WorldMapper

WorldMapper is ‘story creation’ map application which is integrated into Microsoft’s powerful ‘Bing’ and NASA’s Blue Marble mapping services.  WorldMapper transforms daily news easily into exciting video sequences captivating the viewer’s attention. The story is created out of impressive flights over high resolution satellite maps from Microsoft’s Bing map service or NASA’s Blue Marble map archive. The fly over is then enhanced with texts, images, routes, magnifiers and other objects inserted on top. All objects can be animated in several easy and intuitive ways enabling the user to quickly create a highly attractive story. The created sequence is exported either as a still image or as a video clip for playout. WorldMapper supports all standard video formats that are used by TV broadcasters worldwide.

Good story creation does not have to be complicated
 

By using a simple and intuitive editor, the user is able to modify the appearance of the map according to his needs; from one colour flat map to multi-coloured 3D globe maps. It is possible to save all the different map layouts for a later use.

Powerful graphic enhancements
 

Tracks and routes in form of flights or trips are visualized clearly with many types of object animations. The magnifying glass brings high reso¬lution street level maps while the “Bird's Eye View” provides impressive 45° site visuals without leaving the overview position of the map. The Mini Map locator maintains the overview even when the visualization dives deep into the map. Already used location data can be stored in a bookmark library and found easily for later use.
 

Highlighting geographical locations

WorldMapper comes with a library of all national and interstate borders, allowing the user to integrate political information quickly and easily. Countries and regions can be coloured for greater emphasis. The map’s colour and outlines may be adapted to the layout concept. WorldMapper enables the user to edit both the look and the contents of the depicted countries' borders, for instance to adapt the layout or visualize shifts in ownership claims. The edited border is saved as a copy so that the original can still be accessed.

A dynamic data object supports the automation of recurrent contributions. In doing so, it retrieves information from external data sources and depicts this in graphical form. The object’s current position and the associated information like country, federal state, or city name function as filters for data updates.

Wide range of output formats

The software’s strong video encoding engine allows the user to choose the desired video format, the codec, clip size, bitrate, aspect ratio and more. WorldMapper even enables the user to customize his codec configuration.

Interactivity support

WorldMapper offers the creation of flights for interactive presentations on a touch screen, and navigates online through high resolution maps. In addition, the anchor can use WorldMapper to present created sequences interactively on a touch screen. With the multi-touch standard and an optimized user interface, every map can be accessed quickly and intuitively on the screen. The interactivity enables the presenter to zoom with two fingers, stop an animation at any place, assign a story to a geographical location, or visit the relevant scenes. Function editors that can be positioned anywhere on the screen help highlight countries, add objects, or return to earlier positions.