Using videos from Google Earth Pro

in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 under Windows

One of the features available only in the Pro version of Google Earth (GEPro) is the ability to save a video file of “tours.” GEPro running on Macs saves Quicktime videos. GEPro running on Windows saves Windows Media Video (wmv) or the less compressed avi format.

To create a video file that looks good when combined with footage from a standard SD camcorder several settings are important. I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and the following settings to make the “Old, Flat, and Unconsolidated” video.

In Google Earth Pro:

1. Under Tools à Movie Maker:

In the Movie Quality area select “High Quality,” and “25 fps.”

In the Resolution area select “1280x720 (HD).”

In the Advanced area select “Record to AVI format.”

2. Under Tools à Options:

Under the 3D View tab in the Graphics Mode area select “DirectX.” (The OpenGL option produced very jerky videos.)

In the Terrain Quality area move the slider all the way to “Higher.” I think I entered “2” for Elevation Exaggeration.

Under the Touring tab, select your preferred speeds for Fly-To and Tour.

All the video clips were created by playing a tour from one saved placemark to another after saving a snapshot view for each placemark. The resulting videos were imported into a Premiere project which was initiated with the preset “HDV 720p25” which matches the settings of the GEPro clips (1280x720, 25fps). Clips from an SD camcorder (720x480, 29.97fps) were also imported into this project and enlarged to fit the height of the larger 1280x720 frame (in the Effect Control window under Motion à Scale). The SD clips were automatically rendered to the new framerate. Video for the Web was exported at the native framerate of the project (25fps) and at a resolution of 720x406. Videos uploaded to YouTube had the native framerate and resolution (25fps, 1280x720), and are then reprocessed by YouTube into normal and HD quality versions.