How-to: Use Altimeter Data to Overlay Dashware Gauges on Video

I had a question in someone else's thread about overlaying gauges on video to display altitude and velocity. I wrote up a how-to, but not to hijack that thread any further, I decided to post it here:

https://danno.org/RocketBlog/howto_dashware.php

If you find any mistakes in the instructions or have questions, please PM me or reply here.

That's pretty sweet. It would be cool to see if there was an open source version of that software.

Nice!

Greg

I just used it for the first time. I have 2 complaints about Dashware after this first attempt:

1) Video output quality is inferior to original (input).
2) Sound in the output file is 0.7 seconds ahead of the image!

I hate poor video quality, and even moreso I despise audio sync issues.

I will play with it some more to see if I can fix both - maybe there are tweaks available in the program.

Maybe you have some experience with these issues and can recommend countermeasures?

I used Dashware with half dozen videos and did not have any issues with image quality or sync.

If i had to guess, you are upscaling original video or changing its frame rate. Be careful in selecting output file format and its codecs, it is not very obvious from the dialog.

I was importing and exporting .mpg files from DashWare, for what it's worth. It's possible that if it's trying to convert to/from other file formats, it's not doing so correctly.

azzie said:

I used Dashware with half dozen videos and did not have any issues with image quality or sync.

If i had to guess, you are upscaling original video or changing its frame rate. Be careful in selecting output file format and its codecs, it is not very obvious from the dialog.

Click to expand...

No, I imported 1080p 30fps .mov format. The output doesn't appear to give any options when you "create video". It creates an .mp4 file.

How does one change the output format?

sti_ffy said:

How does one change the output format?

Click to expand...

You can pick output video profile in "Output Settings" section of main screen. I think it defaults to 720p output with 18mbit/s bit rate.

To see particular settings of a given video profile, go to File - Edit Video Profiles. It won't let you see settings of "built-in" profiles, but you can clone it and then edit settings if codec/video/audio/mixer.


PS. Another option is to create a video with the gauge alone, then use a better video editor to overlay the gauge on footage - but this goes well beyond just dashware discussion

-Alex

mp4 format (DVD format) has the sound synchronized with the frame. The older mp2 format does not. Check the format of your source video. google the file name extention to get information on your input file. If the sound is not synchronized in thesource format there's no guarantee on the output. If you have multiple option for your source video, pick one that employs synchronized sound.

Bob

I've had problems in the past with video/audio sync using the .MOV format from an older camera. I recall that I would convert it from MOV to MPEG before I did any other editing, and that fixed it, but I don't remember what program I used to do that conversion. The last couple of cameras I've used have used MPEG natively, so I haven't had to deal with it recently.

azzie said:

You can pick output video profile in "Output Settings" section of main screen.

Click to expand...

No wonder I'm so confused. What "Output settings"? My main screen has only "Input settings".

You have a trial version of Dashware which have not been activated. It does not allow saving output videos - so you are seeing just a preview.

I can render the video for you - upload .mov and .pds files to dropbox or something and PM me the location.


-Alex

azzie said:

You have a trial version of Dashware which have not been activated.
-Alex

Click to expand...

I bought it and activated it before I ever tried using it. What makes you say it isn't activated?

Arghhh. I get it now. I upgraded to the version you are using (1.6.4) and it looks like Dashware moved away from commercial encoders (MainConcept) to free ffmpeg. Despite ffmpeg having hundreds of options, Dashware lets pick only bitrate. That's an interesting development...

If you want, try an older version (link) and see if it makes a difference. You'lll need to uninstall newer version first. License key works fine for both.

Thanks for posting this thread - do a search on google for dashware and rocket and this comes up...

The instructions on the blog are great too, thanks for that.

I was able to create a project and sync the data with some on board footage of mine, but when I went to create the clip I keep getting "Error rendering FFMpeg Error clFFmpegWrapper::Transcode 1349 Error number -22 occured"...

Anyone got a clue how to resolve this? I googled the hell out of it and got no where - beyond complex coding discussions...

I'm hoping that someone with some practical experience maybe able to suggest a solution - thank you.

Sorry - I've never seen that particular error before. I was about to direct you to the DashWare Facebook group, and say, "oh hey, somebody just posted with the same problem"...and realized that was you.

In general, for that kind of problem, I would guess that either a) trying a different output video format or b) using a video conversion utility to convert your original video to a different format before pulling it into DashWare might fix the problem. The converter I use is "Any Video Converter" but there are probably a lot of them out there.

Good luck!

Danno said:

Sorry - I've never seen that particular error before. I was about to direct you to the DashWare Facebook group, and say, "oh hey, somebody just posted with the same problem"...and realized that was you.

In general, for that kind of problem, I would guess that either a) trying a different output video format or b) using a video conversion utility to convert your original video to a different format before pulling it into DashWare might fix the problem. The converter I use is "Any Video Converter" but there are probably a lot of them out there.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Many thanks for the reply.

I ended up uninstalling and re-installing. I did manage to create a clip but still had some issues along the way. So tried some different things, using the default output directory seemed to do the trick initially, but then it only created a snippet. So I tried again and ticked the "oversample" box - which worked.

Another thing I tried was to convert the MTS first to WMV, which also seemed to help.

Using the Microsoft Foundation setting instead of FFmpeg still crashes the program though...

Great software, your blog was tremendously helpful - I couldn't find anything except for this thread and your blog, that was specific to rocketry. I should mention, I did post a thread and link to your blog on ausrocketry forum FWIW. Hopefully more people will use the software and share tricks/tips etc...

This is a great post along with your blog. Dashware is awesome, but it is not very intuitive, I must say. I can usually pick up software pretty quickly, but I needed to refer to your blog a few times during the course of my project. Thanks.

I think Dashware is now affiliated with GoPro? Makes sense. Maybe that will prompt some changes. I also like GoPro Studio for all my video editing.

I know that this is an old post but I wanted to say thank you for the concise directions on how to use Dashware. I tried it out last night and it looks great. I'll definitely be using it on my future videos.

ChrisAttebery said:

I know that this is an old post but I wanted to say thank you for the concise directions on how to use Dashware. I tried it out last night and it looks great. I'll definitely be using it on my future videos.

Click to expand...

I'm happy to return the favor, since I used your Doorknob build thread (and your e-bay kit) when I built mine.

Thanks for posting this! :wink:

It can do a lot once you get your head around it. I did a bunch of trail videos with it. Was inspired by the Space X barge landing so made up gauges in the Space X style.


[youtube]vYonIEsNOtM[/youtube]

Nice gauges Matt.

Hrmmm. Unfortunately I can't even get DashWare to launch, it complains about a missing function in msvcrt.dll, I followed MS's instructions to restore the original file from my XP CD and that made absolutely no difference. The rare instances I end up dealing with Windows only make me that much happier to be a Mac user.

Looks like a really cool program. Adds a cool touch to the launch videos.

I got Dashware working last night. I redid the video of my Punisher 4 test flight I posted over the weekend:

[YOUTUBE]xV9GPbGtnHo[/YOUTUBE]

ChrisAttebery said:

I got Dashware working last night. I redid the video of my Punisher 4 test flight I posted over the weekend:

[YOUTUBE]xV9GPbGtnHo[/YOUTUBE]

Click to expand...

Nice. No roll. What is the motor?

Ok I've been asked to share my Space X gauges...

I'm not sure if there is an easy way cluster gauges together, so I simply produced 3 of them - time, speed and altitude.

I initially thought I had to pass max speed and max altitude values from the log file, it turn out that is not the case. However I left an Animated Arc in there in for the max values in case someone wanted to use it to provide a "peak hold" feature (which is not what spacer X does). To use it you would have to delete the Arc(0,0) entry as this provides a fixed gray arc.

So effectively your log file only needs to supply the time, speed and altitude. You do not need to assign input variables for max speed and max altitude. What you do need to do for each flight is to go into the second Animated Arc of the speed and altitude gauges.


In each gauge under the Range Settings you need to change the Max Value to be maximum speed or maximum altitude that is achieved in that flight.


Hope this all makes sense.

Enjoy

View attachment SpaceX.zip

Thanks. It was a J449BS.

Buckeye said:

Nice. No roll. What is the motor?

Click to expand...

Thanks for posting them Matt. I'll take a look at them over the weekend.