Getting track log data from Canon GP-E2 to Lightroom 4

<p>I'm stumped. I want to add GPS data to my images. That's no problem if I attach the Canon GP-E2 GPS device directly to my 5DIII, but there are times (shooting sports) I use that camera alongside a 7D. That means that to mark the 7D images, I need to link the images to a track log, unless I want to buy another GP-E2 device, which I don't. There seem to be two ways to do this, neither of which I can make work. </p>

<p>Way #1: download the track log and the images using the supplied Canon software, then click the "Automatically add GPS data to images" button. Nice in theory, but it crashes my Mac every time I attempt it. So that leads to:</p>

<p>Way #2: download the track log using the supplied Canon software, but load the images directly into Lightroom. Import the track log into Lightroom, and have Lightroom match the images with the locations. Nice in theory, too, but I haven't found a way to convert the track log into a .gpx format, which is the only one Lightroom understands. Canon appears to use some proprietary format, which can be exported as a .kmz file. GPSBabel, which everyone seems to think handles all sorts of such conversions, doesn't recognize .kmz files, at least as far as I can tell. I haven't found other software that does, and my Google searches seem to come up cold. </p>

<p>What am I missing? Surely, someone has figured out how to work the Canon track log + Lightroom + Mac combination.</p>

<p>I haven't found time yet to synchronize the (Garmin) GPS data with my LR4 catalog so I can't advise you how to use the GP-E2 data. For converting the GPS files to GPX you may have a look at Routeconverter. It's a great piece of software and it seems to run on a variety of platforms: <a href="http://www.routeconverter.de/home/en">http://www.routeconverter.de/home/en</a><br>

Another one is Geosetter: <a href="http://www.geosetter.de/en/">http://www.geosetter.de/en/</a> which adds GPS data to the picture file. This is Windows only so you will need to use virtualization software to get it running on a Mac.<br>

Have you tried the LR manual or Adobe's help pages? It may be possible that you have to allow adding GPS data somewhere hidden insome setup menu?</p>

<p>Canon only gives sparse information about the format they use, it is stated to be NMEA-0813. routeconverter supports NMEA-0183. Perhaps it's just a typo, I'd give it a try.</p>

<p>Jos, thanks for the info. I'll give it a try.</p>

<p>Arrgh. Routeconverter appears to support .kmz files, but it doesn't run on the Mac OS. Not quite sure I'm ready to run in parallel mode.</p>

<p>I just tried the Webstart version of Routeconverter but I could only get it running under windows, no succes with Ubuntu or Lubuntu. I'm not familiar with Apple's Mac, routeconverter seems to require Java 7 which in turn needs a 64 bit OS. You may try the webstart version if you haven't already done so. Alternatively you can send me the file(s) so we can see whether Routeconverter is the way to go. You can find my adress in the member area of pnet.</p>

<p>I had another look at the downloads of Routeconverter, it lists a 32 and a 64 bit Mac version: <a href="http://www.routeconverter.de/releases/en">http://www.routeconverter.de/releases/en</a> . Requires Java 6 (not 7 as mentioned in my previous reply). Again, I'm not familiar with Mac so you have to try it yourself.</p>

<p>I just tried Routeconverter on my Mac (running Java 7) and it appears to start/launch fine (I dont have/use GPS to verify that it does what it says on the tin)</p>

<p>Thanks! I haven't checked back here for a couple of days. I'll follow up on the new recommendations.</p>

<p>Good news / bad news. The good news is that RouteConverter does run on the Mac. Yay! I was able to convert the .kmz file to .gpx. Yay! I was able to import it into LR4. Yay! I was then unable to match the images selected to the tracklog. As far as I can tell (I checked back in the RouteConverter app), the imported tracklog has no times attached to any of the track points. Huh?</p>

<p>Arrgh. I have to go photograph another meet now, but I'll be back to keep working on the puzzle. </p>

<p>Thanks for all the help.</p>

<p>If anyone is still unsure of this problem, I *think* that I figured it out on a Mac setup, and the Windows solution should be almost identical.<br>

Step 1: Download the KMZ file to your mac or PC using the provided software.<br>

Step 2: rename the .kmz file to a .zip file. The alternative is to, without renaming, just try to open the file with something like Stuffit Expander on a mac, or Winzip in windows. kmz files are just kml files that have been compressed using the zip compression standard.<br>

Step 3: Once you have extracted the kml file from the kmz file, you can use a utility such as GPSBabel on windows, mac or linux (http://www.gpsbabel.org/download.html#downloading) to convert the file from "Google Earth (Keyhole) Markup Language" to "GPS XML".<br>

Step 4: Take the newly converted .gpx file, and load it into Lightroom 4, and then do whatever else you have to do.<br>

Simple!</p>

<p>If anyone is still unsure of this problem, I *think* that I figured it out on a Mac setup, and the Windows solution should be almost identical.<p><br>

Step 1: Download the KMZ file to your mac or PC using the provided software.<br>

Step 2: rename the .kmz file to a .zip file, and then try to open it. The alternative is to, without renaming, just try to open the file directly in a program like Stuffit Expander on a mac, or Winzip in windows. kmz files are just kml files that have been compressed using the zip compression standard, so any standard compression software should be able to read it and extract the kml file that is inside.<br>

Step 3: Once you have extracted the kml file from the kmz file, you can use a utility such as GPSBabel on windows, mac or linux (http://www.gpsbabel.org/download.html#downloading) to convert the file from "Google Earth (Keyhole) Markup Language" to "GPS XML".<br>

Step 4: Take the newly converted .gpx file, and load it into Lightroom 4, and then do whatever else you have to do.<br>

Simple!<br>

Note: I have only tested this walking around my neighborhood. I haven't actually shot any photos with this, so I cannot guarantee that the timestamps will match up. However tonight my plan is to take another walk and try it with photos.</p>

<p>Tristan: This is exciting! I'll give it a try. I finally gave up before.</p>

<p>Hello!<br>

Another solution to this problem that worked really well for me:<br>

Open Canon's MapUtility software and use the import function to import the tracks from the GP-E2 into the program. Once all your tracks are in the MapUtility, close it. Then, in the Macintosh finder go to /Macintosh HD/users/yourname/documents/Canon Utilities/GPS Log Files/ ! (On Windows machines the path should look a lot like this...) This is where all your logs are stored in a regular NMEA format. They should open no problem in most GPS programs.</p>

<p>(If not, open the file in a text editor such as TextWrangler (free in the AppStore) and simply delete the very first line of text!)</p>