Garmin Virb Elite

[FaroukRohoman]

Can FMV use the position information (metadata) that the Garmin Virb Elite records?

Farouk Rohoman

[DanPatterson_Retired]

any device that supports the formats listed here can be used according to the FAQ

https://community.esri.com/docs/DOC-8379 

[FaroukRohoman]

Thanks fro the information Dan

[CodyBenkelman]

Farouk

If you're going to ask advice here about metadata, please include information about (or a sample of) the metadata with your question.  You'll get more answers if you do not require each of us to go do our own research to fill in the missing parts of your question.   

A colleague of mine is familiar with the Virb Elite, and based on his experience and what I found here  VIRB Elite Action Camera | Garmin I believe the answer is yes - you should have the required metadata, but some reformatting will be required for the multiplexer to work.

The FMV add-in needs GPS at a minimum (to know the location of the camera), and ideally three orientation angles written in compliance with the MISB specification (which you can find here http://www.gwg.nga.mil/misb/zip_pubs.html but this is probably more information than you need).  I don't know for certain, but I think the Virb Elite does *not* write data in MISB format, but if you can get at all of the GPS and orientation metadata in ASCII text format, the FMV geoprocessing tools include a multiplexer which allows you to create MISB formatted metadata in the video stream.  See this link for a tutorial:   Tutorial for Full Motion Video 1.3.1 is availab... | GeoNet  

The video file format (MP4) *is* compatible with FMV.

[FaroukRohoman]

Hello Cody:

Thanks for the information.  I did not include the file as it was fairly large. Just thought that some user may have used the Virb already.  I know that that I  can get the data from the unit in gpx format but the sensor orientation is not part of the export.

Thanks again

Farouk Rohoman

[JeffLiedtke]

Hello Farouk,

The Garmin VIRB XE includes both a GPS and orientation sensors.  The GPS sensor supplies the camera position info while the orientation sensor supplies the heading, pitch, roll and yaw (also known as "crab") parameters. These, together with the sensor height info (provided by the altimeter) and time stamp are the minimum info needed by the FMV application to compute the video frame footprint on the map.

I took a look at the Garmin VIRB Elite manual and see that it includes the GPS info, but no reference to the orientation information.  So it looks like this info is not available with the Elite.  With just the GPS location info and the time stamp, you can display the sensor position on the map (but not the video frame footprint).  And you will not be able to digitize features in the FMV video player and/or the map without those orientation parameters.

If you want to display the sensor ground track on the map, rename your gpx file extension to .xml.  This can then be directly imported into Excel and saved out as a CSV file.  The FMV User's Manual https://community.esri.com/docs/DOC-8607 details steps to ensure your metadata conforms to the MISB standard needed by the FMV application - see the Video Multiplexer section (page 39, through page 50).

Jeff

[FaroukRohoman]

Thanks very much Jeff

This clears things up.  I assume that the multiplexer attaches the XYZ, sensor size and orientation (omega, phi, kappa) to each frame of the video thus allowing the reconstruction of the "footprint" on the ground

Thanks again FMV has now become a valuable application

Faouk Rohoman

[JeffLiedtke]

Farouk,

I just wanted to reach out with an update.  The new Garmin VIRB Ultra camera records the proper metadata for use in the FMV Video Multiplexer tool.  We are working directly with Garmin for an integrated solution that produces a CSV file that can be directly input into the multiplexer tool.  This integrated solution should be available in early 2017.

Regards,

Jeff

[SteveLepp]

Hi Jeff,

How's the integration solution for the Garmin VIRB Ultra camera going? We are looking the easiest off-the-shelf video camera to mount to a vehicle and use the resulting video within FMV.

Cheers

Steve

[ZaraCarman]

I believe this blog post is about this feature: https://community.esri.com/community/gis/imagery-and-remote-sensing/blog/2017/07/05/garmin-virb-came...