Question 1

What is OVRLEY?

Accepted Answer

OVRLEY is a free, open-source project for turning .fit and .gpx activity files into custom, animated overlays . The main priorities were to make it user-friendly, easy to install without annoying dependency setup, built around a modern interactive editor that shows you in real time what your overlay will look like, and still capable of fast exports. Big credit goes to @walkersutton and his Cyclemetry , which was the original trigger for this project - without him this likely would not have happened . I first forked it and then completely rewrote both the frontend and backend, to the point where likely not a single line of code remained untouched. For nerds: the editor uses ReactJS with react-moveable and Zustand, rendering is handled by skia-rust, and encoding is done with FFmpeg.

Question 2

Is OVRLEY really free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. OVRLEY is a passion project that is completely free and will remain free . For most of us, making videos from our rides, runs, hikes, and other activities is a hobby, and I do not think a hobby like that should cost an arm and a leg to enjoy, especially now that it feels like everything comes with yet another subscription. There are several alternative apps that offer similar features, but many of them either require a subscription or are simply too expensive for something people do for fun. I wanted to create a free and open-source alternative that anyone can use.

Question 3

Which activities does OVRLEY support?

Accepted Answer

OVRLEY does not care about the type of activities you use. It extract all available data from your files, and you can choose which ones to show in the editor. Because of that, OVRLEY supports all activities that can be exported as .fit or .gpx files, including but not limited to running, cycling, swimming, hiking, skiing, sailing, motorcycling and more. OVERLAY currently supports the following data types: location, altitude, speed, power, cadence, heart rate, temperature and time. I am planning to support more data types in the future - see the roadmap for details.

Question 4

Is it really offline? Are my data safe?

Accepted Answer

Yes. OVRLEY works fully offline . After you download the software, the data are processed, rendered and encoded locally on your computer, and never leave your machine. You can test this by disconnecting from the internet while using the app. The app is also open source , so you can check the code yourself if you want to be sure.

Question 5

What export codec should I use?

Accepted Answer

OVRLEY currently offers four main export options, and the best one depends on whether you care most about compatibility, editing quality, or size. Do not forget to check also the benchmark section below. transparent overlays ProRes CPU is the safest general recommendation. It gives you high quality, supports transparency, and works very well if you plan to edit the result later in apps like Adobe Premiere Pro or Davinci Resolve. ProRes Vulkan is a newer GPU-accelerated ProRes option. No matter what I tried, it seems slower than Prores CPU. It is very new to ffmpe so treat it more like an experimental feature for now. QT RLE also supports transparency, but it is a format with lower compatibility, but much faster export times and usually creates significantly smaller files. final videos H264 is the most versatile and compatible format for everyday use, especially for social media. H265 is a newer format that can give you smaller file sizes at the same quality, but it may not be as widely supported, especially on older devices and software. NVIDIA|CUDA|QSV|AMD|Videotoolbox are hardware-accelerated options that give you much faster export times, and their availability depends on your system. They may give you varying results in terms of quality and file size.

Question 6

My GPU is not fully used. Is this normal?

Accepted Answer

Yes, this is completely normal . Currently only the encoding process is GPU-accelerated, while the rendering process relies on the CPU. The individual frames are first drawn by the CPU , and then passed to the GPU to create the video . This means that while the GPU is working hard during encoding, the CPU is also busy rendering the frames, which can lead to a lower overall GPU usage . However, this is one of the first things that I am planning to fix. Both rendering and encoding of the frames will happen on the GPU so the computer does not waste resources and time by moving the frames around. The GPU-accelerated Vulkan encoder is a very new addition to FFmepg used by OVRLEY and likely not as optimized as other codecs.

Question 7

Why can't I use OVRLEY in my browser?

Accepted Answer

Exporting high-resolution overlays and video takes a lot of computing power, especially when transparency is involved. Browsers are simply not as good at this kind of heavy work as a desktop app, so exporting would usually be much slower and less reliable. Second, OVRLEY is built on native desktop rendering and encoding tools that do not exist in the browser in the same way. Making it run well in a browser would require building a large part of the app again completely from scratch and heavily simplifying some features. However , I do plan to release a web version of OVRLEY in the future. It will most likely be a more limited version focused on quick, upload-ready 1080p clips with telemetry for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok.

Question 8

Can you add feature X?

Accepted Answer

Maybe. This is a single-person passion project and I have to prioritize the features. You can check the roadmap to see what's coming next. If you have a specific feature in mind that is not on the list, feel free to create a request on GitHub . Or feel free to contribute to the project yourself- it is open-source.

YOUR RIDE. YOUR STORY.

Youtrainedhardforyourdata.Showthemoff.

BUILD OVERLAYS THAT HIT HARD, READ FAST, STAY YOURS

LOAD

DESIGN

EXPORT

WINDOWS

WINDOWS

macOS

macOS

GOT ANY QUESTIONS?

DATA FOR NERDS

WHAT'S NEXT?

MORE WIDGETS

ANIMATED GAUGES

FULL GPU RENDERING

.IGC FILE SUPPORT

TEMPLATE REPOSITORY

BROWSER EXPORT

WHAT'S NEXT?

MORE WIDGETS

ANIMATED GAUGES

FULL GPU RENDERING

.IGC FILE SUPPORT

TEMPLATE REPOSITORY

BROWSER EXPORT

YOUR RIDE. YOUR STORY.

Youtrainedhardforyourdata.Showthemoff.

BUILD OVERLAYS THAT HIT HARD, READ FAST, STAY YOURS BUILD OVERLAYS THAT BUILD OVERLAYS THAT STAY YOURSHIT HARD

LOAD

DESIGN

EXPORT

WINDOWS

WINDOWS

macOS

macOS

GOT ANY QUESTIONS?

What is OVRLEY?

Is OVRLEY really free?

Which activities does OVRLEY support?

Is it really offline? Are my data safe?

What export codec should I use?

My GPU is not fully used. Is this normal?

Why can't I use OVRLEY in my browser?

Can you add feature X?

DATA FOR NERDS

WHAT'S NEXT?

MORE WIDGETS

ANIMATED GAUGES

FULL GPU RENDERING

.IGC FILE SUPPORT

TEMPLATE REPOSITORY

BROWSER EXPORT

WHAT'S NEXT?

MORE WIDGETS

ANIMATED GAUGES

FULL GPU RENDERING

.IGC FILE SUPPORT

TEMPLATE REPOSITORY

BROWSER EXPORT

BUILD OVERLAYS THAT HIT HARD, READ FAST, STAY YOURS