Insta360 Studio Export Metadata Weirdness

[ExifRookie]

Hello,

I am very new to this community, but since there seems to be such talent here, perhaps this type of problem would have a solution I am just missing.

Posted this over on the insta360 subreddit - https://old.reddit.com/r/Insta360/comments/10rfe4l/new_insta360_x3_and_studio_user_here_studio/

I am testing the ability to upload to Google Street View with a recorded clip from my new x3. Ran into a problem where the original file has the correct media creation date, the exported GPS has the correct time (in UTC/Z), but when exporting in mp4, the export shows a media creation time of -6 hours....the same as my UTC offset.

Something is happening in Studio with the export of the data and all attempts so far to fix it have failed. I attempted to modify the exif data of the file with ExifTool and that worked to show the correct media creation date in Windows, but there must be other data inside of the MP4 file that Google Street View Studio is reading because it rejected it.

When viewing the exif data with ExitTool 12.55, all data looks good. "Media Create Date" is correct and identical on the export as well as the original insv file. All other aspects of dates look to be correct in the Exif data set between files.

Error From Google -

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GPS time range (2/1/23, 3:39 PM to 2/1/23, 3:42 PM) does not overlap with Video time range (2/1/23, 9:39 AM to 2/1/23, 9:42 AM)
Sample from the GPX File -

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<ele>396.0</ele> <speed>6.945000000000001</speed> <course>80.49200439453125</course> <time>2023-02-01T21:39:10.242000Z</time> Based on this time, this is the correct time it was recorded (in GMT/UTC/Zulu) when factoring my -6 offset.

Exif from the original INSV File -

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ExifTool Version Number         : 12.55
File Name                       : VID_20230201_153911_00_006.insv
Directory                       : D:/360 Video Temp/Camera01
File Size                       : 1934 MB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2023:02:01 15:42:24-06:00
File Access Date/Time           : 2023:02:01 20:51:15-06:00
File Creation Date/Time         : 2023:02:01 16:23:15-06:00
File Permissions                : -rw-rw-rw-
File Type                       : MP4
File Type Extension             : mp4
MIME Type                       : video/mp4
Major Brand                     : MP4 Base w/ AVC ext [ISO 14496-12:2005]
Minor Version                   : 0.0.0
Compatible Brands               : avc1, isom
Media Data Size                 : 1926837184
Media Data Offset               : 48
Movie Header Version            : 0
Create Date                     : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Modify Date                     : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Time Scale                      : 60000
Duration                        : 0:03:12
Preferred Rate                  : 1
Preferred Volume                : 100.00%
Preview Time                    : 0 s
Preview Duration                : 0 s
Poster Time                     : 0 s
Selection Time                  : 0 s
Selection Duration              : 0 s
Current Time                    : 0 s
Next Track ID                   : 3
Track Header Version            : 0
Track Create Date               : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Track Modify Date               : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Track ID                        : 1
Track Duration                  : 0:03:12
Track Layer                     : 0
Track Volume                    : 0.00%
Image Width                     : 3840
Image Height                    : 1920
Graphics Mode                   : srcCopy
Op Color                        : 0 0 0
Compressor ID                   : avc1
Source Image Width              : 3840
Source Image Height             : 1920
X Resolution                    : 72
Y Resolution                    : 72
Compressor Name                 : Ambarella AVC encoder
Bit Depth                       : 24
Pixel Aspect Ratio              : 1:1
Video Frame Rate                : 59.94
Matrix Structure                : 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Media Header Version            : 0
Media Create Date               : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Media Modify Date               : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Media Time Scale                : 48000
Media Duration                  : 0:03:12
Handler Type                    : Audio Track
Handler Description             : Ambarella AAC
Balance                         : 0
Audio Format                    : mp4a
Audio Channels                  : 2
Audio Bits Per Sample           : 16
Audio Sample Rate               : 48000
Warning                         : Truncated '\x00\x02\x00\x00' data
Image Size                      : 3840x1920
Megapixels                      : 7.4
Avg Bitrate                     : 80.1 Mbps
Rotation                        : 0
-- press ENTER --
EXIF from the same file just exported -

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ExifTool Version Number         : 12.55
File Name                       : VID_20230201_153911_00_006(h264)(1).mp4
Directory                       : D:/360 Video Temp
File Size                       : 1876 MB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2023:02:01 21:19:43-06:00
File Access Date/Time           : 2023:02:01 21:20:05-06:00
File Creation Date/Time         : 2023:02:01 21:17:46-06:00
File Permissions                : -rw-rw-rw-
File Type                       : MP4
File Type Extension             : mp4
MIME Type                       : video/mp4
Major Brand                     : MP4 Base Media v1 [IS0 14496-12:2003]
Minor Version                   : 0.2.0
Compatible Brands               : isom, iso2, avc1, mp41
Media Data Size                 : 1876063475
Media Data Offset               : 48
Movie Header Version            : 0
Create Date                     : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Modify Date                     : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Time Scale                      : 1000000
Duration                        : 0:03:12
Preferred Rate                  : 1
Preferred Volume                : 100.00%
Preview Time                    : 0 s
Preview Duration                : 0 s
Poster Time                     : 0 s
Selection Time                  : 0 s
Selection Duration              : 0 s
Current Time                    : 0 s
Next Track ID                   : 3
Track Header Version            : 0
Track Create Date               : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Track Modify Date               : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Track ID                        : 1
Track Duration                  : 0:03:12
Track Layer                     : 0
Track Volume                    : 0.00%
Image Width                     : 3840
Image Height                    : 1920
Graphics Mode                   : srcCopy
Op Color                        : 0 0 0
Compressor ID                   : avc1
Source Image Width              : 3840
Source Image Height             : 1920
X Resolution                    : 72
Y Resolution                    : 72
Bit Depth                       : 24
Stereoscopic 3D                 : Monoscopic
Metadata Source                 : Lavf58.13.101
Pose Yaw Degrees                : 0
Pose Pitch Degrees              : 0
Pose Roll Degrees               : 0
Projection Bounds Top           : 0
Projection Bounds Bottom        : 0
Projection Bounds Left          : 0
Projection Bounds Right         : 0
Video Frame Rate                : 59.94
Spherical                       : true
Stitched                        : true
Projection Type                 : equirectangular
Stereo Mode                     : mono
Stitching Software              : Insta360
Source Count                    : 2
Matrix Structure                : 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Media Header Version            : 0
Media Create Date               : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Media Modify Date               : 2023:02:01 15:39:01
Media Time Scale                : 48000
Media Duration                  : 0:03:12
Media Language Code             : und
Handler Description             : SoundHandler
Balance                         : 0
Audio Format                    : mp4a
Audio Channels                  : 2
Audio Bits Per Sample           : 16
Audio Sample Rate               : 48000
Handler Type                    : Metadata
Handler Vendor ID               : Apple
Encoder                         : Lavf58.13.101
Image Size                      : 3840x1920
Megapixels                      : 7.4
Avg Bitrate                     : 78 Mbps
Rotation                        : 0
-- press ENTER --
The lack of Timezone data inside of exif for dates without a specified offset is sure frustrating.

Windows sees the original insv file at the correct time captured - 15:39, but sees the exported file as 09:39. -6 hours is my GMT/UTC offset.

I attempted to tweak the time on my computer and re-run the export, same issue. I attempted to tweak the exif data, but was unsuccessful in any type of progress.

Anyone seen this issue with exported files coming from Insta360 Studio? Any ideas as to where Windows and Google Street View are looking for the date created field?


Any of the exif pros on this forum see something that is out of line?  Something else I should try? 

[Phil Harvey]

There are a number of possible issues here.

One is the inconsistent epoch used for time stamps in MP4-format files.  Older cameras didn't know about time zones so they stored local time.  Newer cameras tend to store UTC time stamps.  For these, the exiftool -api quicktimeutc option should be used.

Another possible issue is that you may not be seeing all date/time tags if there are duplicates with the same name.  Try this command to see them all and where they are stored:

exiftool -api quicktimeutc -a -G1 -time:all FILE

The third possibility is that timestamps may be stored in the video stream itself, and ExifTool doesn't deal with this.

- Phil

[ExifRookie]

Thank you Phil!  I am going to try what you mentioned about the quicktimeutc....that is one area I could not figure out how to edit previously. 

[ExifRookie]

I am going to try Phil's suggestions to tweak the data to find the underlying cause of the timestamp weirdness, but also wanted to share a working solution for the problem that lead me down the EXIF data rabbit hole -


I tested with the UL2GSV toolset and it actually worked!

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*** Processing: C:\redacted\VID_20230201_153911_00_006(h264)(1).mp4
*** Using start time from GPX file
*** Using the following times

            START TIME (UTC)    END TIME (UTC)
    GPX   2023-02-01 21:39:10 2023-02-01 21:42:22
    VIDEO 2023-02-01 21:39:10 2023-02-01 21:42:22

*** No CAMM track detected.
*** Uploading video ...
100%|█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████| 1.75G/1.75G [05:36<00:00, 5.58MB/s]
*** done!
*** Publishing video ... done!
*** Sequence id: redacted
*** Press Enter to continue
Workflow that worked -
1. Copy insv file(s) from memory card to local computer.
2. Use Insta360 Studio 2023 to export the files I want to upload to a new mp4 file.  Use default settings for 360 video.
3. Extract GPS data from insv file using the insv2gpx converter found in the ul2gsv toolset. 
4. Login to my GSV account with the ALU2GSV tool from the UL2GSV toolset.
5. Drag and drop the newly created gps file and the mp4 exported file to VID2GSV tool from the UL2GSV toolset. 

Result was the above correctly aligned timestamps. 

I still would like to see two things from Insta360 Studio for Desktop -
1. Correct metadata handling.
2. Ability to use the GSV API from the app directly without needing to do all the above.  Their mobile app can do it (well somewhat), so the desktop app should be able to also!