Create video overlays from GoPro Videos or any GPX/FIT file

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• Overlaying exciting graphics onto GoPro videos with super-exact synchronization
• Create videos from any GPX or FIT file - no GoPro required
• Support multiple resolutions, most GoPro models, normal, timelapse & timewarp modes
• Support GPUs to create movies at up to 17x realtime
• Convert GoPro movie metadata to GPX or CSV files
• Cut sections from GoPro movies (including metadata)

Examples

An Example of 'overlay only' mode, which generates movies from GPX files

Example from examples/layout

Map Styles

Almost 30 different map styles are supported! - See map styles for more

Example

.	.	.	.

Requirements

• Python3.10 (development is done on Python3.11)
• ffmpeg (you'll need the ffmpeg program installed)
• libraqm (needed by Pillow)
• Unixy machine (probably, untested on Windows)

Installation

Install locally using pip, or use the provided Docker image

Optional: Some widgets require the cairo library - which must be installed separately.

Installing and running with docker

The docker image is a new thing and still a bit experimental... please file an issue if you find any problems.

The docker image contains all you need to get started, and uses a volume /work/, which we suggest you map to the current directory which can contain your GoPro files. Note that the docker version doesn't support nvidia GPU extensions.

The most recent version on docker is:

docker run -it -v "$(pwd):/work" overlaydash/gopro-dashboard-overlay:<version> <program> [args...]

e.g.

docker run -it -v "$(pwd):/work" overlaydash/gopro-dashboard-overlay:0.92.0 gopro-dashboard.py GH010122.MP4 render/docker.MP4

Files created by the program will be created with the same uid that owns the mapped directory.

You can use the --cache-dir and --config-dir command line arguments to configure where the cache and config dirs are, thereby making it easier to use persistent mapped volumes.

Installing and running with pip

python -m venv venv
venv/bin/pip install gopro-overlay

The Roboto font needs to be installed on your system. You could install it with one of the following commands maybe.

pacman -S ttf-roboto
apt install truetype-roboto
apt install fonts-roboto

(Optional) Installing pycairo

Optionally, install pycairo

venv/bin/pip install pycairo==1.23.0

You might need to install some system libraries - This is what the pycairo docs suggest:

Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install libcairo2-dev pkg-config python3-dev

macOS/Homebrew: brew install cairo pkg-config

Overlaying a dashboard

venv/bin/gopro-dashboard.py

The GPS track in Hero 9 (at least) seems to be very poor. If you supply a GPX file from a Garmin or whatever, the program will use this instead for the GPS.

Privacy allows you to set a privacy zone. Various widgets will not draw points within that zone.

The data recorded in the GoPro video will uses GPS time, which (broadly) is UTC. The renderer will use your local timezone to interpret this, and use the local timezone. This may produce strange results if you go on holiday somewhere, but then render the files when you get back home! On linux you can use the TZ variable to change the timezone that's used.

Example

For full instructions on all command lines see docs/bin

venv/bin/gopro-dashboard.py --gpx ~/Downloads/Morning_Ride.gpx --privacy 52.000,-0.40000,0.50 ~/gopro/GH020073.MP4 GH020073-dashboard.MP4

Writeups

There's a great writeup of how to use the software to make an overlay from a GPX file at https://blog.cubieserver.de/2022/creating-gpx-overlay-videos-on-linux/ (Nov 2022)

Format of the Dashboard Configuration file

Several dashboards are built-in to the software, but the dashboard layout is highly configurable, controlled by an XML file.

For more information on the (extensive) configurability of the layout please see docs/xml and lots of examples

FFMPEG Control & GPUs

Experimental

FFMPEG has a lot of options! This program comes with some mostly sensible defaults, but to use GPUs and control the output much more carefully, including framerates and bitrates, you can use a JSON file containing a number of 'profiles' and select the profile you want when running the program.

For more details on how to select these, and an example of Nvidia GPU, please see docs/bin/PERFORMANCE_GUIDE.md

Please also see PERFORMANCE.md

Converting to GPX files

venv/bin/gopro-to-gpx.py <input-file> [output-file]

Joining a sequence of MP4 files together

Use the gopro-join.py command. Given a single file from the sequence, it will find and join together all the files. If you have any problems with this, please do raise an issue - I don't have that much test data.

The joined file almost certainly won't work in the GoPro tools! - But it should work with gopro-dashboard.py - I will look into the additional technical stuff required to make it work in the GoPro tools.

This will require a lot of disk space!

venv/bin/gopro-join.py /media/sdcard/DCIM/100GOPRO/GH030170.MP4 /data/gopro/nice-ride.MP4

Cutting a section from a GoPro file

You can cut a section of the gopro file, with metadata.

Related Software

• https://github.com/julesgraus/interactiveGoProDashboardTool - An interactive helper to build the command line for the dashboard program

Known Bugs / Issues

• Only tested on a GoPro Hero 9/11, that's all I have. Sample files for other devices are welcomed.

Icons

Icon files in icons are not covered by the MIT licence

Map Data

Data © OpenStreetMap contributors

Some Maps © Thunderforest

References

https://github.com/juanmcasillas/gopro2gpx

https://github.com/JuanIrache/gopro-telemetry

https://github.com/gopro/gpmf-parser

https://coderunner.io/how-to-compress-gopro-movies-and-keep-metadata/

Other Related Software

https://github.com/progweb/gpx2video

https://github.com/JuanIrache/gopro-telemetry

Latest Changes

If you find any issues with new releases, please discuss in GitHub Discussions

• 0.100.0 [Breaking] Don't load GRAV/ACCL/CORI by default - its slow
  • [Breaking] Use EXTEND mode for GPX, so only add in additional data items. Use --gpx-merge OVERWRITE to restore previous behaviour. Previously it was all-or-none for GPX, now can choose to add hr/cad/power to GPX track from GoPro.
• 0.99.0 [Internal Changes Only] No user-visible changes expected.
• 0.98.0 [Feature] Add configurable background colour with --bg rgba thanks to @mishuha in discussion time4tea#120 for the concept.
• 0.97.0 [Feature] Add new map style "local" - which will connect to a tileserver running locally on port 8000. This may be useful if you want to use a completely custom map - like a hand drawn one.
  • For more details see: time4tea#132 Thanks to @mattghub1 for the concept.
• 0.96.0 [Feature] Hopefully add support for older gopro files when joining. #129 Thanks @FFMbyBicycle for raising and some example code.
• 0.95.0 [Feature] Add api key support for geocode.xyz - #117 Thanks @mishuha for raising.
• 0.94.0 [Change] Update docker image to python3.11/ffmpeg 6.0
• 0.93.0 [Feature] Support for fully gpu decoding/overlay/encoding. Huge performance increase now possible. It takes a bit of work, but now can render at 12x realtime. See docs/bin/PERFORMANCE_GUIDE.md
  • [Breaking] Remove support for --output-size as it didn't really work properly anyway.
• 0.92.0 [Feature] --double-buffer - EXPERIMENTAL double-buffering. Potentially much faster rendering, but may not work on all architectures. Speed improvements highly dependent on ffmpeg performance. Likely much faster when using --generate overlay. Feedback welcomed.
• 0.91.0 [Fix] Ignore FIT data items that don't have a GPS location. #122 Thanks @patkoscsaba for raising.
• 0.90.0 [Change] cairo-circuit now draws much more quickly.
• [Change] Map rendering caches tile images more efficiently, so draws more quickly.
• 0.89.0 [Feature] New component cairo-gauge-round-annotated - A bit like a car speedometer - See docs docs/xml/examples/06-cairo-gauge-round-annotated
• 0.88.0 [Fix] Journey Map broke when no there were no locked GPS points in the movie.
  • Thanks @shahargli for reporting
• 0.87.0 [Fix/Breaking Possibly] chart - discovered a few bugs, now fixed. Removed alpha, instead use alpha of each colour.
• 0.86.0 [Feature] New component cairo-gauge-marker - a nice clean gauge component, with a marker for the current value.. See docs docs/xml/examples/06-cairo-gauge-marker
• 0.85.0 [Feature/Breaking Possibly] Add validation to attributes in layout files. This may cause some custom layouts to break! - But they wouldn't have been working as intended.
  • [Change/Breaking] Change some zone-bar attribute names, aiming for standardisation
  • [Change/Breaking] Change some cairo-circuit-map attribute names, aiming for standardisation

Older changes are in CHANGELOG.md