Simon, do you have a link to this NASA equivalent?

NASA World Wind:
 

NASA world wind:

NASA World Wind

Google Earth Pro permissions:
 

It's called World Wind.
World Wind JAVA SDK

There is also Flash Earth
http://www.flashearth.com/

But you can't do animation with it.

Thanks, Simon.

Simon,

If Google Earth Pro is "absolutely mind blowingly astoundingly expensive" at $400 per year, how do you manage to pay for the other software you use in video production?

Andrew

Andrew, a program like Photoshop or FCP I use every day. $400 for something that will be used only occasionally is very expensive. It simply isn't viable or a good use of resources. What is more, as I also mentioned previously, Google won't just let you record a video and put it into your edit. You have to show it to them first for them to approve its usage.

I can understand the approval process issue being a hassle. Mind you, if a TV news service can show a map fly-through in a news-cycle timely manner there must be some pre-arranged approval process you can have.

Any thoughts on billing the customer extra for the extra animation service? At least the burden is then on your client re this optional extra. Let them decide.

Andrew

Hello,

No doubt, google earth pro is expensive. But ignoring the price for a moment, the movie maker option on the latest version of google earth pro works great. I know, because I use it that way via After Effects and PPCS4.

As for how I can afford it, I have my own video company business as a hobby and also am a project engineer for a firm 4 days a week. Oh yeah and I don't have any kids or pets. That saves a lot of money for my video equipment and software.

:)

Simon

I have a client that has me create land auction videos. I have used the earth zoom effect as shown in the Video Copilot tutorial. I realize you can get permission from Google, but then your video says "Google" in it and I don't want that. I get my images from the USGS EarthExplorer. Our tax dollars paid for them, we might as well get some use out of them.

I've filmed my screen and set Google Earth to a slow speed, set the cache to a larger amount, and run the move back and forth a few times to ensure the data is cached. Then speed it up in post adding averaging for a motion blur look.

We tried to buy the Pro version direct from Google, when it was PC only. We wanted to pay them for 'something' but in the end the chilled out Google guy said 'don't worry about it...'

He didn't want the bother of taking our money.