| Someone from the message board asked how to create the radar loops I post on YouTube. In case anyone else wants to know, you can do the following... The radar loops on my YouTube channel are created manually in Google Earth Pro. The "Pro" edition is free and you can downloaded it here: https://www.google.com/earth/ When the program asks for a license key, enter your email address and use the key "GEPFREE" to sign in to the program. You can replace the normal Google Earth program you have installed with this version. After opening the recon product ( http://hurricanecity.com/recon/ ) in Google Earth Pro, click on a NOAA mission that has radar data in the left column. Go to "Mission Data > Radar Scans > Radar Loop". Note: Older computers may not be able to play the loop, or create the movie that you will be creating of the loop, and may crash Google Earth. To load all the images in the loop, though this too may crash Google Earth, use the timeline slider, in the top left corner of the viewable Earth, to add all imagery at once using the following directions. Click the right tab in the slider and drag it all the way to the right. The left tab slide will also be dragged. Then click the left tab in the slider, which is now positioned to the right, and drag it all the way to the left. The tabs should now be on opposite ends of the slider. Wait until all the images load. (An animated circle will appear next to "Radar Loop" until the images have loaded.) Then again click the left tab in the slider and drag it back all the way to the right, against the right tab. Then do the same thing with the right tab in the slider, dragging it all the way back to the left. It will take the left tab with it. You are now ready to play all the images in a loop. You can adjust the speed of the image loop. Click the little wrench icon in the top right of the timeline slider. To play the loop, use the furthest right button that is located in the top left of the timeline slider. For the nice background I use, visit: http://tropicalatlantic.com/models/more/#ta And download the 5.09mb black marble imagery overlay I have created from NASA imagery from August 2004. This overlay may also crash Google Earth due to its size. You may have to select, and then unselect, the "Radar Loop" folder to get the radar imagery to appear above the NASA imagery. In the menu at the top, click "View > View Size" and then select a size to set the size of your Google Earth window. Within this sized window, I usually pick "1280 x 720p HDTV", you will be playing the loop as it will appear in the video you create. A higher sized window is too large to use on most computers. If you will only be using this as a GIF image, and not uploading it to YouTube, you may want to use a smaller size or the movie file created will be large. It will then make creating the GIF file from the movie take a longer time. Position the view how you would like it to appear in the video, but do not change the size of the window before you create the movie. (Including changing the size of the left sidebar, hiding it or hiding the toolbar) You are now ready to create the movie. In the menu at the top, click "Tools > Movie Maker". As a Movie Type, I usually pick "WMV9 - High Quality Video (16mpbs)". Under "Record from...", "Live mouse and keyboard navigation" is selected. As a Resolution, I pick whatever I set the "View Size" to be, so for me I usually use "1280x720 (HD)". Select "Browse" to choose where to save the file, a ".wmv" file since we are creating that format. Creating the movie is tricky. You can't start playing the loop after you start creating the movie. You must start playing the loop and then, as quickly as you can, hit "Create Movie". A small dialog window will popup, located just below the sized Google Earth window, located at the bottom center. It has a "Stop Recording" button. When the loop has finished playing, click it. You have now created a movie of the radar that you can upload to YouTube. You may have to try that several times to get it right. If you try to overwrite the same file each time, it will ask "Are you sure you want to overwrite [file name of movie]?" as soon as you click "Create Movie", wasting time while the radar loop is already playing. On subsequent attempts, delete the file, or rename it, so that you don't get asked that question. As for creating a GIF image animation, you can use Google to find an online converter: https://www.google.com/search?q=convert+wmv+to+gif+online+free Note: Use caution in using free sites like this. I just tried this site and it happened to work: https://convertio.co/wmv-gif/ As for uploading that large image file, you could do so at a variety of photo sharing sites, some of which do not require registration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photo-sharing_websites I use imgur ( http://imgur.com/ ), a site which may have mature content as an fyi, but it does not require registration and on some GIF images you upload, it allows the image to play like a movie, allowing you to pause it. You may be able to right click on the movie, depending on your browser, and see options to show controls that will allow you to pause it. If you want to use the plain GIF that was uploaded to imgur, do the following. In Google Chrome, right click on the movie and click "Copy video address". In Mozilla Firefox it will be called "Copy Video Location". Paste it into you browser's address bar and replace the ".mp4" in it with a ".gif". Visit the image to make sure it is available. That image can now be posted elsewhere. Example from Tuesday's afternoon mission: Credit: NOAA-AOC And the saved alternatives... With controls when you right click: http://imgur.com/a/ISLFC Or just the GIF image itself: http://i.imgur.com/Qq0Ty9p.gif |