How-To: Render Video Using RaceRender

[Sam Reed]

Don't have a SmartyCam, but want to overlay telemetry on your GoPro, Insta360, CamBox, or other video?

Blair gave me some video from his helmet-mounted CamBox v4 at Sebring which is really great, visceral stuff. But rendering it properly creates a few difficulties:

• The onboard SmartyCam failed to turn on (we're still investigating). Data from the AiM dash was still present.
• Video from CamBox is split into 5 minute segments, with a roughly 2.5sec delay between them (you can't simply concatenate them together, as the data delay will get really bad)
• The Rush SR does not have a brake or throttle position sensor.

If we want a good video, we need to merge properly with the AiM data.

So here's how I did it with RaceStudio 3 and RaceRender:

1. Upload the session into RaceStudio 3. If you haven't done this before, turn on your car, wait for the AiM's WiFi network to appear, connect to it, and the device should display in RaceStudio. This works well on Windows or on OSX using Parallels.
2. Right click the session and hit export. This will create a `.xrk` file which unfortunately does not work with RaceRender.
3. Use the "Batch Convert.." option to convert the file to csv.
   1. 
4. Open RaceRender. Use the csv as your data file and your video as the video track.
   1. If you have multiple video tracks, as I did, you can add them all as a group. If you need to add delays between them, you can do so by using the "Time Filler" option. Right click on a video file and hit "Add Time Filler". You can move it up and down with the "Move Up" and "Move Down" options, and you can adjust its length in the properties menu.
   2. 
   3. Synchronize your video. I find it easiest to do this by using the synchronization wizard and syncing on the car crossing the start/finish line.
5. Map the brake and throttle.
   1. Brake is fairly easy. Look at your AiM data and figure out your max brake pressure for the session, and use that as the top end of the range. I set a minimum of 50 psi just to avoid noise.
      1. 
   2. Throttle is a little more complicated. I use `SDN IGN AN 1 Deg`. From my AiM data, I can deduce that zero throttle is approx 81deg, and full throttle is 37deg. This is backwards! So you'll need to enter the range, then reverse it, then reverse the bar colors(turn light green -> dark green and vice versa) so the bar looks correct.
      1. 
6. Adjust your layout to your liking, and render! Generally I use the same settings as my source materials. For example, if you have 29.97fps 1080p input, then just render 29.97fps 1080p output.

That's it. Here's the video on YouTube. I've also attached the project files and raw data so you can try it yourself.

 

[Andor]

We had a lot of fun at Sebring! Rasmus Lindh turned some excellent laps on Saturday, getting into the 2:17s and won the ST2/SR class for the day. Sunday, Blair turned some very consistent laps and showed superior traffic management, and won both races for the class.

Blair gave me some video from his helmet-mounted CamBox v4 which is really great, visceral stuff. But rendering it properly creates a few difficulties:

• The onboard SmartyCam failed to turn on (we're still investigating). Data from the AiM dash was still present.
• Video from CamBox is split into 5 minute segments, with a roughly 2.5sec delay between them (you can't simply concatenate them together, as the data delay will get really bad)
• The Rush SR does not have a brake or throttle position sensor.

If we want a good video, we need to merge properly with the AiM data.

So here's how I did it with RaceStudio 3 and RaceRender:

1. Upload the session into RaceStudio 3. If you haven't done this before, turn on your car, wait for the AiM's WiFi network to appear, connect to it, and the device should display in RaceStudio. This works well on Windows or on OSX using Parallels.
2. Right click the session and hit export. This will create a `.xrk` file which unfortunately does not work with RaceRender.
3. Use the "Batch Convert.." option to convert the file to csv.
   1. View attachment 9
4. Open RaceRender. Use the csv as your data file and your video as the video track.
   1. If you have multiple video tracks, as I did, you can add them all as a group. If you need to add delays between them, you can do so by using the "Time Filler" option. Right click on a video file and hit "Add Time Filler". You can move it up and down with the "Move Up" and "Move Down" options, and you can adjust its length in the properties menu.
   2. View attachment 10
   3. Synchronize your video. I find it easiest to do this by using the synchronization wizard and syncing on the car crossing the start/finish line.
5. Map the brake and throttle.
   1. Brake is fairly easy. Look at your AiM data and figure out your max brake pressure for the session, and use that as the top end of the range. I set a minimum of 50 psi just to avoid noise.
      1. View attachment 11
   2. Throttle is a little more complicated. I use `SDN IGN AN 1 Deg`. From my AiM data, I can deduce that zero throttle is approx 81deg, and full throttle is 37deg. This is backwards! So you'll need to enter the range, then reverse it, then reverse the bar colors(turn light green -> dark green and vice versa) so the bar looks correct.
      1. View attachment 13
6. Adjust your layout to your liking, and render! Generally I use the same settings as my source materials. For example, if you have 29.97fps 1080p input, then just render 29.97fps 1080p output.

That's it. Here's the video on YouTube. I've also attached the project files and raw data so you can try it yourself.

Great right up Sam!

I also have a Cambox and been wanting to put an overlay and some data from the aim into the video... as well with my GoPro footage so this is great. Thank you for sharing.

FYI, I shared with Blair how to extend the Cambox recordings from 5 min clips to either 10, 15, or 30 min clips, which should make the videos much better to work with.

Received from Victor who works at Cambox:

The default file duration on the V4 models are 5 minutes. This is mainly in order to have light files easier to transfer in the app. However you can change this manually for now (not yet in the app) by opening on your laptop the file from the sd card named config.ini (using note pad). Here one of the first line is file duration. Replace the 5 minute by any of the following : 10 / 15 or 30. Note that I would recommend the 10 minutes value to avoid any video saving issue when the battery is low. Any value others than these ones will go back to default value and won’t be accepted. I hope we’ll have this soon in the app.

 

[Sam Reed]

I also have a Cambox and been wanting to put an overlay and some data from the aim into the video... as well with my GoPro footage so this is great. Thank you for sharing.

Nice - unfortunately we only have one video source for this race, but if we had two, it is pretty easy to do PiP on RaceRender!

 

[Andor]

Nice - unfortunately we only have one video source for this race, but if we had two, it is pretty easy to do PiP on RaceRender!

I am actually in the process of releasing a little video with a PIP showing the rear facing camera I had mounted (like a rear view mirror style)... just a bit difficult to sync both videos but figuring it out

 

[Sam Reed]

I have an update to my RaceRender config, now with a brake/throttle graph which really improves the usability of the video!