Making Movies in Google Earth Pro and EC
This tutorial describes how you can make a movie in Google Earth Pro
or EC. You
will make a simple movie of several locations near Mount Everest in Nepal and view this
movie file in an external application such as Windows Media Player or Apple QuickTime.
Note - This tutorial describes how to create a simple movie. There are
many ways you can enhance, optimize and customize your movie. To learn more, see Making Movies with Google Earth
in the user guide.
You can use the Movie Maker feature to record 3D viewer imagery and save the recording as
a movie file. You can make a movie that follows the camera viewpoint to and from multiple
locations. You can either set the feature to record your interactions with the 3D viewer
in real-time, or you can set up a tour and record the entire tour without interruption.
Once you finish recording and have saved your movie file, you can make the file available
on a web site, use it in a presentation, or send it via email.
In this tutorial, there are two parts to creating your movie:
First, you need to save placemarks of locations you want to show. To do this:
- Go to Mount Everest. For the purpose of this exercise, the quickest way to do this is
to enter the following latitude and longitude coordinates in the Fly To tab in
the Search panel. You can copy and paste these coordinates:
27°59'17.62"N 86°55'30.42"E
Press Enter. The 3D viewer flies to Mount Everest.
-
Create a placemark for this location or drag this coordinate from the
Search Panel to the Places panel.
- (Optional) To create a more interesting movie, navigate and
tilt
the terrain to an interesting perspective and snapshot
the current view. For more information, see Creating a
New Placemark in the
user guide.
- Repeat Steps 1 - 3 using the following coordinates:
27°58'59.70"N 86°51'27.06"E
28° 2'41.09"N 86°54'55.08"E
27°57'7.49"N 86°58'51.23"E
-
Create a new
folder and move the new placemarks to this folder.
Record Your Movie
Now you are ready to record your movie. To do this:
- In the Places panel, check and select the folder that contains your Mount Everest
placemarks.
- Test how your movie will play out by clicking the Play Tour button
. Google
Earth Pro or EC tours the locations. Note that you can set tours so that they play only
once, show descriptive balloons, etc. Learn more
about touring options.
- Click Tools > Movie Maker. The Movie Maker dialog box
appears.
|
|
The Movie Maker dialog box as it appears in Windows.
|
- (Windows and Linux only) Under Supported Compression
Formats, choose a desired compression format for your movie. Learn more
about these options.
- Under Movie Quality, choose Standard Quality. This
setting works well for movies that you want to provide over the Internet. Do not change
the frame rate (FPS).
- Under Resolution, use the 320x240 default setting. This setting
works well with most screen displays.
- Under Record Movie to this location and file , specify a name for
your movie. Click on the Browse button and navigate to a location on your
computer where you want to save the movie file when you are finished recording. Type in a
name for the file in the file dialog box and click OK.
- In the Places panel, be sure the the folder that contains your Mount
Everest placemarks is checked and selected. Click the Play Tour button
- Click the Record button. This button is available only after you
enter a valid filename for your movie. When the movie begins recording, the Movie Maker
dialog box appears below so you can visualize the recording of the movie. Google Earth
Pro or EC records the movie in a small area in the center of the screen.
- When the tour is complete, click Stop Recording. The movie is
complete. Google Earth Pro or EC asks you if you want to view the movie file in a media
player that supports the movie format you selected. If you are satisfied with the
results, you can post the file to a local server or use it in a presentation.
Note - If you chose High Quality (see step 8), the tour begins
automatically once you click Record.
