[Qgis-user] QGIS is great! (and fixed the broken geotagging in my Insta360 photos)

[Emma Hain]

Thanks Adam! I am glad it worked out for you.

On Wed, 23 Aug 2023 at 18:55, Adam Nielsen via QGIS-User <
qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> This isn't a request for help, I just wanted to give a big thanks to
> everyone involved in the development of QGIS.  I have never used a
> program that seems to be able to cater to everything I might want to do.
>
> I recently purchased an Insta360 camera, with the goal of going walking
> and having it collect a bunch of 360 degree photos, that I could turn
> into my own private Google Street View.
>
> Unfortunately having just loaded the photos in using the "import
> geotagged photos" tool, it turns out that in their infinite wisdom, the
> Insta360 developers thought it would be sufficient to just use the GPS
> coordinates of the first photo taken.  So now I have 400 photos at the
> exact same GPS coordinate, making the camera entirely unsuitable for
> Street View photography!  (Funny how you find all the complaints on
> Google only AFTER you've bought a product.)
>
> However I was also recording my track using the GPS Logger app on my
> phone.  I wondered whether perhaps there was a way to somehow apply
> that GPS track against the photos.
>
> As it turned out, the .gpx export from the app includes a track_points
> table, which has one row every second with the current GPS coordinates.
> This means there is a timestamp in that table, with GPS coordinates,
> for every timestamp in the photo table!  Unfortunately one is UTC and
> the other is local time, but a little maths should be able to solve
> that.
>
> In the end I worked out that I could create a virtual layer, which uses
> an SQL query to join the two tables together and pick the GPS
> coordinates out of the GPS track but the rest of the data from the
> photos table.  This worked perfectly and now I have a proper layer with
> each of the 400 photos at the correct location!
>
> This was another feature I never thought I would need but QGIS provided
> the means to get it done.
>
> In case anyone else ever needs to do something similar, here is the
> query I used:
>
>   SELECT
>     "photos"."fid",
>     "photo",
>     "filename",
>     "directory",
>     "ele" AS "altitude",
>     "direction",
>     "rotation",
>     X("track_points"."geometry") AS "longitude",
>     Y("track_points"."geometry") AS "latitude",
>     "timestamp",
>     "track_points"."geometry" AS "geometry"
>   FROM "photos"
>   JOIN "track_points"
>     ON unixepoch("track_points"."time") = unixepoch("photos"."timestamp")
> - 36000;
>     -- (36000 converts UTC+10 into UTC)
>
> To use it, create a new virtual layer, import the geotagged photos
> layer (and call it "photos") then add the "track_points" layer from the
> .gpx file (and call it "track_points") then click the Test button and
> it should come back as OK.  Then you can add the layer.
>
> Just be aware that it's quite slow and makes QGIS freeze for a few
> minutes - you just have to leave it alone and it will eventually come
> back to life.  The first thing I did was to quickly hide the new virtual
> layer seconds after I added it (to stop it from rendering and freezing
> QGIS), then I exported the virtual layer to a new layer in a temporary
> .gpkg file.  This way I could remove the slow virtual layer and continue
> working with the faster temporary .gpkg file.
>
> Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks for all the effort everyone has put
> into such a fantastic program!
>
> Cheers,
> Adam.
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-- 
Emma Hain — Product Manager/Senior GIS Analyst
emma at north-road.com / 0414 512 782
[image: https://north-road.com]
*North Road*
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