How to integrate Shearwater information in Final Cut Pro X

After my video at 108 meters with Trimix (see here Youtube), there was a lot of interest on how i managed to put the shearwater information on the screen

To those who think this can be done automatically, no such luck. Everything is manual and it is a very repetitive process.

First, we need to extract the data of the dive. 

Go into Shearwater Desktop, select your dive and go into File->Export Dive->CSV

Shearwater will ask you for a directory to save the data to. In that directory you will find a csv file that you can open either with a text editor or excel.

Here are the columns that I used for the video:

Time (seconds), the shearwater internally save the data every 10 seconds, on the display the TIME is in minutes.

Depth: This translates directly into the DEPTH field

FirstStopDepth: translates to STOP

TTS Mins: translates to TTS field

Average PPO2: translates to the Gas PO2 field

Current NDL: translates to the NDL field

Fraction O2/FractionHe: permit to reconstruct the gas and the O2/HE field

In Final Cut pro, I created 2 titles that mimics the shearwater display (available here), Why 2, because the shearwater will change the color of the gas, when there is a better gas that can be used.

Now the boring part:

You have to sync the data that you have in the excel with the movie. What I do is that I use the moment I look at my shearwater in the dive to sync it the excel data. When this is done you  can go backward and forward from that point with the excel data.

I do a title every 10 seconds that is overlaid on top of the video, in each title, I look in the excel to find the corresponding data from the timestamp and I update one by one every title.

Have fun!