Harry's GPS Suite Forum

Despite being an IT/programmer/app-developer guy and having spent many hours this past year with LapTimer, I cannot get more than 1 lap to overlay.
I have followed Harry's "How to add a video recorded externally to laps recorded by Harry's LapTimer" on YouTube and thereby gotten the 1st lap of a session to overlay.
I'm recording with a GoPro 5 and LapTimer controls it perfectly. Laptimer version 22.0.4 Grand Prix Edition.
I have successfully made my neighborhood a "track", recorded it, used "wifi" to copy the video from the GoPro to LapTimer's local "sandbox" and made an overlay of the 1st lap.
I even got one 3GB real track video copied to the sandbox. (Forgot how, it was a year ago, but using my desktop.)
That video has 12 laps. Following Harry's YouTube instructions I can get the first lap of the video assigned to the 1st lap as the "Master".
I select the 1st lap, select "Edit", select "Add video", select the video from the sandbox, set the ending time for the 1st lap (according to the lap time) and select "Full Session". This shows all the laps, the ending times look good, but only the first lap show "Master", all others show PIP.

Going back to the lap list, all the video icons are set. However, when I now pick any lap, click on the video to play it, I get an "Cannot find video selected", even on the 1st lap. Still on the 1st lap, I was able to select "Export", ignore the error about missing video and I get an overlay of the 1st lap only.

I have no interest in PIP. What am I doing wrong?
Seems like everyone on this forum knows how to make overlays work. But when I go to a track, it seems like half the people have LapTimer, few know how to integrate it with a GoPro and no one knows how to make overlays.

Next, while I succeeded once with one 300MB video, I cannot get Wifi transfers from the GoPro to work on 3GB files. I can get the Wifi connected, the video appears (slowly) for each lap, but I don't know how to force it into the Sandbox. I know the Wifi transfer might take hours, but I can keep the GoPro and the iPhone powered up and charging for hours.
I tried using the GoPro app to Wifi the file, but it goes into the main video folder and while LapTimer (after selecting the video for the lap) will show the thumbnail of the video for each lap, it will not run the video and will not overlay it. I don't see any way to copy a file from the main video folder to the Laptimer sandbox.
I recall getting it to Wifi copy once showing some type of "Copying file" message, but don't know how to force it.

Thanks for any help.

This are quite a few questions

To start with PiP: LapTimer allows you to associate more than one video with a lap. The first one will be the Master and all others picture in picture. You can change the role of a video by reordering it: for iOS, select Edit in Lap Details and drag videos into the order you like; for Android, long press a video in Lap Details to get reorder buttons.

To overlay more than one lap to a video, these laps need to follow each other without a gap. This is the case for tracks with stop/go triggers. Obviously, they need to have the same master video associated in addition.

Transferring videos using WiFi is not recommended. GoPro transfer is tricky (confirmed) and their own app does a better job than LapTimer here. Videos transferred will go into Gallery / Photos apps - which is no problem as LapTimer should be able to access them.

LapTimer’s Video Documentation (www.gps-laptimer.de/documentation) recommends a wired transfer, please check the respective section.

As you do not say which version of LapTimer and OS you are using: take care to go for the latest LapTimer. Older versions had problems with spaces and accent characters in video file names, but you may want to use a standard name to be sure.

Harry

Thank you for the quick reply.
I did mention: Laptimer version 22.0.4 Grand Prix Edition. And now adding: iOS 11.4.1 on an iPhone 6.
The 3GB video was taken at Grattan Raceway which is on your list of tracks. So I assume these laps "follow each other without a gap". (Didn't really understand what that meant.)
I will try the "re-order" you mentioned, but while documenting everything for my first post, I deleted the video from the 1st lap and this unfortunately deleted the video from the sandbox. (Perhaps this should be considered a bug - video files should only be deletable from the Video list, not from a lap.

While I appreciate the quick support here, I suspect many users barely plan to scratch the surface of what LapTimer can do. In contrast, the app Track Addict (by HP Tuners) is trivial to use and created an overlap with zero effort on the first try. It does not integrate with GoPro; else I would use it. My only goals are to create overlays for YouTube and be able to analyze the G forces within turns If Track Addict added GoPro support, it would be a serious competitor to LapTimer. Just trying to give friendly and helpful feedback.

Videos can be deleted from Lap List only in case no lap references the video any more and after a second confirmation. That’s how it is designed.

Please update to 22.0.5 now, it should be available on AppStore now. “follow each other without a gap” should describe the situation a new lap is started immediately when the former is finished. This is the standard for all closed tracks. Autocrosses and hill climbs are not in this category.

LapTimer addresses technical oriented users and often chooses the route functionality has priority against simplicity. Oddly, it is not possible to achieve both often. Handling action cams support is a good sample. Not using this feature will make things a lot easier. User have the choice here.

Harry

Thanks. I have finally gotten overlays to work. Since the video often showed up as the "PIP Video" with "No Video" listed for the Master Video, I have learned to delete the Master "No Video", which then moves the PIP Video to the Master Video slot. Deleting the "No Video" was not an obvious step. I had to do the same for each lap.

I have also learned to fine-tune the video-data synchronization which required repeating the overlay process several times. Each time I had to go to each lap and press "Revert" to clear the previous overlay video out of each lap. Again, not an obvious step.
Not the fault of LapTimer, but I suspect that the Start/Finish line for Grattan Raceway is in the wrong place because there is no mark on the track; this is the reason I had to fine-tune the synchronization several times.

Two hints:

Instead of deleting the master entries to make the PiP the master, press Edit in the top right and drag the PiP to the Master position. You can keep the master / NO ViDEO entry and the sync information stored in particular.

When optimizing synchronization, do not use the video Export function - this generates a new video, requires a long time and space. Instead, press the Play button in Lap Details - this will show the overlaid video instantly using the same sync information as used for an export later,

Harry