Joined data - should use same manual start/finish line info

[georgn]

I use an ION Adventure camera that splits video files every 3.9GB (ish). I use RR3 to join them together to put together the entire race video.

RR3 extracts the GPS data from the video files into separate CSV files and supports the idea of joining them too. However, after dorking with the first one to figure out the start/finish line, that should really automatically apply to the others in the joined wad of stuff.

Even when I copy/paste the coordinates into the config for the second data file's config, the lap counter seems to start again at zero (at least in the preview, haven't yet rendered the whole thing but there's nothing the leads me to believe that the result will be different).

Also, while waiting at the start/finish line for my races to begin, the speedometer reads some non-zero value. Today I realized, by looking at the extracted csv file, that this corresponds to the first non-zero speed in the file. I understand ignoring zero-ed co-ordinates (such as I get if I start recording video before the camera gets a gps lock) but zero speed is pretty reasonable and should not be ignored.

Am I doing something wrong? Thanks for any guidance.

[Weston@HPTuners]

What's happening here is that although the data files are joined in RaceRender, they are still really two separate files and have been loaded as such, so that split creates some difficulty for things that RaceRender calculates itself, like lap times. This is a less common situation, but tends to happen when there was embedded data inside of a video file that got split into chunks every 4 GB or so.

A solution here would be to manually combine the two data files into one, and then use that one combined data file in RaceRender instead. Fortunately, the iON Adventure's data format is pretty conducive to this:

1) Open the first data file in a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc, then scroll down to the last data row. (For the iON Adventure, the extracted data file name will end with "-RR_Data.csv" and will be placed in the same folder as its video file.)
2) Open the second data file in the same program, then select all data rows, excluding for any text rows at the top (ie avoid the column names or other text). Make sure you have selected the full width of available data columns.
3) Copy this selection to the clipboard.
4) Go back to the first data file, and Paste the copied data onto the end of it.
5) Save that file back into its original .CSV format, and then use that with RaceRender.

[georgn]

Wow, that's complicated (and borken). If you're on a Mac and comfortable with UNIX commands, the workaround can be much simpler. Open a terminal and do:

cd /to/the/directory/where/your/files/are
sed '1,2d' IO010001-RR_Data.csv >> IONX0001-RR_Data.csv

(changing the actual filenames as appropriate; the sed script '1,2d' means delete lines 1 through 2 inclusive, the rest of the file is just sent to standard out. The >> means redirect and append to file)

Any comment about part two of my original question, the speedometer widget bug?

[Weston@HPTuners]

If you're on a Mac and comfortable with UNIX commands, the workaround can be much simpler. Open a terminal and do:

Easier for a technically-inclined user, who also has a Mac, but unfortunately most users will only have the means to use the spreadsheet process I had posted. Fortunately, this doesn't happen too often and we are starting to see less of a need for this sort of thing as newer cameras stop splitting their video files into 4 GB chunks... There's now wide support for file systems that can handle larger files, as well as .MP4 containers over 4 GB, so the cameras are starting to catch up.

Any comment about part two of my original question, the speedometer widget bug?

Without seeing the file, there are two possible explanations that come to mind:

1) It saw zero'ed Latitude & Longitude coordinates and discarded that entire GPS sample as invalid. Those situations can report some weird data, as well as the transition to/from them, and of course every system has its own quirks, but RaceRender will try to a few things to filter out bad data. In any case, it should be resolved when the GPS has a valid fix and reports a complete set of valid data, at which point, any zero speeds would be accepted as well.

2) Any Gauge-based displays may show an intermediate value, in attempt to smooth / filter any noise in the needle movement. This feature can be disabled by going into the Gauge Designer and disabling the "Smooth Needle Movement" checkbox.

[georgn]

The files are all here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/afr9i2lhu...LOeG7F_ma?dl=0

Based on earlier info from you, I try to avoid 1) by turning on the camera a couple of minutes before I start recording specifically to avoid having 0s in the lat/long fields.

Number 2) doesn't seem to change anything at the start line, admittedly I didn't explore too much beyond that.

Eventually, I found option 3) which is to have RR3 calculate the speed itself by changing the vehicle speed from Automatic to Calculate MPH (and then have it convert to km/h)
That seems to work.

Thanks again for your help.