Does a CSV export include your photos and video clips?

The short answer

No. A CSV export is a table — one row per hike, or one row per recorded point, depending on what the export is summarising — with a fixed set of columns such as date, distance, duration, pace and elevation gain. There is no column for an attached photo, a video clip or an audio recording, and nothing in the comma-separated format lets a cell hold anything but plain text or a number. The media stays exactly where it was captured; the export carries the numbers describing the walk, nothing else.

What a CSV row is actually built to hold

CSV stands for comma-separated values, and that is a literal description: each row is a line of plain text, split into the same columns as every other row, with a comma marking where one value ends and the next begins. A spreadsheet program reads that structure and lines the values up into a grid, but the file underneath is nothing more than text and commas. There is no mechanism in that structure for a cell to contain a file — a photo is thousands of pixels of binary image data, and a CSV cell is built to hold a short run of characters, a date, or a number. The two are not a size mismatch that a bigger file would fix; they are different kinds of thing.

Why even a per-point CSV does not change this

Some CSV exports list one row per recorded GPS point rather than one row per hike, with columns for latitude, longitude, elevation and a timestamp on each row. That is a finer-grained table, but it is still a table of numbers, and adding more rows does not add a new kind of column. A row that already holds a coordinate and a time has nowhere to also reference a photo — there was never a "media" column defined for it to go in. Compare that with a GPX file, which at least has an optional waypoint name and description field sitting in its structure, doing nothing useful for media either, but present. A CSV row does not even have that unused field to point at.

Where the media actually lives instead

A photo, video clip or voice note recorded on a hike is stored the way any photo or video on a phone is stored — as its own file, separate from any exported table entirely. An app that pins media to a point on the route keeps that connection on its own side, inside its own history or database, linking a spot on the track to a file sitting elsewhere on the phone or in its own storage. Exporting the hike as CSV writes a fresh, separate file containing only the summary numbers; it does not move, copy, or reference the media in any way, and nothing about the media changes because an export happened.

Why the format works this way

CSV exists to be opened by the widest possible range of tools with the least possible fuss — a spreadsheet program, a script, a database import, all read the exact same rows-and-commas structure without needing to know anything about hiking apps specifically. That is what a CSV summary is for: comparing distance or elevation gain across a season of hikes in a program built for exactly that kind of comparison. Media has nothing to do with that job. A photo does not summarise into a spreadsheet column any more than a video clip does, and forcing one in would turn a tool built for scanning numbers into something closer to a media archive, which is a different problem with different tools.

Things that trip people up

• Expecting a spreadsheet opened from a CSV export to show thumbnails or links to photos — there is nothing in the file for a spreadsheet program to display, because no reference to the media was ever written into it.
• Assuming CSV must be worse for this than GPX, or better, because it is "simpler" — neither format carries media, for the same underlying reason: plain rows of text and plain XML both lack any field built to hold a file.
• Worrying that exporting a hike as CSV somehow deletes or detaches its photos, clips or voice notes — exporting only writes a new file elsewhere; it does not touch anything already saved in the app.
• Trying to match a CSV row to a specific photo by eye — the row's timestamp and the photo's own timestamp can be compared by hand if needed, but the CSV file itself carries no link between the two.

Where TrailCam fits in

TrailCam pins a video clip, a photo or a voice note to the exact point on the route where you captured it, and replaying a saved route brings them back, shown where they were recorded, with the elevation profile running underneath. Exporting the same route as CSV or GPX 1.1 — for a single walk or the whole history at once — carries only the coordinates and summary numbers; the media stays in TrailCam, where replaying the route is what puts everything back together. Export is part of the optional TrailCam Pro upgrade; the app itself is free to download.