Overlaying video is showing stupid speed and no OBD data

[Frank997]

Hi,

I have found several problems: not being able to access the pre-loaded track when not having internet access and lost data when overlaying the video. Especially the second one is quite frustrating. Hopefully you can help.

I was attending Porsche Club Cup in Anneau Du Rhin this weekend and wanted to use HLT the first time on a race track to document the performance and video. So far I only had recorded highway or normal road trips with different cars (including the Porsche which I ran this weekend).

First of all I could not select the race track although I had downloaded it while stil in Germany (knowing that I would not have internet access in France). Anyway, that would only stop me from having automated lap times but at least I would have all the other data of one stint (speed, acceleration, engine revolutions and gear, etc.) overlayed in the videos. Just everything but the lap times, similar to what I have frequently done on the high way and which worked (most of the times).

So I connected my Dual XGPS150A and my GoPoint BT1 via BT to my iPhone 4 (using iOS 6.1.3). The connection was shown in the BT menu and when I started HLT (Grand Prix Edition v18.0) by pushing "Timer" and then "Video" it showed all the right data (speed = 0km/h when waiting for the launch, rpms, etc.). By pure chance I took a picture where one can see this (see file attached):

One can see that the OBD data (rpms, etc.) are shown correctly and that the speed is 0km/h when waiting for the launch

IMG_2108.jpg (70.87 KiB) Viewed 3758 times

I went for 5 stints (1 guided, 2 trainings, 2 scoring runs) and recorded all of them (by manually starting the video: pressing the red dot at the upper left corner which was confirmed by "Aufzeichnung gestartet" or similar and manually stopping it again in boxes by pressing the green square in the center), trusting in having collected nice videos with all relevant data (beside lap times, see above).

When returned at home I started HLT, selected "Laps" ("Runden" in my version) selected 1 item and then "Overlay". After processing the data I watched the video and was shocked:

No OBD data at all, no acceleration data, no position on the track (which would work even without download a specific race track, just by tracking the GPS data) and the video showing 819 km/h when still waiting for the launch (the speed does not change at all, during the stint it constantly shows 819 km/h).

I checked the few sessions I took on the highway when driving to the track. The same result: no OBD, acceleration or GPS data, and a constant speed of 819 km/h (it would be great to impress my friends but that was not the purpose ...).

Maybe I did something wrong when overlying the data to the video? And hopefully the right data is still there and accessible (for a correct overlay?

In order to not loose my data of the 2 training and 2 scoring runs I have not yet overlayed those data. They are still on the iPhone as raw HLT data.

Please help!
Thanks and regards

Frank

[Frank997]

Hi,
just to add to my problem described before:
I have tried today with another iphone 4 (iOS 6.1) and checked GPS status after connecting OBD and GPS and before starting the video.
I also checked OBD and acceleration data while driving and recording. everything looked fine. But after overlaying the video does not show any of the data. The speed is 0km/h this time.
I am sure I am doing something wrong but don't know what.
Hopefully the data (of the race track on Sunday) are not lost and I can repeat overlaying it correctly.
I appreciate your help.
Thank you
Frank

[Frank997]

@Harry: Would it help if I sent you some data?

[Harry]

Hi,

To start with the easy topic: once you have loaded a track set, it is stored on your device. There is no need to reload it, it is available already. You can check availability of a track set by looking into the Lap List: in case you see a row named "Certified Track Set" directly below the "Anneau Du Rhin" section start, you are fine and don't need to load it again. When loading a track set from Add-ons for a track a set is already available, you get a confirmation alert asking you if you want to delete the existing track set and load the selected. You most probably selected this - which in turn deleted the track set you loaded in Germany. Due to the blocked roaming, it has not been replaced by a new one... So for the next time, simply don't load it again.

The next item is most probably due to a complete overload of your device. The iPhone4 comes with a single core processor running into problems with recording both video and handling an external GPS and OBD at the same time. This is the reason I removed it from the compatibility list (http://www.gps-laptimer.de/Compatibility.html):

In case you want to record videos in parallel, a dual core processor (iPhone 4S and later, or iPod 5th generation or later) is strongly recommended.

Especially for iOS 6.1.x the video + GPS recording seems to work mostly, but adding an additional sensor generates drop outs. While LapTimer is able to recreate original time information even when receiving GPS positions deferred, for OBD this doesn't work due to missing timing information.

So as long as you use an iPhone4, I'd recommend either to not use external sensors when recording video, or not use video recording at all. Probably a good reason to buy an iPhone 6 in late summer this year

In case you want me to check the data, please feel free to export a session's data to .hlptrl and send it to me. I will check if there is something that can be recovered.

- Harry

P.S. Overlaying does not delete data, it only switches video links. Even when crashing, at least a backup will be created.

[Frank997]

Hi Harry,

Thank you for your reply.

With regard to the track set I probably did what you suspect. So I should have gone to "Runden" and select there the track set? I would not expect the selection of tracks there, but it's good to know for the future.

With regards to the iPhone 4 not working correctly with HLT I did not know that. But it explains why I had never found any problem before: I have an iPhone 5 and have used it occasionally on the highway to get familiar with HLT. And it generally worked fine. Then I had the idea to use my old iPhone 4 for the race track as I cleaned it from almost every app, deleted music, photos and videos so that I would have the maximum memory available for recording as many laps as possible. It did not come to my mind that the performance of the iPhone 4 would not be sufficient.

I appreciate your help analyzing my first scoring run of Sunday (I was wrong in my first mail: the second scoring run had not been recorded as stop watches were forbidden in that run). How can i send the .hlptrl data to you? Per email?

Regards
Frank

[Frank997]

Hi Harry,

I have seen you are offline. I have sent the data by email and look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks again and best regards
Frank

[Frank997]

Just another question coming to my mind:

Can the iPhones 4 be used as slave cams when using the iPhone 5 as master cam and data recorder?

Or: if my iPhone 5 has not enough memory space (due to all the apps and music, etc. i do not want to delete from it), i could us it to record the data only and have the iPhones 4 as the cams which could be overlayed to the data step by step (once a lap or stint is overlayed, the video could be exported to a computer and then deleted from the iPhone 5 before overlaying the next video(s).

Do you have other recommendations beside buying a new iPhone?

I obviously do not want to run again in similar problems.

Regards
Frank

[Harry]

Hi Frank,

Received the export but it has no GPS data included. When GPS doesn't work at all, no OBD data is stored either (if it is available at all). So no luck here... On your other questions:

The iPhone4 is making a good MultiCam platform, yes. MultiCam does not activate sensors at all and just records video and handles the connection to the master. This is clearly within scope and can be used to record a master video. As it is not possible to completely turn off video recording for a master device if you want it to control MultiCam satellites, you need record here too. However, reducing resolution to SD and using the front cam creates a grew PiP video not requiring too much space. The problem with this scenario will be to overlay your recordings because you need to have all footage involved on the overlaying device... So the iPhone5 cannot be used for this (as long as you can not make storage available). Not convenient but possible is this scenario: recording using LapTimer on your iPhone5 with GPS / OBD connected and SD set to save save, and using MultiCam on your iPhone4. To overlay, transfer the session to the iPhone4 using LapTimer's export to .hlptrl Once you receive the export mail on your iPhone4, open and import that session export into your LapTimer app on the iPhone4. Re-Link the master video to the lap and optionally transfer the SD video from your iPhone5. Overlay the laps required on your iPhone4. You need to turn off the automatic transfer of footage from MultiCam to iCloud in this scenario. Instead, move the video recorded within MultiCam to your Photo library so both MultiCam and LapTimer can access it on your iPhone4.

As the process requires you to be a real LapTimer wizard, please read the video documentation and the MultiCam and Video Management sections in particular: http://www.gps-laptimer.com/LapTimerDoc ... hapter.pdf

- Harry

[Frank997]

Hi Harry,

Thank you for your feedback.

>Received the export but it has no GPS data included...
Does this mean the connection of my GPS sensor to HLT failed? The BT menu of the iPhone showed it as connected.

When GPS doesn't work at all, no OBD data is stored either.
Why is that? I do not see the necessity of having GPS data to store the data of the engine (although I would prefer the speed to be shown than the rpms, etc. if I could or had to choose between both).

What's strange though is that when starting Overlay the app shows a screen saying "Hauptfilm o.k., Overlay Daten verfügbar, verarbeite Runde #... des Tages". So there should be some data available, shouldn't they?

Can we check the other stints or is it likely to fail as well?
Should I send you the additional exports?
It would be great if we could recover the data...

Also one example of yesterday (with the other iPhone4)?
Because I suspect that there had been problems with GPS as my picture I uploaded above in this thread seems to show a "NO FIX" message which has to do with the GPS signal, hasn't it?
And i am sure that was not the case when starting my tests yesterday.

I think it would be great to implement a warning so that the user knows there will be no (or corrupt) data later in the overlayed video.


>As the process requires you to be a real LapTimer wizard...
Yes, it sounds like that's true. So I might want to think about using an iPhone 5 (or an iPad or iPad Mini?) with some empty space as the master and the iPhone 4 only as a slave. everything elese seem to complicate life further...


One other question: I tried today (on a 2 year old BMW, 525d) with my iPhone 5 and it worked (which somehow confirms your information that the iPhone 4 is the guilty element). But I could not see the new OBD information which I had seen the day before yesterday while trying with the 997 S: Fuel status, power and (water?) temperature. And I am quite sure that this information had not been shown at the race track (same car, different iPhone 4) neither. Is there any configuration to do which enables the additional information?

Regards
Frank

[Harry]

I assume once you started video recording manually, the sensor data has not been processed any more due to the overload. When a system passes its design load, any system behavior gets pretty unpredictable. Typical large scale system management would simply kill the process from outside to get rid of the process running wild and consuming all system resources. I will probably disable the video function for iPhone4 devices once external sensors are attached - as a workaround. Btw: in case a sensor does not deliver data fro several seconds, LapTimer closes and re-opens the connection - which in turn adds load temporary. As written above, it is an extremely difficult task to make a piece of software recover on its own in situations like this. As we know the root cause already, it makes little sense to spend time on this either.

It is easy to check availability of data by yourself. In case a lap shows a small track symbol, GPS/OBD/acceleration data is probably not usable, but available. Enter the lap and check the number of fixes the Data Recording Section displays to get more details. In case you find such laps but diagrams show strange data, I can check if it is possible to strip it down to something usable. In case you see no track shape or get no Data Recording section in Lap Details, there is no data to work on.

There is no special configuration by car. Connection needs to work correctly (so the dongle needs be paired with the right iPhone - turn BT off for other iPhones around as long as not used as MultiCam devices), but that's 98% of the game. There are certainly compatibility issues from time to time, but that needs to be checked in details and is probably a different topic.

Sorry, I can't help more...

- Harry