Tchin-tchin! Cheers to the most requested feature finally released. Now you can convert your animations to videos using our built-in Screen Capture feature.
Remember how we partnered up with Movavi a while back to provide you with an option to convert your animations to videos? Many took advantage of it but that solution wasn’t ideal for travelers who would never use a screen capturing program ever again, or were not tech savvy or willing to learn a 3rd party program for what they thought should be a quick and easy job within our platform.
We worked really hard on bringing a solution to you. We won’t bore you with the details of the long and wild ride this feature had to take before making it to you (we’ll only say we had to start over several times!)
At last, the built-in Screen Capture feature is here. It’s been available to our premium users for the past couple of months ‘in secret’. We did some improvements based on user feedback and it’s time we presented it to everyone today 🙂
Check out a video we made with our brand new Screen Capture feature – isn’t it great?
Upgrade your account today to gain access to the feature and start converting your animations to videos right away.
While we don’t expect you to have any problems with this new feature, mind that it’s still in BETA so please send us your feedback and reports via the Feedback form in your account or email directly at support @ pictramap . com.
How to Use the Built-in Screen Capture feature
Once you’ve upgraded your account to the Pro or Ultimate level, you will find the Screen Capture feature available on the ‘Review & Share’ page of each project in your account. To create a video file from any project, you should just click the “Open Capture Window” button and then follow the onscreen instructions.
For your convenience, and to know what to expect, here’s what you’ll have to do.
- Open a Google Chrome browser. Technically, the feature could work in other browsers too but for best results, we strongly recommend using Google Chrome.
- Close all open programs except your browser.
- Close all other browser tabs/windows.
- Click on the button ‘Open Capture Window’, which will open your animation in a new window with the instructions you need to follow.
After the start of the screen capture, please don’t use the computer until the animation has ended.
Due to the screen capture technology, the quality of the video will be lower than the high quality animation in the browser. Nevertheless, you can choose between three quality levels when converting animations to videos – the output video can be qHD (960 x 540 pixels), HD (1280 x 720 pixels), or full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) quality.
Naturally, more powerful computers will produce better quality videos. Fast i5 or i7 processor and 16GB RAM are recommended.
The speed and quality of your internet connection matters too. You can try and save the video several times – sometimes there are browser glitches when loading the animation assets. Also, when running the animation a second time, Chrome will have cached the images and map tiles, thus avoiding download delays.
The output format of your video will be .webm – some media players may not be able to play it, but you can always open it in Chrome. You can upload it to YouTube directly or import it in a video editing program. If your program doesn’t support the .webm format, we recommend using a free online tool like this one to convert your .webm file into an mp4 file so that the quality is not distorted during the import process.
When you click the ‘Start Screen Capture’ button, your browser will ask you what to share. Please select:
- “Chrome Tab”
- “Animated Travel Map with PictraMap”
- If the animation has music, select “Share audio”
And finally, click on the “Share” button on the bottom right. The animation will run, and after its end, Chrome will save a video of it.
A friendly Intellectual Property Copyright reminder
- Please keep all brand elements intact – e.g. the PictraMap watermark in the bottom left corner of the screen – if you need non-branded animations and videos, you are welcome to upgrade to the Ultimate level.
- If you upload the animation in its entirety, please leave the PictraMap logo and music credits in the end of the animation (if you use music from our library). If you use only parts of the animation/video in a larger video project, you are welcome to cut it in parts as you need, as long as our logo remains in the bottom left corner of the screen (see previous bullet).
- Commercial use is allowed ONLY with an Ultimate plan.
- If you upload your videos or use parts in larger custom-created videos on your blog, YouTube, Vimeo or other 3rd party website, you need to include a notice in the description. A simple one-line credit would suffice: “The travel animated maps used for the production of this video were created with PictraMap at https://www.pictramap.com.” Feel free to change the copy as you see fit, as long as our name and an active link to our website are present.
That’s it – now go ahead and log in to your PictraMap account. Upgrade to the Pro or Ultimate level to gain instant access to our new built-in Screen Capture feature and start converting your animations to videos right away.
Once the BETA test of this new feature is over, we’ll bump up our prices a bit to make sure we can continue to deliver the high quality service you demand of us. So hurry up and upgrade at the old price while you still can.
You wont publish THIS comment!
What other company allows you to do a basic procedure free and then does not allow you to download to use it!?
I think you are clever tricksters who a re not worth my confidence and certainly not my money!!
Hello Alan,
You create animations with PictraMap, not videos – and because the animations are interactive, they are dynamically created and cannot be saved to your computer.
However, because many of our users requested the ability to convert the animations to downloadable videos, we have released the built-in screen capture feature that would allow you to do just that – convert your animated maps into videos for download – please check out this blog post on the topic. And yes, it is a premium feature because we cannot afford to offer it as part of the free service. I hope you’d understand that!
I also hope this helps clarify things for you. Thanks for PictraMapping your trips with us!
~Diana