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Start a GPX track moved before the video at the video's start - #873

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caglarpir merged 5 commits into
mapillary:mainfrom
caglarpir:clip-assumed-start-track-at-video-start
Oct 22, 2026
Merged

caglarpir merged 5 commits into
mapillary:mainfrom
caglarpir:clip-assumed-start-track-at-video-start

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Stacked on #872; review the last commit.

Problem

For a video without a GPS clock, process places a GPX track at the start of the video (assumed, or by --interpolation_use_gpx_start_time). --interpolation_offset_time then moves the track back, before video time 0. The upload drops the points before 0 without putting one at 0, so the first frames had no position: with an offset of 2.5 s and a point a second, the first half second of the video.

The warning of a track that runs on for more than twice the video (#861) also said, with an offset, that the video was assumed to start with the track.

Fix

Clip such a track at the start of the video, with a point interpolated at video time 0 (_clip_track(points, None) from #860), as a track a clock places is clipped at both ends. Its end is left as it is, as the track of a timelapse without a GPS clock runs on past the end of the video (#860, #861). Sampling is unchanged.

With an offset, #861's warning now says where along the track the offset places the start of the video, and lists checking the offset next to trimming the GPX (or NMEA) and video_process --video_start_time. Without one it is unchanged.

Verification

  • Insta360 ONE X timelapse with its GPX and offset 2.5: the track starts with a point at 0 at the GPX position 2.5 s in (was from -2500 ms), and its end is unchanged. Same for a Sony FDR-X3000 with its GPX.
  • Without an offset, the tracks and warnings are unchanged. Videos placed by their GPS clock, and video_process, are unchanged.
  • New unit tests. Unit and integration tests, doctests, mypy --python-version 3.9, ruff check, ruff format --check and usort diff are clean.

The README lists NMEA among the sources that geotag videos, but no video
was read from an NMEA file: process and video_process gave the video no
description at all, and exited 0, so it was silently left out. Sampling
fell back to the GPS in the video, which a video recorded with an
external logger does not have.

Read the NMEA file into a track and place it on the video exactly as a
GPX track is: synced by the GPS clock of the video, or by
--video_start_time, or assumed to start with the video, with the
interpolation options, the coverage checks and the clipping of process.
GPXVideoExtractor now reads its file through _parse_tracks(), which
NMEAVideoExtractor overrides, and names the format of the file in its
messages. A file that is not valid NMEA is reported as an invalid GPX
file is. Interval sampling checks an NMEA track started with the video
by --interpolation_use_gpx_start_time as it checks a GPX track.

On an action camera video with a GPX and the same track as NMEA, process gives
the same track, and video_process samples the same frames at the same
positions.
Images geotagged from an NMEA file failed with a traceback when the
file had an RMC sentence without a date, such as the last one of a log
cut short (TypeError), or GGA sentences and no RMC sentence at all
(UnboundLocalError), and a video was failed as if the file were not
NMEA. A void RMC sentence, which receivers log before they acquire a
fix, gave the date of their unset clock, and a GGA sentence without a
fix added a point at 0, 0. Only $GP sentences were read, so a log of a
receiver of several systems, which writes $GN sentences, gave no points
at all.

Skip RMC sentences that are void or have no date or time, and GGA
sentences without a time or a fix, and read the sentences of any
talker, keeping the first fix of each time, so that a receiver that logs
a fix from two talkers does not give two points at the same time. GGA
sentences without the date of any RMC sentence give no points, with a
warning. The points read from valid files are the same.
process searches a directory for the images and videos it can process,
and skips the other files. It skipped a file named explicitly the same
way, without a word: `process VID.insv` processed 0 files and exited 0,
with nothing on stderr, so a user could not tell why the video was not
there.

Warn of such a file. It is still skipped, and the run does not fail:
callers that pass the files a user selected rely on that, and find the
skipped files in the process report (--process_report_path). A zip file
is not warned of, as process_and_upload uploads it.
video_process samples each video into a folder of its own in the import
path, and then processes the import path with the same options. With
--skip_subfolders, the processing step skipped those folders: it found
no samples, wrote an empty description file and exited 0, and
video_process_and_upload uploaded nothing.

Process, and upload, the sample folders of the videos as import paths
of their own. --skip_subfolders still keeps the other subfolders of the
import path out, and the description file is written to the import path,
as without the option.
For a video without a GPS clock, process places a GPX track at the start
of the video: it assumes the track starts with it, or
--interpolation_use_gpx_start_time says so. --interpolation_offset_time
then moves the track back, before the start of the video. The upload
drops the points before video time 0 without putting one at 0, so the
first frames had no position: with an offset of 2.5 seconds and a point
every second, the first half second of the video.

Clip such a track at the start of the video, with a point interpolated
at video time 0, as a track that a clock places is clipped at both ends.
Its end is left as it is, as the track of a timelapse without a GPS
clock runs on past the end of the video. Sampling, which reads its track
only within the video, is unchanged.

The warning of a track that runs on for more than twice the video said,
with an offset too, that the video was assumed to start with the track.
With an offset, it now says where along the track the offset places the
start of the video, and lists checking the offset next to trimming the
GPX and video_process --video_start_time. Without one, it is unchanged.
@caglarpir
caglarpir force-pushed the clip-assumed-start-track-at-video-start branch from f464fd4 to bf4a238 Compare October 22, 2026 20:18
@caglarpir
caglarpir merged commit 075958d into mapillary:main Oct 22, 2026
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