Hey, I’m trying to export a walk as an image and nothing is happening. No error message no nothing. Exporting as JSON or GPX of the same activity is working just fine. Is that a known issue? Is there anything I could try to fix that?
Thanks from Germany
Hi @david_opp!
Unfortunately this is what Arc sees too: no error message, no indication that it failed at all. So yeah, it’s a known issue, and one with no known workaround yet 
That’s assuming you mean “Export timeline as image”? I’ve never seen “Export map as image” fail - that one seems fine. But for exporting the timeline as an image, on longer days with more timeline items (and especially timeline items that have photos), it sometimes just silently fails.
From Arc’s perspective, there’s no problem, it’s not told that anything went wrong. But my guess is it’s due to memory limitations - if the image data gets too big in memory, iOS just gives up on it and silently fails. Which means the fix for the problem will probably have to be something like the image export being done in multiple parts, then Arc stitching it together afterwards. Which is a more time consuming fix than I can afford to focus on yet 
Sorry about that! I wish I had a better answer.
Hey, @matt
Seeing as how you can already view the timeline in Arc in the same visualization as the exported PNG images, what about just a list-type timeline item export as a markdown or text file or something?
Shelby, CM.Just an idea. It seems that having Arc capture the timeline as image sections then stitching them together is unnecessarily involved.
Heh. I agree there. Though I’ll eventually have to do it, to fix the image export. Such is life.
This sounds like a great feature for a third party tool. I’ll eventually be adding export formats for some of the more popular location data formats (GeoJSON, maybe KML, etc) that can be considered semi essential. But for purposes beyond that I can imagine it being done better by a third party tool that has the luxury of doing a broader range of things. Conversion between Arc JSON and Markdown, perhaps a calendar format, etc. (I still haven’t had a chance to look into calendar file formats, but that’s also on my todos).
Strange, it works for February and the months before. But not for March and even not for April, which today is only 1 day. Also the year view for 2021 works. So maybe not a memory issue…
Most of the image exports look fine on my end except daily map (zoom extent not working) and longer timelines.
It really looks like the length of the timeline is the issue. I can export the timeline if it’s short (1). Unfortunately, my Disney World timelines are long (2) and those are the only ones I need to export into a journaling app. (1) and (2) below are thumbnails.
It looks like the longer timelines are being saved as a panoramic (2)? I wonder if that’s causing it.
I just love how Arc can note I was in Whole Foods for 2.25 min. They were out of baguettes, so I left.
Yep. It’s a built in UIView to PNG Data function, that just silently fails when the image is too large. Presumably it hits a memory limit and decides to abort.
Looking at the code for it, it’d actually be easier than I thought to do it as multiple smaller screen regions to separate PNG Data objects. But then I’m guessing that trying to stitch those together into the final full size image will hit the same memory limits. But perhaps there’s a way to handle that gracefully. With the current “easy, one step” function there’s no way to handle failures (nor even be aware of the failure).
Heh. I’m so obsessive that I even split out sub 2 minute visits for things like bike stands and car parks.
Right now, for exporting maps, I’m just adjusting the map’s zoom extent in Arc and taking a screenshot. Then, importing the .png into some other mobile apps for adding a matte and labeling. Other apps, like Gyroscope, also suggest just taking a screenshot of the map. Have you thought about just eliminating the map export option? Maybe less to deal with?
We took the ferry in; the monorail out. After eating at Tony’s Town Square Restaurant, a short visit to City Hall across the square, followed by a stop at the City Hall popcorn stand nearby. With some editing, the locations of the monorail stations, docks, and parking spot are easily identified. Nice. 
Very cool! Nicely done 
I really want the map export to work Especially for things like full year maps, having a proper image export would be very valuable. If you’ve got travel data over multiple countries / states over a month or year period, then a screenshot of that map isn’t going to give you the detail for zooming into.
The catch is that exporting full size map images seems to require using completely separate map building APIs from the ones used for building for screen. It’s over a year since I last looked at it, but I think that was true for both Mapbox’s and Apple’s map SDKs.
Right now the map export option literally just captures the UIView from the screen and saves it to a PNG. Which isn’t any better than just taking a screenshot yourself. But some day I definitely have to get it done properly. Because a full size image of a large geographic region with months of travel data in it is something really worth having.
As an example of the kind of map detail I want to be able to get into a single full size image:
Though there’s some unavoidable challenges / limitations of getting that much detail into a single image, notably text labels and line widths. And the latter is possibly a show stopper problem. But I’d still like to get image exports to a state where they’re not limited to the size and shape of the phone screen! Someday…
