite it being 'not really rocket science' as you put it) is that the fact that this must be done manually was *not advertised*.

It is COMPLETELY reasonable to assume that software which copies
1) video files
2) data files
*completely automatically* ALSO would copy the image files - unless you can give a valid logical reason why it is NOT reasonable to assume this...?? Go on - I challenge you!!

The Garmin Virb creates video, data and image files - but downloads only two of these types of files. Nowhere is it advertised that image files must be coped manually - how are we expected to guess this, exactly? Please explain - I'm all ears...

Is it such a 'hardship' for Garmin to advise us, "By the way - our software does not currently download image files. Please do this manually"? <-- That's *all* it would have taken..... Yet apparently you consider this too much to expect?? Really??

Because, for example, OS X already comes with two different pieces of software (Image Capture and iPhoto) that can automatically copy photos off of a camera when it's plugged in, including the VIRB. I'd be surprised if Windows didn't have something like that available. Because VIRB Edit is video editing software, not still picture software. Because people have multiple still cameras and don't want to handle different cameras with different software. Is that enough? VIRB Edit is for video, and especially for the unique things that the VIRB Elite can do, recording both video and GPS/ANT+ data. iMovie (the video editing software that comes with OS X) can't replace VIRB Edit, because it can't do the overlays. But iPhoto and anything else I have on my Mac that does images (and personally I store all of my images, including the VIRB ones, in a local web site and use iPhoto for "best of") can easily deal with the stills that a VIRB takes.