Mastering Track Merge

Analyze your network of tracks

The displayed track network has the following obvious problems and inaccuracies:

(1) Several workouts started from a similar location but there is more than one starting point. To find similarities between tracks, TrailRunner requires them to be "parallel" that means the starting way-point and the end-waypoint of two tracks must be identical. If that's not the case, you have to make them identical.

(2) This spot is a mess. It's obvious for a human that this spot has three entry and exit points and that the diagonal track was a false recording from the GPS. TrailRunner already placed some way-points here but didn't split the nearby tracks for some reason. We'll sort that out later.

(3) This typical crossing point was detected by TrailRunner but the tracks where no merged, We'll correct this soon.

Consolidating Way-Points

Zoom into the location and select the way-point that is very similar to the given other way-point

Drag Way-Point onto other

Drag the selected way-point onto the other. If you have a selected route you could either first deselect the route in the routes list or use the command-key while you drag the waypoint. (dragging a way-point of a selected route starts a re-route, which we do not want here)

TrailRunner will ask if the two way-points should be merged and replayed by a merged representative.

Split tracks at existing way-points

Now that we have corrected the lower end of the overlapping tracks, let's take care of the upper end.
There are already tracks ending at the circled waypoint and these could be merged into one.
The hi-lighted track should be splittet at the circled way-point

Split tracks at the location of a selected way-point

Select the way-point and in the context menu, use Split at selection to split all tracks that are near to this way-point.

Parallel tracks

This now looks much better, all three tracks are "parallel" meaning they have the identical start and end way-point.
They now can be merged.
To merge tracks you have the following options:

Merge By Intermediate calculates an intermediate track out of all parallel tracks. The intermediate is being done weighted meaning the more often you merge a track the hight probability its path has and therefore the bigger weight its course and altitude data has on any merge operations.
Remove similar tracks replaces all parallel tracks to selected track by the selected track, not altering anything else.
Merge Selection is a heavyweight operations that tries its best not only to merge tracks but also to merge anything else being involved by the operation.

Just to let you know: you can undo all operations.

Merge similar tracks into one

Select a track to be merged with its parallel tracks and choose the Replace by Intermediate option.

Merge similar way-points into one

As you can see, the track was replaced by a new path that describes the intermediate course.
Now drag way-point (1) onto way-point (2) to consolidate the two elements.

Cleanup garbage

The two waypoints are now merged but the track still has some track-point leftovers on the right side. Select each of the track-points and press the backspace key to remove it.

Split and merge at a crossing-point

The track network now looks pretty good already.
Select a track-point at the location of (1) and in the context menu select the Split at Selection option to place a new way-point at this location.

Conclusion

TrailRunner did now split the track and automatically did merge the overlapping resulting tracks as an intermediate track.

That's it, next time you import a course into your network of tracks, TrailRunner will do a much better job in splitting and merging the track course as the network is now pretty obvious.

Please keep in mind that you still can keep your original recorded track data by adding a diary entry. From the diary you can always merge tracks into documents.

Split detail and accuracy

As you might already have noticed, TrailRunner has some fixed values build in below which splits and merges do not take place. In the sample above it's obvious that the hilited track should be merged but it was not because of these thresholds. The reason is that at a certain point TrailRunner has to stop the magic for that the algorithm doesn't run into an infinite loop.
But as in the sample above the split should still occur. So here's the trick.

Split track at a distant location

Select a track-point that is near to the split location. select the split at selection command.

Join way-points

Drag the new waypoint onto the existing waypoint and replace it.

Merge

Now the two tracks are parallel and can be merged.