Gopro Fusion Workflow

Hi all!
Does somebody have any idea of how to batch-export panoramas in Fusion Studio? I’ve only seen a single image export option: screen|690x178
I’m using the latest version of Fusion Studio (V 1.3.0.400) on Windows 10.

Thanks. :grinning:



decent. Ukrainian mapillary community is amazingly active - slava ukraine!

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if you haven’t found it yet: you need to go to the “rendering” stage, and there under export options among video files you’ll find jpeg and possibly raw. need a screenshot?

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Hi 4004, found it a couple of minutes before your replied. Not as easy, if you are too focused on that 360-button. :wink:
Thanks for that hint, anyways.

Just wanted to add some comments regarding GoPro Fusion use and performance.
Frankly I am not satisfied as the camera itself has a lot of issues (overheating, poor gps, short battery life, big weight, general fragility).

After trying multiple tests I must say that in my opinion this camera is generally usable for bike and foot trails capture and not very good for road (car capture).

Main issue with the car capture is mounting. You can mount Fusion using several options on the roof of the car, but, since the car is generally big and large part of the image is occupied by the car itself.

The only way to improve that situation, is to invent a custom mount on a long pole, which should be at least 1.5m above the roof, 2m even better. Something similar to what you can see on the photo above, or in this thread:
http://mapillary.trydiscourse.com/t/pvc-pipe-magnetic-roof-mount/3035/8

But here come the big cons - poor driving experience and all the limitations related with having such a long ‘monster’ on the roof. Often I am driving highways at 120-140kmh speed and this setup does not seem to be suitable for that kind of use. Also forget about tool booths with height barriers, underground parkings, garages, etc.
For car use I think externally mounted action cam like Xiaomi YI or more expensive GoPro Hero will do much better job (while not delivering 360’ imagery).
Internally mounted dashcam will work as well, however, part of the picture will be ‘lost’. Blackvue DR-900S appears to be a very good option thanks to excellent support by mapillary tools.
Other (legacy) dashcams will require much more effort for pre-processing

So, now a few words about GoPro Fusion in bike&hike scenario.
Generally it’s ok, however, weight is a bit high in my opinion and you have to be very careful as the camera lens are very fragile.
Also, I must warn users that built-in GPS hardware is a very unreliable.
First it can stop working any minute (mainboard overheating or due to whatever else). Also accuracy is very far from being acceptable, especially in dense-buildings or nature locations with obstructed or limited sky view. SO, ALWAYS record a GPS track with your smartphone or any other GPS tracking device.
I have tried Fusion when hiking along the river in the gorge (in the mountains) and compared the ‘tracks’ later.
Fusion: approx 50% of images were missing GPS coordinates. The ones which have them - accuracy was between 5-10 and 300 meters, so the resulting track was not usable.
Osmand tracker on smartphone in the pocket: only 3% of GPS fix loss, overall accuracy was much-much better. Only 10-20 points (out of approx. 2000) were having 100m+ accuracy, while majority was between 5 and 10 meters

Re the workflow, this one works good for me:

  1. stitching in fusion
  2. exiftool to adjust all dates to match actual GPS date/time
  3. Geosetter or exiftool to update GPS coord. with the ones from the track you have recorded (could be probably skipped if you are lucky and no gps-fix lost with good sky view)
  4. Upload with Desktop uploader
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My experience using the Fusion 360 has been okay. Not perfect, but okay.

It’s only completely lost its GPS once (presumably due to overheating as the weather was exceptionally hot). It’s messed up on an image or two in an otherwise good sequence now and then, but the uploader usually catches those shots and rejects them. If not, they become obvious once the map is displayed, and I can manually delete them.

I haven’t had any problems with the time. Perhaps it synchronizes itself to the computer or the GPS. I really haven’t researched that. But the time hasn’t been off since I set it up.

The overheating is the biggest pain. I didn’t even bother trying to map the past few days because it’s just been too blasted hot. But that’s not completely a bad thing because hot days are usually hazy.

The other big annoyance is the slow transfer speed from the camera, along with the camera’s tendency to break sequences into folders mid-stream, which causes Fusion Studio to vomit. Both problems are solved by copying the SD cards to the computer using a car reader, and processing each folder pair individually. It’s no big deal, but it’s annoying that it’s necessary.

As for getting too much of the car in the raster, I’m not sure that would be any different regardless of the camera. Spherical is spherical. I designed the mount you linked, by the way, and I found I actually had to shorten it a bit from the pictures in the thread. Most of the roads I map have overhanging branches.

But again, I don’t think that’s a camera-specific problem. On a spherical image, you’re going to get the car in the picture; and if you have something mounted on a mast on top of the roof, it’s going to hit low-hanging things.

If I’d paid full-price for the camera, I probably would be more annoyed with its shortcomings, quirks, and needs for workarounds. But I paid about half-retail. Maybe less. I forget exactly. So given that this is basically a hobby for me that happens to benefit the public, I’m satisfied enough that I didn’t return it for a refund.

But yeah, it does have some annoying shortcomings. If I were making a living doing this, I would have returned it already.

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+1

true, what I was saying is that any consumer 360cam is not car-use friendly.
After several tests I gave up trying to set it up the way I will like. Thinking of pros and cons I have ended up with the standard action cam mounted on the hood. It is not 360 degree, but gives a perfect and sharp front facing shots with a good angle and proved to be stable and hassle-free even when driving highways @140kmh. Chances to catch the bug are not very high given the small size of the lense.

I have left Fusion only for bike&hike scenario, which happens not very often.

p.s.
I was not satisfied with the Fusion capture quality either.
Frankly, they look awful for a cam with 600 EUR price-tag

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Yeah… At that speed, I think it would look like crap.

I generally keep at the speed limit (prima facie with a 55mph / 88.5kph cap on most roads) or slightly less. At those speeds, the quality is passable enough, meaning the signs usually are readable. Some of the sequences actually looked quite good. Others look grainy and occasionally pixelated.

I think it’s a bitrate limitation, possibly one of the camera’s self-protection mechanisms when it starts to get hot. It’s also true that leaves and foliage, while soothing to the human analog eye, play havoc with digital imaging. Finally, I’m old enough to remember when 2.0 MP cameras were state-of-the art. I spent a lot more money on a lot worse cameras back in those days. So all in all, I’m satisfied with the Fusion 360 for the price I paid for it.

Because I’m doing rural roads, the degradation of image quality at high speed is less of an issue. All we really need on trails through the woods are speed limit signs and road surfaces, when you get down to it. Trees, skies, and clouds are pretty much the same anywhere.

So again, for what I’m doing, I have no complaints bad enough to make me return the camera. But yeah, I can understand how it wouldn’t work out for everyone. And I agree, spherical really isn’t an ideal format for mapping.

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Here is an example of an important forest road sign that is captured in a disturbing smart phone image and not in the 360 image.

yeah, I guess if you paid 500+ for the Fusion in 2018/19, you might not bee too impressed. I think they are discounted quite heavily now.
On the car capture point, I think google/bing have the same problem, which is why 360 imagery is mostly confined to cities. Capturing something useful on the motorway, with a massive drag-increasing object on the roof is not the way to do it. You could try more suction/magnets for peace of mind, but it would still be a hazard. I am planning to get a circular plastic frame to mount (not sure how though…) on top of the car as a precaution from cameras falling off - when one of the mounts failed previously the camera just fell on its side but could slide away if at speed).
Either way, the solution is cropping/masking, but you do lose a hefty bit of the image and basically render some of those precious megapixels useless.
Until we get prosumer level cameras with GPS (or you can try xphase if you don’t need gps), we’ll have to make do with what’s available.
I’ve actually found Fusion imagery surprisingly useful in a dense rural environment, where even house numbers where readable being close to the road.

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I added a safety strap anchor to my mount on the advice of a deputy sheriff who quoted some obscure law about anchoring. With nearly 400 lbs (181 kg) of magnetic force holding the mount in place, it hasn’t moved so much as a hair so far. But attaching an anchor point was no big deal. I’ll take a picture of it the next time I have the mount on the roof.

thanks. I keep trying to find other ways of securing gear apart from suction mounts/magnets, which should be easy considering I have railings, but didn’t find anything cheap and universal yet

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Here are some pictures of the tie-down. I just pass it through the rear doors and through the hand grabs in the rear of the cabin.

Putting half a twist in the strap will null out the aerodynamic lift and stop the strap from vibrating.

The tie-down is really just to keep the police happy because those four magnets have never moved so much as a whisker. But it was easy enough to do, and the extra safety margin can’t hurt.

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To do the calculation one would have to know the friction coefficient of your roof and the combined weight of your load.
Are you sure it would not move in a crash ?

No, I haven’t done the math. I probably should. But I’m pretty confident. In the initial tests I did, I couldn’t make it move with a hard stop. Those magnets are pretty strong.

It didn’t have the camera mounted for those tests; but in that scenario, it would be the weight of the magnets themselves I’d have to be concerned about. The combined weight of the mount plus the camera is trivial compared to the weight of the magnets.

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this looks reasonably secure, I might explore this if I can’t find a plastic tub, cut out the bottom and stick it on the roof.
how would you search for those straps? ebay’ing anchor straps gives me fitness stuff

“Tie-down straps” are what they’re called here. Any store that sells trailer supplies should have them.

I usually get them at Tractor Supply, a farming supplies chain with stores throughout rural parts of the United States. Most hardware stores and auto supply stores also have them.

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And here we go, the new Fusion will apparently get a full color display.

I sure hope it can be turned off as another source of heat. Also hope they actually improved the sensor, but sadly it’s probably ~5.8k still

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If they could do something about the heat dissipation in general, that would be a massive improvement. The propensity of the Fusion 360 to overheat in hot weather has kept me off the streets for several weeks.

Other than that, I really have no major complaints about the Fusion 360. The USB transfer is slow, but that can be easily worked around with an inexpensive card reader. Other than that, I’m happy with it – especially at the deeply-discounted price that I paid for it.

As for its replacement, I don’t quite get the point of a viewfinder on a spherical camera. Or is it just a color display of the function menu? That also would be a pointless feature, in my opinion, if that’s all it’s for.