Creating Animated Travel Maps in iMovie

There are animated travel maps built right into iMovie on your Mac. You can choose a single location or a route between two locations or even more. Beyond the basics, you can use cropping, color adjustments, and filters to create a unique animated travel map for your new iMovie project.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to create easy travel maps in iMovie. 
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Now iMovie has a great feature that I'm surprised to find some people don't know about. It's the ability to create these really cool travel maps where you travel from point A to point B on either a globe or a flat map. The best part is you don't have to import any special media or have anything setup. This is a built-in feature of iMovie and it is so easy to use. There are also some advanced options if you explore a bit. 
So here I've got a new iMovie project. There's nothing in the Timeline yet. I want to show a vacation video and I want to start off by showing a map with it traveling from my home to the destination. Now the way to do this with the built-in travel maps is to first go to Backgrounds. Travel Maps are part of Backgrounds. Now if you just see backgrounds here the trick is to scroll UP as maps are the first thing in the list here for Maps & Backgrounds. You get all of these different maps here.  But only the first eight are the ones you want to pay attention to. These last few, where it says Still, that is just a plain map background. So to preview these just move your pointer over one of these maps here. Slowly move it back and forth and you'll see a preview in the window to the right. You could see all the different styles here. There are basically four different styles and then there are Globe and Flat Map versions of each.
So you're going to pick the one you want. Let's just use the Old World Globe to start with. I'm going to select that and I can double click it to add it or I can drag it into the Timeline  here. Then I've got this globe here that spins a little bit and shows me one point on the Map. If I look on the right above the preview there's a new item that appears at the top in your Tools and that's the little globe or map settings icon here. So if you're not at these settings just click the little globe there to get to it. You'll see Route and you've got your Start point and your End point. 
Now if you just set a Start point then the way this will work is it will turn the globe slightly and then show you the name under the dot for that point. So you can click here and set that to any location you want. So if that's all you want, just to pinpoint a dot on a globe or a map you can just use the Start point. If instead you want to have a route then click the second button here. Now you don't type longitude and latitude or anything like that. Instead you type the name of a location. There's a huge database of names including airport codes and everything. So, for instance, I'll type London here and I'll see a lot of different matches. I'll go with the one that is just London, Greater London UK. Before you click Done look closely at the name to display on the map. So no matter what the actual listing is here there is a different name to display. It is usually a little simpler. But you can customize this. For instance you can all this Destination or Jim's House or whatever you want. You can put that in there and that's what you'll actually see on the map. 
So now you could see, since I've got the playback head at the end here, there's the end of the map. I could scrub over this and you could see the entire thing. That's all you really need to do to have a simple globe or map. Then you can jump into your video. 
Now there are a lot of different options starting with speed. So when you select this you can see it is four seconds. If I want it to be faster just simply make the time shorter. For instance if I make it two seconds it will have to do the animation in twice the time. If I want it to slow down I can have it go to six seconds and it is going to take six seconds to do it. So speed and duration are, of course, completely related. 
Now you can also go here and change things about the color. So let's go to the Color Tools here and I can use any of these color tools to change things. I can desaturate it a little bit or supersaturate it. I can tint it. So you can use those. You can also use color matching. So, for instance, if I know that I'm going to be going to a video that looks like this I want the colors to match. I can select this, click on the Color Matching tool here. Click Match Color and then I can select some point in here and have it match. Now the colors will match between the map and the first video that you go to, which is nice. You can also change the cropping. So if you go to the Crop Tool here is set to Fit which is standard. But you can change to Crop to Fill and then the idea is I can crop it in closer. Let's crop it in very close and put the crosshairs right wherever the red dot is on the frame that you're previewing. Then you click the checkbox here. Now it is zoomed in really close. So instead of seeing a globe you kind of see this curved map instead.
Now you can also use Ken Burns. With Ken Burns you get a Start Frame and an End Frame. So you can have it start all the way zoomed out and then I'll click here on the end frame and zoom that in. I'll put the crosshairs right on the red dot. So now my effect is that starts all the way out on the globe and zooms in very nicely to your location. 
Now what if you want multiple stops. You don't want to go from point A to point B but A to B to C. Well, you can do that as well. So let's go into Backgrounds here and instead of using the globe, this time I'm going to choose the Old World Map. I'll bring that in. So that is a flat map now. With it selected I've got starting San Francisco. Let's change that to Denver. I'll make sure the name is displayed like I want. Maybe I want to change this to Home. Then I'll have the first stop be London and I'll select from all the different options. Greater London UK. Make sure the name is right. Now I've got a map that goes like this. Now what if I wanted to continue from London to somewhere else. Well, what I could do then is I can simply Copy this and I could go to the End here. Click so that the playback head is at the end and Paste. Now I could have started over from scratch but what this does is it puts the route Denver to London and I can simply reverse them and now I've got London to Denver. But I'll change Denver to my next stop, Rome. I'll choose Rome right there. So now I've got this first part of the route and it goes seamlessly into the next part of the route. So that's really handy to have and then you can continue with multiple stops if you want. 
Now notice that because this is a longer distance it seems to go faster than this, which is a shorter distance. So I'll shorten this one so the speed is a little bit better matched. 
Now let me go back to when I just had one here. I can actually do the Ken Burns effect here starting all the way out and then the end will get closer, maybe not zoom in that close, like around there. So now it will zoom in as it gets closer to my destination but I want to do another stop. So I want to Copy, click at the end here, and Paste. Here not only will I be able to go to the Map Settings, reverse this so I'm starting in London, change the destination to my next destination like that. But I could also go to Cropping and Ken Burns. I can reverse Ken Burns with this button here. So now it starts at that size and the end I want to get even smaller so it will finish at that size.  Then I'll do the checkbox. I'll shrink this up since it is a shorter distance to make the speeds match, but better. Now it will zoom in from Denver to London and then continue to zoom in to Rome.
Now one last thing I want to show you. That is you can apply filters to these backgrounds just like you can with any regular video. So I'm going to select both of these. Hold the Shift key down selecting both. I've got the Filters button right there. I can now click Clip Filter and select one of these. There are a lot of good ones to choose from and you can kind of preview them all here. Vignette looks really nice. CPL looks pretty nice as well. Old World kind of enhances it. But I'm going to choose Aged Film like that. It is applied to both here. I can change the amount of the effect, percentage wise is there, like that. So now I've got Aged Film applied to this map using the Ken Burns effect to zoom in and going from one destination to another and then to a third. 
So give this a try. Play around with it. It's a lot of fun. You don't need to have a project that you're currently working on to play around with this. As a matter of fact it is better to play around with it now. Try all the different maps. Try some different things. Then in the future when you do want to use it you'll already know how. Hope you found this useful Thanks for watching.

Comments: 16 Responses to “Creating Animated Travel Maps in iMovie”

Alan Graham

9 months ago

This is a great feature that I wasn't aware of. When mapping shorter distance (e.g. London to Paris) the dots and line are too big. Is there a way of adjusting their size?

Gary Rosenzweig

Alan: No, there are no settings for that.

Julie

Thanks for the enhanced features demonstration. I did use the simple versions before and I’m glad to know how I can tailor it more.

Vaman Kale

Thanks. I have been dreaming of having this feature in my travel videos. I will try this now.

Sherry Raley

Darn! Every time I add the copy & paste so I can add another stop, it just extends the one I already have. There's no division.

Sherry: Make sure you set the two locations for each section carefully like I do in the video.

John Riddle

I have tried to enter GPS coordinates obtained from Apple Maps for a Custom destination but either the GPS option doesn’t work or I am entering in the wrong format. Have you tried using GPS coordinates? Thx

Follow-on above… for instance 30.73496°N, 97.69498°W is in TX but iMovie shows it in Asia.

John: Try "30.73496,-97.69498"

Thank you Gary, that format worked... your awesome!

Ken

Again, Always great. I use Final Cut. Are these options there or do I need to make movie in iMovie then export it? I would try but do not have Final Cut on this computer. Thanks

Ken: No. This is a feature of iMovie. You can always export from iMovie and use that as a clip in FCP, yes.

Thanks. I haven't used iMovie in a long time and have forgotten some of the features. This one was great. Thanks again

Michael

8 months ago

Brilliant tutorial Gary. Great detailed descriptions. Thank you. Having taken your iMovie course, this feature is something I will start using more in my movies. Regards Michael

Gene

4 months ago

Is there a way to keep all the legs of a trip displayed? As opposed to each leg ends and another starts.

Gene: Not with this technique. But try some of the other ones I show, like:
https://macmost.com/how-to-create-video-travel-maps-with-apple-motion.html
https://macmost.com/how-to-create-video-travel-maps-with-keynote.html

Creating Animated Travel Maps in iMovie

Comments: 16 Responses to “Creating Animated Travel Maps in iMovie”

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