Does recording a video clip pause your GPS track?
Tapping to pause a hike and tapping to record a clip both happen from the same recording screen, which is reason enough to wonder if they do some of the same thing. They do not. Pausing is a deliberate instruction to stop logging your route until you resume it. Recording a clip is not an instruction to the track at all — it runs alongside it, and the route keeps logging points the entire time the clip is being filmed, exactly as it would if you were not filming anything.
The short answer
No. Starting a video clip does not pause, stop, or otherwise interrupt GPS recording. The route keeps logging your position in the background for the whole length of the clip, up to its two-minute limit, and picks up again with nothing special to resume once you stop filming — because it never stopped.
The clip itself gets pinned to the point on the route where you took it, the same way a photo or a voice note does. What happens to the track underneath it during those two minutes depends entirely on what you did with your body while filming, not on the act of filming itself.
Two different buttons, two different jobs
Pause exists so a hike's moving time is not stretched out by a lunch stop or a long break at a viewpoint — tap it, and the clock and the track both wait until you tap resume. It is a control you reach for on purpose, when you know a stretch of time should not count as part of the walk.
Recording a clip is a capture action, not a track control. It does not ask the route to wait for it, because there is no reason it should — a two-minute video is not a break in the hike, it is a thing that happened during the hike, and the point of pinning it to a location is that the route was still being recorded around it.
What actually shows up in the track during those two minutes
If you stand still to film a view, the track logs a short cluster of points sitting close together, the same as it would for any other few minutes spent standing in one place — waiting to cross a stream, catching your breath, or just looking at something. Nothing about filming makes that stretch behave differently from a plain, un-filmed pause in your walking.
If you keep walking while filming — panning across a ridgeline as you move, say — the track logs your actual movement during that time, same as any other stretch of the hike. There is no separate mode for 'recording a clip'; the GPS side of the app has no idea a clip is being made at all, and just keeps doing what it always does.
Why this matters for your numbers afterwards
Because filming never pauses the track, two minutes spent standing still to get a clip counts the same way any other two minutes of standing still would when moving time is calculated afterwards — it is not specifically excluded for being a clip, and it is not specifically included either. If you want those two minutes left out of your moving time entirely, the only way to do that is the pause button, used on purpose, the same as for any other stop.
Where TrailCam fits in
TrailCam records a clip of up to two minutes without leaving the recording screen, and the route keeps recording the whole time, whether the screen is showing the map or the camera. Pausing a hike is a separate, deliberate action, and paused time is the only time kept out of moving time — filming one is never mistaken for the other.
Questions
- Do I need to pause my hike before recording a clip?
- No. Recording a clip and pausing a hike are unrelated actions. You can film a clip at any point while the route is actively recording, without pausing anything first or afterward.
- If I stand still for two minutes to film something, does that count as moving time?
- It is treated exactly like any other two minutes spent standing still — it is not automatically excluded just because a clip was being recorded. Pausing the hike is the only way to keep a stretch of time out of moving time.
- Does taking a photo or recording a voice note behave the same way?
- Yes — none of the capture actions pause the GPS track. A photo, a voice note and a video clip are all pinned to the point on the route where you took them, while the track keeps recording underneath, undisturbed.
Recording your own routes
TrailCam is an iPhone app that records your route with GPS, keeps video clips, photos and voice notes pinned to the spot where you took them, and exports the result as GPX 1.1 or CSV. It is free to download.