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    Version 5.9 - What's new?

    Public beta

    Planned for version 5.9.

    Version 5.9 is about what happens around the recording. A track can now carry the vehicle’s motion without filming anything, and turn it into overlay videos for the footage you shot on your own camera. The Action Cam’s own decisions — the focus, the lens, the moment of capture — become yours, and the waypoint editor finally shows where each value came from.

    Your gauges on someone else’s footage

    A Pitch & Roll overlay video over black: the two car instruments, the live pitch and roll, their maxima, and the GND reference


    A track can now record the vehicle’s motion — and, if you want it, a clap for synchronisation — while recording no video at all. Afterwards the track’s own screen exports Pitch & Roll, G-Cross, Speed and Map as separate transparent videos: telemetry overlays to lay over the footage you filmed on a GoPro, a DJI Osmo, an Insta360, a dashcam or another phone, in iMovie, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro or CapCut.

    Tracks that carry motion data also gain a Map + pitch & roll + chart view, where the chart cursor scrubs the map marker and the two instruments together.

    The track in the Map + pitch & roll + chart view: the route on the map, the pitch and roll instruments, the values band, and the chart with its cursor


    The same export works on video recorded with the Action Cam, from More > Full video > Overlay videos.

    Overlay videos from a track. · From a recorded video.

    A map of our own, and one you can take offline

    The map screen showing Blocoware Open Street Map: streets, paths, parks and place names, with the attribution line and the map source label at the bottom


    Blocoware Open Street Map is an OpenStreetMap raster map served by us: streets, tracks, paths, buildings and place names worldwide, drawn at retina resolution so labels stay sharp, turning with your heading, down to zoom level 17.

    It is also the source you can take offline. OpenStreetMap’s own volunteer tile service does not permit bulk downloads — this one is built for it, region by region, up to 8,000 tiles per download, resuming where an interruption left off.

    More on Blocoware Open Street Map.

    The Action Cam, when you use it

    The camera screen changed as much: autofocus, the lens and the moment of capture used to be the app’s decisions, and in 5.9 they are yours — without taking a single option away from anyone who never opens these menus. Each one has its own page.

    Focus — lock it, keep it far, save it, or set it by hand

    Behind a windscreen, autofocus hunts between the glass and the trail. On a subject you photograph every visit it settles a little differently each time. Neither is a setting problem — it is autofocus doing its job on the wrong subject.

    The AF button on the left edge of the viewfinder, yellow with a closed lock, and the confirmation Focus locked, Wide, 42 per cent

    The AF button is now always on the viewfinder. A tap locks focus where it is; exposure keeps adjusting, so a tunnel or a low sun still gives you a usable frame. Hold it and you get the rest:

    • Far-only autofocus keeps autofocus running but on distant subjects, which helps keep a windscreen, the rain on it or the dashboard from becoming the subject — and still follows the trail as it changes, which a hard lock cannot. This is the one for driving.
    • Save current focus stores the distance you are on, per lens. Lock at saved focus returns to it on any later visit.
    • Set focus by hand opens a dial: slide it, watch the picture, stop where you want.
    • Focus at start does any of it automatically the moment the camera opens.

    Everything about focus, on one page.

    Lenses and zoom — AUTO, or one lens by name

    An iPhone with several cameras normally hides them behind one zoom slider. That is right for snapshots and wrong for a repeated shot, where two photos of the same thing should be taken through the same glass at the same framing.

    The lens strip open on AUTO at 1x: the vertical dial with stops at 0.5x, 1x and 2x, the close button, and the lens selector reading AUTO, 120MM, 24MM and 13MM

    • The lens strip puts every lens stop on a dial you can drag or tap, and a lens selector underneath: AUTO, or one focal length. Pick a focal length and the picture never changes lens on its own again.
    • The zoom chip always names the lens actually doing the work — so you can see when iOS has quietly served a close-up from the ultra-wide instead.
    • A single selected lens now zooms to its sensor’s maximum, with the dial dimmed past the point where iOS stops recommending it.
    • Every lens and the whole zoom range are free.

    More on lenses and zoom.

    Shutter timer — 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds before the shot

    A finger on the screen moves the phone, and on a pole, a mast or a tripod that is exactly the shake you were trying to avoid.

    The camera sheet: a Camera section with Back camera and Front camera, a Timer section with Off, 1 s, 3 s, 5 s and 10 s, and a Lenses section with Lenses and zoom

    The camera button at the top of the screen now opens a sheet with a shutter timer — 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds. A ring counts down around the shutter and a second tap cancels it. Starting a video recording counts down too; stopping never waits, and neither does a Bluetooth remote or the hardware buttons, which are already shake-free.

    More on the shutter timer.

    Viewfinder controls — gestures, black screen, video light

    Every option here is off by default — a camera you never configure behaves exactly as it did before.

    Viewfinder controls settings: the Gestures section with Single tap, Double tap and Long press

    • Assign Single tap, Double tap and Long press to focus, the shutter, a focus lock or a black screen. Useful with gloves, or with the phone in a mount you cannot comfortably reach.
    • The black screen keeps recording with the display dark, for a long recording from a windscreen at night. A double tap brings the viewfinder back.
    • In video mode the flash button becomes a video light switch with its own brightness.
    • The AF and microphone buttons can be set so a tap only reports the state and every change lives in the hold menu — a stray touch while driving then changes nothing.

    More on viewfinder controls.

    Every waypoint value, and where it came from

    The waypoint editor in Advanced view, with Altitude, Heading and Course at the bottom of the list


    The waypoint editor now has two views. Simple is the familiar compact editor and stays the default. Advanced shows where each value came from — the GPS, the terrain, what you typed, the photo itself — and lets you pick the one you trust for altitude, address, heading and course, or type one in yourself, which the editor could not do before. Nothing changes until you tap Apply.

    The attached photo is kept in step field by field: Photo sync says how many values differ, and you choose once what Done should do about it — ask, write silently, or leave the photo alone.

    More on the Advanced waypoint editor. · The waypoint editor.

    Getting there

    Motion data for tracks is turned on in the GPS tracking settings — the settings button inside the NEW TRACK button — under Motion and audio data. The Action Cam is opened from MENU, and everything on its screen has its own page: Focus , Lenses and zoom , Shutter timer and Viewfinder controls .