Making Animated Maps? Google Earth?

[Dave Allen]

I notice that many docu's that show location or the destination will show an earth image that zooms in to the location. I know Google Earth will do that, but not as a movie.

What suggestions and workflow do you all suggest to show location as a moving image system?

[Shaughan Flynn]

Earth Zoom Tutorial

[Rouan van der Ende]

Thats one way, recently I had to do several of these and found a quicker way.

Get Google Earth and fraps

Fraps lets you capture the viewport of google earth to uncompressed .avi :)

[Dave Allen]

Fraps is Windows only, not Mac....I'd boot my Mac in a Windows environment, but I don't have Windows yet...but I am going to research all the links offered up....thanks

[Dave Allen]

Earth Zoom seems to require on have Adobe Elements....I only have Final Cut Pro


crap! lol

[Simon Zimmer]

With the pro version, you can create movies. HD quality looks great.

I use it often.

Expensive though.

Simon

[Dave Allen]

If you create movies with it, how do you deal with zooming in from afar with the time it takes to download or it will be blurred?

[Simon Zimmer]

Hello,

There is a trial for google earth pro:

Google Earth

Try it out.

You create a tour first and then record the tour which records each frame after the frame has been downloaded. The quality is excellent.

Then you can take the video in your NLE and do what you want with it.

Simon

[Dave Allen]

What I am finding with Google Earth, whether it be the pro version or otherwise, is that when you zoom in all the way to whatever your end zoompoint is, then let it download, then zoom out, and repeat while recording it, that is looks great on screen. BUT, whether recording it using Snapz Pro X or Snow Leopards screen movie capture protocol, the video loses all its smoothness and becomes real steppy.

Does make any difference whether you import it into Final Cut pro and render it, it is still really jerky, whereas animating it onscreen it looks great.

So I am still stuck..

[Andrew Smith]

That jerkiness / stuttering on the screen recorded video is likely to be a CPU / resources issue with the computer that you are working on.

Got a faster computer by any chance? Or maybe screen capture a smaller area?

Andrew

[Simon Zimmer]

You have to use Google Earth Pro (movie maker) option to record not another program.

Andrew also might be right. Is your computer powerful?

The movie maker option works in Google Earth Pro (trial version).

Simon

[Dave Allen]

The computer was a Mac dual core 27" iMac. I find it odd it looked good on screen, the zoom was slow, the buffer was downloaded....

I hate to buy Google Earth Pro for $400 and have it not work smoothly.

[Simon Zimmer]

Hello,

It is not clear from your post if you tried the trial and if you used the movie maker INSIDE google earth?

It does work and the quality is excellent. Not sure what else I can say to help you out.

Sorry.

Simon

[Andrew Smith]

Dave,

Download the pro version of Google Earth and use the option for a free 7 day trial.

Let us know how you go.

Andrew

[Simon Wyndham]

Google Earth Pro isn't just expensive, it is absolutely mind blowingly astoundingly expensive.

Even if you pay for it and record a video, Google still have to give you written approval for using the resulting video in your production.

It is such a shame that NASA's own equivalent to Google Earth isn't going anywhere, because that was free, and from what I have been told the video recording could be better than Google Earth. But I haven't used it because I'm also on a Mac.