GPS data overlay on Video

G'day all,

I am planning to do a few videos one my bike, I have a camera and I have my GPS(N95) and I want to overlay the GPS information (speed, distance, heading etc) onto the video.

I know there are number of ways such as overlay boxes which you plug the GPS into the overlay box and have the video feed through it and it records it directly onto the video recorder, and the other option been using a computer and have it overlay on the run in real-time..

Now its a bit hard to have a laptop on a bike and the GPS overlay box costs a fortune, what I am looking for is something that I can take separate video and gps tracks and combine them in post production, obviously i would have to be able to match the start times for this to work.

Does anyone know of any application that can do this... or another way of making this type of thing work?

sort of similar to how knoxie has done his data logger on
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=5147649837318141523

Most guys just try to put the screen of the GPS in front of the camera so you can see it. Of course this makes it jiggly, out of focus, and amost impossible to read.

A software to do this would be cool, but I haven't seen one that would do it.

yeah thats why i was thinking of doing it

Fush said:

G'day all,

I am planning to do a few videos one my bike, I have a camera and I have my GPS(N95) and I want to overlay the GPS information (speed, distance, heading etc) onto the video.

I know there are number of ways such as overlay boxes which you plug the GPS into the overlay box and have the video feed through it and it records it directly onto the video recorder, and the other option been using a computer and have it overlay on the run in real-time..

Now its a bit hard to have a laptop on a bike and the GPS overlay box costs a fortune, what I am looking for is something that I can take separate video and gps tracks and combine them in post production, obviously i would have to be able to match the start times for this to work.

Does anyone know of any application that can do this... or another way of making this type of thing work?

sort of similar to how knoxie has done his data logger on
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=5147649837318141523

Click to expand...

I'm sure existing programs would be able to take text and maybe a timecode and place merge it automatically with video. Maybe look at subtitling software?

Can you get a datalog from the N95 with speeds etc at what times? just in a text file? If you can get this for processing, then half the trouble is fixed . I'll give it some thought.

Doesn't knoxie do stuff like this? Maybe he can tell.

Yeah dumping it to text is easy, it can export google maps/earth, GPX, XML and CSV, it also has dump data but i don't know what it dumps it to.

Hi Fush

Yes its a cool thing to do!! and easy (when you know how) I use a program called Camtasia, its used for capturing your computer screen for use in instructional training videos and the like, all you do it start it running and then playback whatever you like in the window and set it to record.

You then simply overlay this in your video editing software as I did, I also use camtasia when playing the GPS tracks.

I use memory map (no good to you its uk only) but its great for highlighting the GPS data, I use a Garmin Quest which does all the data logging, there must be an application out there that can play that back in real time, if not I could write one! you can dump the data out and play, even a bit of messing about in Excel and VB you may get something easy, else there must be an app to do it.

The data logger I used for that has a speed sensor but I didnt use it, I figured there was already enough info on the screen!!

Its a lot of fun, I will have a dig about on the GPS side and see what I can find, Garmin may do something that will work.

Cheers, Looking forward to your videos!

Knoxie