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User Guide

Making Movies with Google Earth

Note - Movie 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 of Google Earth to record 3D viewer imagery and save the recording as a movie 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 web site, use it in a presentation, or send it via email. For instance, you might want to create a movie 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 movie file formats:

Movie Quality Levels

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

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

Tips for Recording Movies

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

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

Update Your Movie Player

Having the latest version of Windows Media Player or Apple QuickTime installed is absolutely essential to making good quality movies, especially if you are having issues with the graphics quality of your movie. 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 movie, a faulty graphics card driver can produce anomalies in your 3D viewer that then transfer into the movie 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 movie recording experience will go faster (although it will have no impact on the final quality of your movie). 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 the pixels in more detail. As a result, the resolution of your movie 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 movie back to evaluate whether the speed is appropriate. See Touring Places for details.

Note - The tour speed you choose will be consistent throughout the movie. If you want to set different tour speeds for different Placemarks in the same movie, you will need to create separate movie files for each tour and then edit them in a movie making software.

Adjust the Elevation Exaggeration

If you want to enhance the appearance of terrain in your movie, 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 uncheck or check these items in the View menu. Likewise, in this same menu, you can check or uncheck 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 you want to visit in your movie. This involves two simple actions:

After previewing your movie, be sure to make any adjustments necessary 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) on the placemark, then select Snapshot View in the menu. This will overwrite your existing placemark view. See Editing Places and Folders for more details.

Set Up Your System for Maximum Efficiency

Making movies 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 Movies

Tip - Follow a tutorial on this subject.

Follow these steps to record your movie:

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

    If you want to have a movie format other than WMV (Windows Media Video) or .mov (QuickTime), check the Advanced checkbox and choose the format. If you choose another movie 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 movie quality. See Movie Quality Levels for details.
  4. Choose the Frames Per Second (FPS) you desire for your movie. The highest FPS setting, 60, offers the smoothest movie viewing experience, but at the cost of a large file size. For instance, if you want to record a 800 x 600 movie 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 movie 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 movies that you want to provide over the Internet.
  5. Choose the resolution for your movie. You'll want to choose a resolution that is appropriate for your final movie 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 movie 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 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 on the OK button.

    Alternatively, you can select an existing movie 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 movie 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 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.
Note - Recording time in high quality movies 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 of recording movies, to stop recording, click the Stop Recording button in the Movie Maker dialog box. Once you finish recording your movie, you can open the movie file in a media player that supports the movie format you selected and play back the movie 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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