Making Google Earth Movies For Less Than $400, Does Anyone Know How To Do It? Options

[DocTaotsu]

I really want to use Google Earth during my games but we rarely game somewhere with a ready net connection. I particularly like being able to do the "We have satellite recon" and show them falling out of the sky into whatever remote godforsaken place they have to go to this week.

Google Earth can do this... for 400 dollars.

No thank you.

So any suggestions? Good cheap/free program that will let me record what I'm doing on my desktop as a video? Some other method I'm missing?

[vladski]

Well, if you know where your characters are running before the game, jsut use Google Earth and do a screen cap of each zoom step in to your target.

Download and use this software if you don't already have a screen grabber of your own. I have been using AnalogX's Capture program for a good 7 years or so and it works on everything from Win95 to Vista. It's safe, tiny and very easy to use. I give it a 10/10 as an indispensible computer utility.

You could then:

1. Display these pics in a slideslow format, or

2. Make one large animated gif out of them using any of scads of free, downloadable animated gif programs. Then jsut display it in a Firefox or IE window.

I'll take a quick swing around the internet to see if there any Google Earth-type downloads for housing offline available for free. But, I'd say don't hold your breath, as the the TON of maps it takes to create such a database to house on your own computer is pretty daunting.

Vlad

[raverbane]

I luv Google Earth and use it alot in my games, as well.

I tend to use an old--tech solution.

'PrtSc' + Windows Paint + cntV. Rinse, Repeat

[CanRay]

'PrtSc' + Windows Paint + cntV. Rinse, Repeat

I had a job in which this was, literally, part of the techniques I had to use to migrate from an old database to the new one.

[krakjen]

Hmm, Couldn't you do that for free by using Google Earth (free version) + FRAPS?

[Caine Hazen]

there's always NASA WorldWind which is a good open source alternative. I believe you can do a server for this as well... something I've thought about doing before.

[DocTaotsu]

FRAPS?

I might do the animated gif all else fails, but it just seemed like there should be a cooler alternative to holding my video camera in front of my screen.

Does worldwind do video? I was looking at it last night and wasn't getting much love.

[krakjen]

FRAPS is a software made for recording video from games.
But actually any 3D source will do.

You wanted to do a movie in your original post...

[DocTaotsu]

Ah! cool beans man thanks, I'll look into this.

[krakjen]

More info here.
Seeing as the free version is limited, you may want to look into the alternative open/free version: Taksi
Audio is not yet supported but I don't think you need it for google earth (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Edit: Speaking of audio, if you have too much free time, you can record some cool mission briefing to go with the video...

[DocTaotsu]

That's exactly what I was thinking of doing (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) . Use some basic mixer controls to tweak my voice a little...


A guy could have a lot of fun with this.

[krakjen]

You should post it here when it's done :3

[DocTaotsu]

We'll see, it'll be pretty ghetto unless I go get an copy of AfterFX or something.

[CanRay]

More Ghetto than pulling out an Atlas and saying, "This is some satelite shots of..."?

[DocTaotsu]

You know, if I had my 4 ft to a side atlas with me I would have no problem doing that (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I meant ghetto as in "crappy voice overs and bad acting"

[CanRay]

That's not Ghetto, that's Self-Posted YouTube. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Caine Hazen]

I'd dig through the WorldWind site. The program is designed for educators to make video for classes. Plus you can do a custom set of data or images or models and share your version (running almost in a server mode).

Actually the more i look the more I want to try some of this... which sucks for having too many projects and too much work to do (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)