Overlay with no GPS?

Former Member over 11 years ago

I have a Virb Elite and have been using it to do videos of lifting in a gym. Since it's indoors I don't care about GPS data, which is invariably going to be hugely inaccurate anyway, but I do care about heart rate data from an Ant+ HRM.

With GPS on you can put that HR data on the screen just fine, but you have to deal with the hugely annoying map that you can't disable. But if you strip the GPS or turn GPS off in the camera (to save battery and so you hopefully don't have to deal with Virb edit's asinine inability to let you turn the map off if you don't care about GPS data or if, as is often the case, the GPS data is bad anyway) you also don't get heart rate data? And you can't import said heart rate data from, say an FR70 because it doesn't have GPS coordinates in it?

This can't be right, can it? You have to let it record GPS data, whether it's relevant or not, and let Virb Edit annoy the living hell out of you with it or you can't have overlays for any kind of data whatsoever?

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

Maybe I don't understand the problem...

The first part seems clear, recording sensors data with bad GPS reception that isn't going to be used anyway.

Second part, you're talking about the Elite showing heartrate, thats OK. Than you talk about the Elite showing a map.
What kind of map is this? I didn't know the Elite was capable of showing maps.

I'm confused but here is what I think is the case.
You have a Elite.
You use it indoors.
You have it record GPS data and sensor data like heartrate.
You are trying to make a movie without the track as the track is irrelevant.
Why don't you use an overlay without a track?

I don't know the FR70 but I know you can import FIT files into VIRB Edit.
Does that work for you?

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

The first part seems clear, recording sensors data with bad GPS reception that isn't going to be used anyway.

Good or bad, I have no use for the GPS data, so I set "GPS Off" in the Virb Elite. I expected that to turn off the GPS receiver, not stop any and all sensor and timecode recording.

Second part, you're talking about the Elite showing heartrate, thats OK.

I'm talking about an overlay on the video in Virb Edit once it has been transferred from the Virb Elite.

Than you talk about the Elite showing a map.

Virb Edit, apparently I wasn't clear about that.

Virb Edit insists on throwing up a map any time there's a transition, you work on a new file, whatever, with no way to tell it not to. It's annoying as hell, and one of several reasons I tried turning off GPS -- the hope being that without GPS data, Virb Edit wouldn't insist on filling half the screen with a pointless map every time you sneezed.

You have it record GPS data and sensor data like heartrate.

I want it to record sensor and timecode data without GPS being on and wasting battery power. As far as I can find, that isn't possible, which strikes me as beyond silly since there are many, many situations where you might want sensor data but neither need nor want GPS data specifically.

Why don't you use an overlay without a track?

As far as I can find, without GPS data being recorded by the Virb Elite, whether said data is accurate or useful, you cannot use overlays at all. The option is greyed out in Virb Edit.

I don't know the FR70 but I know you can import FIT files into VIRB Edit.

Tried it, you get a "The GPS or FIT file selected has no valid GPS logs [...]" error. The FR70 records HRM and footpod data, but does not have GPS. Without GPS you can't import the other sensor data.

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

I hope the developers can help you and make some changes to VIRB Edit so it accept data without GPS information.
Maybe the firmware guys can change the logging and adding fake GPS information when the GPS is off.

For now I think you need to keep your GPS on and use an overlay without track speed and position.