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User Guide

Making Videos with Google Earth

Note - Video-making features are available to users of the Google Earth Pro and Google Earth EC products. Learn more.

You can use the Movie Maker feature in Google Earth to record 3D viewer imagery and save the recording as a video file. You can either set the recorder 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 file, you can make the file available on a website, use it in a presentation or send it in an email. For instance, you might want to create a video of your property to present to clients or at trade shows where visitors can see satellite views of your property without having to use Google Earth.

The Movie Maker feature supports different video file formats:

Video Quality Levels

The Movie Maker feature also supports two types of video quality levels:

Note - Keep in mind that high-quality video can only play back tour points. You cannot manually interact with the 3D viewer when using the high-quality option.

Tips for Recording Videos

This section covers a number of tips to help you create quality videos. We recommend that you familiarise yourself with these tips before beginning your recording in order to produce the best possible video for your needs.

Note: The time slider is not available when you record videos.

Update Your Video Player

Having the latest version of Windows Media Player or Apple QuickTime installed is absolutely essential to making good quality videos, especially if you are having issues with the graphics quality of your video. We highly recommend that you download Windows Media Player 9 or above:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/9series/default.aspx

Or for the Mac:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/mac/default.aspx

You can find the latest version of Apple QuickTime here:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/

Update Your Graphics Card Driver

Although graphics card drivers have no impact on the actual recording of your video, a faulty graphics card driver can produce errors in your 3D viewer that then transfer into the video itself. Therefore, it's always good practice to update your driver to avoid any possible rendering issues. We recommend that you use a graphics card with at least 64 MB of video RAM or above.

Increase Your Memory Cache

By increasing your memory cache size, your video recording experience will go faster (although it will have no impact on the final quality of your video). To increase your memory cache, see Memory and Disk Cache Preferences.

Increase the Detail Area of the 3D Viewer

Increasing the area of detail for your 3D viewer helps to capture all of the pixels in more detail. As a result, the resolution of your video is improved. See Viewing Preferences for instructions.

Note - Set Detail Area to Large if you have 64 MB of graphics card memory or more. If you have less than 64 MB of graphics card memory, set Detail Area to Medium.

Adjust the Touring Speed

When recording, it is best to use a relatively slow tour speed. However, feel free to experiment with different speeds and then play the video back to evaluate whether the speed is appropriate. See Touring Places for details.

Note - The tour speed that you choose will be consistent throughout the video. If you want to set different tour speeds for different placemarks in the same video, you will need to create separate video files for each tour and then edit them with video editing software.

Adjust the Elevation Exaggeration

If you want to enhance the appearance of terrain in your video, you can adjust the Elevation Exaggeration as described in Viewing Preferences.

Showing or Hiding Items in the 3D Viewer

To hide or show the compass, status bar, scale legend or grid, simply un-tick·or tick·these items in the View menu. Likewise, in this same menu, you can tick or un-tick Atmosphere to hide the atmosphere around the globe when viewed at full horizon or from space. See also:

Preview Your Tour Setup Before Recording

It's a good idea to set up and review the tour points that you want to visit in your video. This involves two simple actions:

After previewing your video, make sure that any necessary adjustments are made before recording. For example, if you want to change the view of a particular placemark on the tour, you can always right-click (CTRL-click on the Mac) the placemark, then select Snapshot View in the menu. This will overwrite your existing placemark view. See Editing Places and Folders for more details.

Setting Up Your System for Maximum Efficiency

Making videos is a memory-intensive and graphics-intensive process. It's best not to have multiple large applications running on your computer during recording. Disable both screen savers and pop-up blockers.

Steps for Recording Videos

Tip - Follow a tutorial on this subject.

Follow these steps to record your video:

  1. From the Tools menu, select Movie Maker. The Movie Maker dialogue box appears.
  2. From the Supported Compression Formats selector, choose the desired compression format for your video.

    If you want to have a video format other than WMV (Windows Media Video) or .mov (QuickTime), tick the Advanced checkbox and choose the format. If you choose another video format, only standard AVI compression is available. Note that AVI formats are not compressed and therefore will result in large files.
  3. Select High Quality or Standard Quality as the video·quality. See Video·Quality Levels for details.
  4. Choose the Frames Per Second (FPS) that you require for your video. The highest FPS setting, 60, offers the smoothest video viewing experience, but at the expense of a large file size. For instance, if you want to record a 800 x 600 video at 60 FPS, you will not achieve the best results. In this case, choose a lower setting in order to produce a smaller file. The lower the FPS setting, the more jerky the video will be. You'll want to find the best compromise between frame transition and file size. Typically, a setting of 30 works fairly well for videos that you want to provide over the Internet.
  5. Choose the resolution for your video. You'll want to choose a resolution that is appropriate for your final video display. For example, you might have a computer screen projector that only supports a 800 x 600 format. You can specify the following resolutions, which indicate the width and height of the video in pixels:
    • 320 x 240
    • 640 x 480
    • 800 x 600
    • 720 x 480 (NTSC) - This setting works well with large screen displays.
    • 720 x 576 (PAL)
    • 1280x720 (HD)
    • 1920x1080 (HD)
  6. Specify a name for your video. Click the Browse button and navigate to a location on your computer where you want to save the video file when you are finished recording. Type in a name for the file in the file dialogue box and click the OK button.

    Alternatively, you can select an existing video file in the same format as the one you are about to create, and that file will be overwritten with the contents of your new recording.
Note - If you are recording your video as an image stream, it's best to choose a new filename or folder location rather than overwriting an existing image stream selection.
  1. Click the Record Tour button. The button is only available after you enter a valid filename for your video. When the video begins recording, the Movie Maker dialogue box appears below so you can visualise the recording of the video.
Note - Recording time in high-quality videos occurs very slowly, since each frame is fully processed before the next one is viewed.

When You Are Finished

When you are finished the steps involved in recording your video, click the Stop Recording button in the Movie Maker dialogue box to stop recording. Once you finish recording your video, you can open the video file in a media player that supports the video format that you selected and play back the video to view the results. If you are satisfied with the results, you can post the file to a local server or use it in a presentation.

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