Making Videos in Google Earth Pro and EC
This tutorial describes how you can make a video in Google Earth Pro or EC. You will make a simple video of several locations near Mount Everest in Nepal and view this video file in an external application such as Windows Media Player or Apple QuickTime.
Note - This tutorial describes how to create a simple video. There are many ways of enhancing, optimising and customising your video. To learn more, see Making Videos 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 video file. You can make a video 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 video file, you can make the file available on a website, use it in a presentation or send it via email.
In this tutorial, there are two parts to creating your video:
First, you need to save placemarks of locations that 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 video, 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 Video
Now you are ready to record your video. To do this:
- In the Places panel, tick and select the folder that contains your Mount Everest placemarks.
- Test how your video plays 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 dialogue box appears.
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| The Movie Maker dialogue box as it appears in Windows. |
- (Windows and Linux only) Under Supported Compression Formats, choose a desired compression format for your video. Learn more about these options.
- Under Movie Quality, choose Standard Quality. This setting works well for videos 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 video. Click the Browse button and navigate to a location on your computer where you want to save the video file when you have finished recording. Type in a name for the file in the file dialogue box and click OK.
- In the Places panel, make sure that the folder that contains your Mount Everest placemarks is ticked and selected. Click the Play Tour button
- Click the Record button. This button is only available after you have entered 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. Google Earth Pro or EC records the video in a small area in the centre of the screen.
- When the tour is complete, click Stop Recording. The video is complete. Google Earth Pro or EC asks you if you want to view the video file in a media player that supports the video format that 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.
