GPX Problems in Maps

[rjdibella]

I am having trouble geo-tagging photos in maps lately.  This problem has started for me in the past 3 months or 4 months.  When I view my GPX file in a visualizer outside of Lightroom, the track looks correct.  When load the tracklog in Adobe Lightroom, the track jumps around as if the points on the track are out of chronological order.  Has anybody else encountered this?  Is there a way to remedy? 

I get my GPX file by converting a KML file from Google location history at https://kml2gpx.com/ .  I've tried other converters and its the same result.  This method worked previously. 

Thank you for your help!

Screenshots of the issue below:

Track in Lightroom:

Track in a GPX viewer:

[johnrellis]

When load the tracklog in Adobe Lightroom, the track jumps around as if the points on the track are out of chronological order.

LR wants the tracklog to be in increasing chronological order, whereas some tools and devices output in reverse order.  Have you opened the .gpx file in a text editor to see what order it's in?

If you post a problem .gpx file here, we can take a look at what might be going wrong and suggest a workaround or filing a bug report. Upload the file to Dropbox or similar and post the link here.

[rjdibella]

Thank you.  I have taken a look at the files but am not familiar enough with it to know what is going on. 

Here's a link to the KML: 1-21-17 KML File.kml - Google Drive

Here's a link to the GPX: 1-21-17 GPX File.gpx - Google Drive

Appreciate your help!

RJ

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

The individual trackpoints in the .kml file don't have timestamps -- without timestamps, it isn't possible to do geo-tagging (since the tagging works by matching the capture time of the photo with the trackpoints that have the closest timestamps).

Where did the .kml come from?  What device originally created the log?

[rjdibella]

Hi John -

Apologies for the delay.  It appears that this issue is due to a change in Google's location data rather than a change in Lightroom.  It seems like you can no longer export KML data from Google Location History and then convert it to GPX for Lightroom. 

As an alternative, I was able to download ALL of my Google location history and use that in Lightroom, although it requires a more complex conversion and much larger files. 

Appreciate your help!

RJ