Importing Google My Maps Route as Google Earth Tour

Question

The goal: I would like to create a video of a route, as it would appear if one could smoothly trace through the entire route in Google Street View. (See an example of the previous solution using Google Street View Player (GSVP).

In Google Maps, it is only necessary to designate starting and ending point, not trace along each step of the route. Unfortunately, without GSVP, there doesn't seem to be a way to create the desired route video in Google Maps anymore.

I didn't see a way to export a KML from Google Maps, so I used Google's My Maps to sketch out a route, and exported that route as KML. Then I imported the KML into Google Earth Pro (GEP). Now, in GEP, I am looking at the territory in question, with a nice blue line across it, signifying the desired route.

What I'm missing is a way to persuade GEP to treat that blue line as a path to be followed in a video tour in GEP's Street View. I'm thinking this would give me an alternative to the GSVP output.

Possibly it just won't work that way. In that case, I welcome alternate suggestions for achieving the goal.

Answer 1

If I'm reading your question correctly, you want to make the video of moving through StreetView pano images, not the 3D map views in Earth. If so, I don't think there's an easy way to generate a video like that from the line you drew in MyMaps, but there are a few things you could explore. First, check out the KML Tour tool in Google Earth Pro. You should be able to create a "tour" that moves from one SV pano to the next along your desired path. Once you've recorded the tour, you can use the Movie Maker tool in Earth Pro to generate a movie/video file from that tour. If your manually created tour is too slow for your taste, just play it back at higher speed while recording a 2nd tour which you'll use to generate the video. Earth does have a way to turn a line (like the one you have) into a tour/flight, but it's designed to fly above the line and view the 3D map. The other thing you might look into is Google Earth Studio, where you can create super slick videos of flying through the 3D views in Earth. Unfortunately it doesn't support Street View at this time, but if flying through the 3D buildings is enough, that might work for you.