Video Editing - World Maps

[son of a vette]

So I've been planning a travel video from a recent trip round Ecuador and the Galapagos, I'd like to include the map with the line showing our route, and I've found a few good tutorials on You-Tube on how to do this.

However I'm struggling to find some good maps to use as the base, getting a good consistent map type to show world (or at least UK to South America) as well as enough detail to zoom and see different Islands in the Galapagos. Most map Jpeg's I've found change in style between larger and more detailed maps.
Can you use images from Google maps for this? Or Apple Maps?
It's a home video, not for commercial use and I'm editing in FCP & have just got Motion to create the lines. Help appreciated.

[Lunja]

The best bet would be to look on GraphicRiver (paid) or a reputable free site for a "vector" map file. A vector, rather than being a set of fixed pixels like a jpg, is instead able to dynamically scale up or down by redrawing the pixels to the size you want without losing quality. You should then be able to zoom into small islands without the image pixellating.

Do some reading on how to work with vectors in Motion, and think of the map as a separate animation project rather than a video edit. You'll likely need to make your entire map in Motion then bring it in to your edit after. Good luck!

[son of a vette]

Thank you Lunja, I hadn't heard of Vector graphics before, I'll do some digging.

[Simpo Two]

son of a vette said:

Thank you Lunja, I hadn't heard of Vector graphics before

Adobe Illustator and .ai files spring to mind...

[rottie102]

iMovie has it all built in, with beautiful animations, distance calculations etc.

You can always edit the rest in something else and then just add the map parts in iMovie?

[son of a vette]

Thanks Rottie,
I'd looked at the iMovie built in maps to start with, thats where I got the idea, but they are limited in detail, major cities only etc, I need more detail to follow our route down the Andes and for round the islands I wanted to plot the route of our boat.
I'll investigate the other ideas and see where I get too.

[ninja-lewis]

Considered Google Earth?

http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/create-an-hd-fly-thr...