# Mapflyover — full text of the guides and use cases > Make cinematic map flyover videos from a script: real place boundaries, narration, word-by-word captions and MP4 export for YouTube, Shorts, Reels and TikTok. Build it by hand or let your own AI agent do it. Mapflyover is built and operated by its founder, Ali Hassan, in Darwin, Australia. This file is generated from the same data as the guide and use-case pages on https://mapflyover.com, so it matches them exactly. ## Features (summary) - Real place boundaries: countries, regions, cities and landmarks come from OpenStreetMap, ranked so the right match is chosen first, with far-flung islands and overseas territories kept out of the frame. - Fix an outline in one tap: switch to another candidate, draw a circle of a given radius, or import your own GeoJSON shape for any scene. - Satellite imagery: previews use free Esri imagery; exported satellite videos are drawn with Mapbox imagery on a free public token you add once. The other nine map looks export without a token. - 3D flyover camera: look straight down or tilt the camera up to 85 degrees, so it flies over the map in three dimensions. Pitch, bearing, roll, field of view, motion speed and flight time per scene, with an automatic cruise zoom-out between places. - Your own camera path: keyframes for position, zoom, pitch and bearing with a speed curve, or ready-made holds (push-in, pull-out, drift, sweep, orbit). - Word-highlighted captions: the spoken word lights up as it is said. Seven presets, eight fonts, outline, shadow, background plate, position and animation. - Stat cards, focus cards and a location chip: timed stat cards for numbers and facts, focus cards as a second distinct card type, and a location chip with the country flag, with separate sizes for vertical and landscape. - Sticker pop-ups: country flags, landmarks, animals, weather and icons over the map, several at once, with tilt, outline, shadow and entrance animations. - Vertical and landscape: one project exports as 9:16 vertical or 16:9 landscape MP4. Those are the only two aspect ratios; there is no square (1:1) export. - Moving icons and pictures: pin a boat, plane, marker or your own artwork to a place and send it along a path; it stays on the map as the camera moves. - Animated titles: words that arrive letter by letter, glitch in, type out or count up like a year ticker, with accent colours on chosen words. - Routes, arrows and borders: lines that draw themselves on, lying on the map in perspective or flat on screen, and can trace the border two places share. - Place fills: fill a place with a solid colour, gradient, pattern, picture, video, text or stat, and keep the fill on after the camera leaves, with reveal animations. - Multi-place highlights: highlight up to 12 extra places in one scene, for comparisons and neighbours. - Your assets and data: upload pictures, SVGs, GIFs and short videos to your own library, or import a data table (CSV) to colour countries on a data map or draw a racing bar chart. - Ten map looks: satellite, streets, topographic, shaded relief, dark, light, ocean, a National Geographic style atlas look, historic (an aged-paper look; the boundaries drawn are current, not historical) and blueprint. - Terrain relief for the 3D look: an optional terrain-relief and haze setting that makes hills and mountains rise out of the map when the camera tilts. The 3D depth comes from the camera angle and the terrain relief; there are no modelled 3D buildings. - Script-to-video studio: paste or write a script (up to 20,000 characters) and it is kept exactly as written, for narration and caption text. - Natural narration voices: pick a natural voice in English or another language and generate the audio, or upload your own recording. Narration is free and needs no key. - Timed to the word: the voice reports each word time, so captions need no key and every caption time can be edited by hand and exported as SRT. For a recording you made yourself, Groq Whisper listens with your own key. - Your soundtrack: up to 8 music and sound-effect tracks from your own audio library, with start times, fades, looping, volume and ducking under the narration. There is no built-in stock music library; tracks are ones you upload. - Create with AI, built in: describe a video in a sentence and the studio's built-in AI builds it for you, 3 videos per account. - Your own AI agent: connect Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or another MCP client to the Mapflyover MCP server to create projects, write scripts, generate narration, time captions, resolve places and save scenes. Everything an agent can do can also be done by hand in the editor. - Exact frame previews for agents: preview_frames returns the exact frames of the saved video in the answer — the real satellite imagery, camera, titles, stat cards and captions at the moments the agent chooses — so the agent sees the real result before handing it over. - Claim links: an agent can build a video for someone who has no Mapflyover account yet, then hand them a claim link. The link shows the videos; after they sign up with Google (or sign in) and press Claim, the projects land in their own library, ready to open, edit and export. Claim links live 14 days. - Six video templates: history explainer, top list, comparison, journey/route, travel guide and country profile. - Portuguese in the logged-in app: the main screens of the logged-in app (dashboard, editor, settings and billing) are available in English and Portuguese (Brazil). The public site is in English. - Browser rendering: FFmpeg runs in your browser, each frame waits for its map tiles, and you can keep editing while an export runs. Finished videos are saved to your account library. - Buffer scheduling (Pro and Studio only): add an exported video to your Buffer queue or pick an exact time, for several channels at once. Free accounts cannot share to Buffer. ## Plans and pricing (summary) - Free ($0): the full editor, unlimited previews and 3 projects. Narration and captions are free. Exports 2 MP4 videos a month at 720p, up to 90 seconds each, with the Mapflyover mark. Buffer scheduling is not included. - Pro trial (USD $3 for 7 days): a week of Pro with 8 exports at 720p with the Mapflyover mark; then USD $20 a month unless cancelled. One trial per account. - Pro (USD $20 a month): 30 exports a month, up to 1080p, up to 5 minutes each, 50 projects, no watermark, Buffer scheduling included. - Studio (USD $70 a month): 300 exports a month, up to 4K, up to 15 minutes each, 500 projects, no watermark, Buffer scheduling included. # Guides ## Connect Claude or ChatGPT to Mapflyover and make your first video URL: https://mapflyover.com/guides/connect-claude-or-chatgpt Published: 2026-10-07 · Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover There are two ways to build a Mapflyover video with AI. The built-in Create with AI button lets you describe a video in a sentence or two and have the studio build it for you, and you get three AI-built videos per account that way. The second way, and the subject of this guide, is to connect your own AI app, Claude or ChatGPT, to Mapflyover through a connector, so the agent you already chat with can plan, narrate and build videos for you. By the end of this guide you will have connected your AI app, asked it for a first video in plain language, opened the result in the editor, changed anything you want by hand, and exported the finished MP4 yourself. Setup takes a few minutes, you only do it once, and building and previewing cost nothing. ### How do I connect Claude or ChatGPT to Mapflyover? There are two ways: use the built-in Create with AI in the studio, which includes 3 AI-built videos per account, or add Mapflyover as a custom connector in Claude or ChatGPT at https://mapflyover.com/api/mcp, sign in and tap Allow. Your agent can then build and save projects with narration and timed captions, but it cannot export — you preview, edit and export the MP4 yourself in the editor. ### Step 1: pick your way of building with AI Before you connect anything, it helps to know which of the two AI paths you are on, because they suit different jobs. Create with AI is built into the studio. You describe the video in a sentence or two, the studio's own AI builds the scenes, and the result opens as a normal project you can edit. It is the quickest way to a first video, and each account includes three AI-built videos this way. Your own agent through the connector is the more flexible path. Because the agent lives in a chat, you can discuss the topic first, ask for a different script, change the order of scenes, or come back tomorrow and build a follow-up video in the same conversation. The agent works in your Mapflyover account, saving real projects that you open, edit and export in the editor. Nothing is locked inside the chat. Both paths produce the same kind of project: scenes with real place outlines, narration, timed captions and camera moves, all editable by hand afterwards. Many people try Create with AI first for speed, then connect their own agent when they want more control over the script and the conversation. This guide covers the connector path from here on. ### Step 2: sign in, nothing to add Narration is free and the captions are timed from the narration, so there are no keys to add before you start. The built-in narration uses Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, and it needs no key and is never limited by your plan. Captions are timed from the narration word by word, and every word's timing can be edited by hand later, with an SRT export if you need the captions as a file. The one exception is captions for a recording you made yourself. If you upload your own narration as an MP3 or WAV file, its captions are transcribed with Groq Whisper. That is free from the studio key for up to 60 minutes a month per person; after that you add your own free Groq key in Settings and carry on. If you never upload your own recordings, you can ignore keys completely. Open the dashboard after you sign in. The setup guide there takes you straight to connecting your AI app, and it checks each step by itself as you finish it. - No key is needed for narration, or for the captions timed from that narration. - Your own Groq key is only for captions on your own uploaded recordings, and only past the free 60 minutes a month. ### Step 3: connect Claude or ChatGPT In your AI app, open Settings, then Connectors, and add a custom connector. Name it Mapflyover and paste the address shown in the setup guide: https://mapflyover.com/api/mcp. The app opens a Mapflyover page where you sign in and tap Allow. That approval is what lets the agent build projects in your account. Free Claude and ChatGPT accounts allow only one custom connector. If that slot is already used, remove the other connector first, or use a paid plan in that app. This limit comes from Claude and ChatGPT, not from Mapflyover, and Mapflyover cannot lift it. If you use Claude Code or Cursor instead of a chat app, you connect with a personal access token rather than the sign-in flow. The For agents page in the studio has the exact commands for each tool. Either way, the agent gets the same abilities and the same limits: it can build and save projects, and it cannot export or spend your plan credits. - Start a new chat after connecting and switch the Mapflyover connector on. - The setup guide in the dashboard checks for the connection by itself and moves on when it sees it. ### Step 4: ask for the video you want Describe the video in one or two sentences: the topic, the length and whether it is vertical or landscape. Mapflyover exports vertical 9:16 and landscape 16:9, so name one of the two. For example: 'Make a 45 second vertical Mapflyover video about the five largest countries in Africa, with narration and captions.' The AI reads the built-in guide, writes the script, records the narration, times the captions, finds the real place outlines and saves the scenes. It then gives you a link. Open it to preview, change anything by hand and export. Ask in the chat when you want changes the agent is well placed to make: a shorter script, a different place, scenes in another order. Ask for one change at a time and preview again, so you can see what each request did. When the agent saves new scenes over old ones, the previous scenes are kept as a backup, so an experiment does not destroy the earlier version. ### Worked example: the five largest countries in Africa Here is the whole flow with a real request. You connect Mapflyover in Claude or ChatGPT as above, start a new chat, make sure the connector is switched on, and send: 'Make a 45 second vertical Mapflyover video about the five largest countries in Africa, with narration and captions.' Nothing else is needed: no script from you, no list of countries, no files to upload. The agent writes a short script that names the five countries in size order, records it with a built-in narration voice, and times the captions to the words. It finds the real OpenStreetMap outline for each country, so the shapes on screen are the actual borders, and saves one scene per country with a camera move for each. A few moments later it replies with a link to the project. Open the link and press play. Suppose one scene sits on its country a moment too long, or you would rather the video linger on the largest country. You can fix either by hand in the editor, adjusting the scene timing or that scene's camera. Or go back to the chat and ask the agent to redo that part. When the preview looks right, export the MP4 yourself from the editor. Exporting is always done by you; the agent cannot do it, and cannot spend your plan credits trying. ### If something goes wrong Most problems are one of these, and most are fixed in a minute. Work through the list in order, because the early items cause the later ones. - The connector will not add: check the address is exactly https://mapflyover.com/api/mcp, with nothing extra at the end, and that your AI app plan allows custom connectors. - The connector added but the agent cannot see Mapflyover: start a new chat and switch the Mapflyover connector on in that chat. Chats started before you connected do not pick it up. - Your free account already has a connector: free Claude and ChatGPT accounts allow only one custom connector. Remove the other one first, or use a paid plan in that app. - The AI says it needs a key: narration and its captions need no key at all. A key only enters the picture for captions on your own uploaded recordings, after 60 free minutes a month, when you add your own free Groq key in Settings. - The AI cannot export: that is by design. Agents can build but cannot export and cannot spend plan credits. Open the project link and export in the editor yourself. - The agent replaced scenes you liked: when an agent saves scenes, the previous scenes are kept as a backup, so the earlier version is not lost. - Still stuck: sign in and use the support inbox, the contact page, the WhatsApp button on any page, or email support@mapflyover.com. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Do I pay for the AI? A: Mapflyover does not charge for the AI. Narration is free and the captions are timed from it, with no keys. Your chat uses whatever plan you have in Claude or ChatGPT, and the one-connector limit on free accounts is their limit, not Mapflyover's. Q: What is the difference between Create with AI and connecting my own agent? A: Create with AI is built into the studio: describe the video in a sentence or two and the studio builds it, with three AI-built videos included per account. Connecting your own agent lets the Claude or ChatGPT you already use plan and build videos inside a conversation you control, and you can keep revising them in chat. Both produce normal projects that you edit and export in the editor. Q: Can I use another AI app? A: Any app that supports MCP over HTTP can connect. Apps with a sign-in screen use the connector flow, and tools such as Claude Code and Cursor can use an access token. Q: Can the agent export the video or use my credits? A: No. Agents can build and save projects, but they cannot export and cannot spend plan credits. Exporting is always done by you in the editor, so an agent can never use up your monthly exports. Q: Can I edit the video afterwards? A: Yes. The link your AI gives you opens a normal project in the editor, and everything the AI set can be changed by hand: scenes, script, narration, captions, camera and timing. You can also send the agent back to change things in chat. Q: Do I need an API key or a Mapbox token to connect? A: No key is needed to connect, to narrate, or to caption narration. One separate thing: the satellite map look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once in the studio. The other nine map looks need none, and the token has nothing to do with the connector. Q: What does it cost to export the finished video? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Top-down or 3D: choosing the camera for a map video URL: https://mapflyover.com/guides/top-down-or-3d-camera Published: 2026-10-07 · Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover The camera is what makes a map video feel like a film rather than a screen recording. Every scene in Mapflyover has its own camera, with a tilt called pitch, a direction called bearing, a field of view, and a gentle motion it performs while it sits on a place. After reading this guide you will know when a straight-down view tells the story best, when to tilt toward the horizon for a 3D flyover feel, how to keep routes and travelling items inside the frame, and how to build your own camera path for a reveal that no single setting can do. None of this needs filming skill: the studio frames each place for you, and the choices below are the ones that separate a clear video from a confusing one. ### Should my map video camera be top-down or tilted for a 3D feel? Use pitch 0 for most explainer scenes, where straight down keeps borders, sizes and labels clearest, and tilt to 40 to 60 for a cinematic reveal or 70 to 85 sparingly for an opening or closing shot. In Mapflyover, 3D means a camera tilted up to 85 degrees with orbit over real map or satellite imagery plus optional terrain relief — not modelled 3D buildings. ### Pitch: how far the camera tilts Pitch is the tilt. A pitch of 0 looks straight down at the map, like a satellite. Higher values lean toward the horizon, up to 85 degrees, which skims almost along the ground. Straight down is the clearest view for comparing sizes, showing borders and placing labels, because nothing is hidden behind anything else. Tilt gives depth and drama, and works well for one or two key moments. As the pitch rises, the far side of a place stretches away toward the horizon and the near edge fills the frame, so a tilted scene shows less of the outline at once. That trade is the whole decision: clarity at 0, feeling at 60. Two controls sit next to pitch. Bearing turns the camera, deciding which way is up on screen; turning it can line a coastline, a river or a border up with the frame instead of leaving it diagonal. Field of view, from 15 to 90 degrees, works like a lens: a narrow field flattens the view and closes in, while a wide field takes in more around the place and makes the tilt feel stronger. - Use pitch 0 for most scenes in an explainer. - Use 40 to 60 for a cinematic reveal of a coastline, city or mountain range. - Use 70 to 85 sparingly for a dramatic opening or closing shot. ### What 3D means here, honestly A Mapflyover video at a high pitch is a 3D flyover video: an angled camera flying over real map and satellite imagery, so the ground falls away toward a horizon and the landscape gains depth. Turn on terrain relief and hills and mountains rise from the surface as the camera moves, which is why a tilted pass over a range feels three-dimensional rather than printed. It is not a modelled 3D city. There are no 3D buildings, and no pitch setting will make buildings stand up. If your story needs rooftops and streets, a tilted satellite pass framed wide is the closest honest shot, because the imagery then reads as a real place rather than a model. Knowing the difference saves a wasted export: choose tilt for landscapes, coastlines, islands and relief, and stay top-down for diagrams, borders and data, where being able to read everything at once matters more than depth. - Tilt works best on coastlines, islands, river deltas and mountain ranges with terrain relief on. - Tilt works worst on dense city centres, very small places, and scenes carrying many labels. ### Hold motion: what the camera does while it waits After the camera lands on a place it keeps moving gently, which stops the video feeling frozen. The options are orbit, push-in, pull-out, drift, tilt-up, tilt-down, sweep and still. Choose by what the scene must show. Push-in draws the eye toward one detail and is the classic explainer move. Pull-out reveals context, ending wider than it started, which suits a closing scene. Drift slides sideways, good along a coast or a border. Sweep pans across a wide place. Orbit circles the place, and only makes sense when tilted, since at pitch 0 it simply spins the map. Tilt-up leans the camera toward the horizon during the scene, turning a flat opening into a reveal. Still holds a frozen frame, which is useful for a moment you want read, but it is not the safe default. At pitch 0, push-in, pull-out, drift and sweep keep the straight-down look. Orbit turns the map, and tilt-up leaves the top-down view. If a video mixes both worlds, tilt-up and tilt-down are the bridges between them: arrive flat and leave tilted, or the reverse, instead of cutting hard from one to the other. ### Keep everything you need in frame Leave the zoom out when you can. The studio frames the whole outline of the place, and every extra place you highlight in the same scene, automatically. Set a zoom only when you want a tighter or wider view than that. A hand-set zoom is the most common reason part of a place goes missing: the automatic framing knows where the outline's edges are, and a guessed zoom does not. Movement is the other framing trap. Items that travel across the map, such as boats or planes, are pinned to real places, not to the screen. A push-in crops the edges as it zooms, so the start of a route can slide out of view. Pull-out, a slow drift along the route, or your own camera path keeps the whole trip visible. The same applies to lines that draw themselves on: if the end of the line is outside the frame when it finishes drawing, the viewer never sees it arrive. Flight time matters too. The camera takes time to fly from one place to the next, and a long flight over empty map spends your seconds on nothing. Shorten the flight between neighbouring places, and save long flights for real journeys, where the distance itself is the point of the scene. ### Your own camera path For full control, give a scene camera keyframes: a time after landing, plus any of position, zoom, pitch and bearing. The camera glides through them along a smooth curve, so the moves blend instead of jumping. This is how you build a reveal that starts wide and pushes in, or a camera that follows a ship along its route. Two ready-made moves are worth knowing. A globe intro opens the video from far out and dives to your first place, which sets the scale better than any title card. A cruise zoom-out does the opposite at the end, pulling away so the last thing the viewer feels is how far apart the places were. Use one or the other on most videos, not both, or the middle of the video gets squeezed. Keep paths simple. Two or three keyframes in a scene is plenty; a keyframe every second makes the camera look nervous and the narration hard to follow. Set the path, preview the scene once at full speed, and delete any keyframe whose removal changes nothing you can see. ### Worked example: a coastline reveal Take a travel scene: one well-known stretch of coastline, in a single scene of about eight seconds. Set the camera the plain way first: pitch 0, no zoom set by hand, hold motion still. Preview it. The coastline is clear and its shape is honest, but the shot feels like a map pinned to a wall, and the narration has to do all the work. Now change only the hold motion, to tilt-up. The scene lands flat, so viewers first read the shape of the coast and any labels while the map is still easy to read, then the camera leans toward the horizon and the coast gains depth as the sea falls away. If the finished tilt hides too much of the outline, undo it and instead set the pitch to about 45 for the whole scene with a slow orbit: the coast stays readable, and the shot still feels flown over rather than printed. Finish by checking the neighbours, because camera problems are usually joins, not shots. The scene before the reveal should end at a pitch the reveal can follow on from, and if the next scene returns to flat, give it a tilt-down hold motion so the pair feels planned. Preview the three scenes together, not the reveal on its own, before you export. ### Common mistakes Most camera problems in finished videos come from a short list of habits, and all of them are quick to check before exporting. - Tilting every scene: at high pitch, outlines shrink toward the horizon and labels crowd together. Keep most scenes flat and spend the tilt on one or two moments. - Setting a zoom by hand and forgetting it: the studio frames the whole outline automatically, so a leftover zoom is the usual reason an edge is cut off. Remove the zoom first whenever something is missing. - Push-in over a route: the zoom crops the start of the trip out of the frame. Use pull-out, drift or a camera path for travel scenes. - Still as the default hold motion: a frozen map under moving narration feels broken. Use still only for a moment you want the viewer to read. - Expecting 3D buildings: tilt gives an angled view over real imagery with terrain relief, not modelled buildings. Frame wide and let the landscape carry the shot. - Checking scenes one at a time: jerky joins only show when scenes play together. Preview the whole video before exporting. ### Frequently asked questions Q: What does pitch 90 mean? A: Straight down is pitch 0 in the studio. A tilt of 85 is the steepest toward the horizon. Q: Can I mix top-down and 3D in one video? A: Yes. Each scene has its own pitch, and a camera path can change it during a scene. Tilt-up and tilt-down hold motions make the join between a flat scene and a tilted one feel deliberate. Q: Why does my camera cut off part of a place? A: Usually because a zoom was set by hand or a push-in is cropping it. Remove the zoom or use a pull-out. The studio frames the whole outline, and any extra highlighted places, automatically when no zoom is set. Q: Does 3D mean I get 3D buildings? A: No. The 3D feel comes from an angled camera, tilted up to 85 degrees, flying over real map and satellite imagery, with optional terrain relief so hills and mountains rise in depth. There are no modelled 3D buildings or city models. Q: What field of view should I use? A: Leave the default unless a shot feels wrong. A narrow field of view, toward 15 degrees, flattens the view and closes in like a long lens. A wide field, toward 90 degrees, takes in more around the place and makes a tilt feel stronger. Change it one scene at a time and preview the result. Q: Can the camera follow a moving boat or plane? A: Yes, with a camera path: add keyframes that move the camera along the route at the same pace as the item. Or choose pull-out or a drift along the route, so the whole trip stays in frame without a path. The item itself is pinned to real places, so it stays in the right place on the map either way. Q: What does it cost to export the finished video? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Make boats, planes and markers travel across the map URL: https://mapflyover.com/guides/make-things-move-on-the-map Published: 2026-10-07 · Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover A flat map becomes a story when things move across it. In Mapflyover, pictures, icons, props and lines sit on real places and travel between them: a ship crosses between two ports, a plane arcs to its destination, a line draws itself along the route, and a flag pops up where the journey ends. After reading this guide you will be able to pin an item to a place so it stays correct through every camera move, give it a path of real places to travel through, draw the route it takes, and time pop-ups to the narration. You will also know the per-scene limits, so a busy scene stays smooth to preview and export. Your AI agent can set all of this up from a sentence, and everything here can also be done by hand in the editor. ### How do I make things move across the map in a video? Anchor an item such as a ship or plane to a real place, then give it a path through up to 12 more places, with follow on so it points along its direction of travel and a gentle float or sway. Lines are separate: add a line through the same places to draw the route on as the item travels, and time sticker pop-ups to the narration for arrivals. ### Pin it to a place Any picture, sticker or video can be given an anchor, a longitude and latitude or a place name. It then stays on that spot as the camera moves, the way a pin on a paper map would. Anchoring is what separates a map item from screen decoration: tilt the camera, zoom in, or pull back, and an anchored item is still on its place when the move ends. Start from the props library, which holds ready-made travellers such as a ship, a plane, a train and a camel, plus landmarks like a castle. The sticker catalogue is searchable and covers flags, landmarks, animals, weather and icons. You can also upload your own pictures, SVGs, GIFs and short videos to your asset library and anchor those instead. An item anchors to a point on the map, so it works even for a place that has no outline to fill. Without an anchor an item sits at a fixed spot on the screen instead, given as a percentage of the frame. That suits titles, badges and logos, and anything that must stay put while the map moves underneath it. Choose deliberately: if the viewer should be able to point at the place on the map afterwards, anchor the item. ### Add a path to make it travel Give the item a path, up to 12 more places after the anchor. It travels from the anchor through them over the time it is on screen. Steady travel looks best for ships and planes, and a small arc lifts a plane in the middle of its trip, so it reads as flying rather than sliding. Turn on follow if the icon points in its direction of travel: a plane's nose or a ship's bow then tracks the route through every turn, instead of sliding sideways. Add a gentle float or sway so the item rides on the map rather than looking pasted on. These two settings do more for believability than any artwork upgrade, because the eye forgives a simple icon that moves the way a real thing moves. Timing is the third setting that matters. The item covers its whole path during the time it is on screen, so a short appearance means a fast trip. If a crossing feels rushed, give the item more time on screen, or split the journey across two scenes at a natural stopping place, instead of speeding the camera up to keep pace with it. ### Draw routes, arrows and borders Lines draw themselves on. They can lie on the map in perspective, follow the camera, or sit flat on the screen as hand-drawn arrows. A line can also trace the border two places share, which is how you show where one country ends and another begins. A moving item does not draw its own route as it goes, so lines and items are set up separately. Give a line the same places as the item's path and the two agree: the line draws itself on while the item travels over it. Use the map-perspective style for a route the camera flies along, and a flat arrow for a quick pointer in a top-down scene, where a perspective line would be hard to read. Keep lines honest. A route line tells the viewer the traveller really went that way, so draw the path the item takes rather than a straighter, prettier one. If the real route is unknown, a plain straight line between the two places is the honest default, and the narration can carry the detail. ### Pop-ups that arrive on cue Stickers can pop up at a chosen moment instead of sitting on the map from the start of the scene: a flag where a journey ends, a landmark as the narration names it, weather over the region it describes. Several can appear in one scene, each with its own entrance animation, so a scene can build up a small set of markers as the script reaches them, rather than opening with everything on screen at once. Time pop-ups to the words, not to the clock. Captions are timed from the narration word by word, so you can place a pop-up at the exact moment its place is named. A marker that appears a fraction before its name feels like a cue; one that appears after it feels like a correction. The location chip is a quieter version of the same idea: a timed chip naming the current place, with its country flag, in a position and size you set once for the whole project. - One pop-up per named place is usually enough; a second one needs a reason. - Keep pop-ups clear of the caption area at the bottom of the frame, so markers and words never fight. ### Worked example: a ship crossing between two ports Build a simple scene: a ship sails from one port to another while the narration describes the crossing. Add the ship from the props library and anchor it to the first port. Give it a path with the second port as the next place. Two places are enough for a straight crossing; add one mid-sea place if the route should bend around a headland or an island on the way. Turn follow on so the bow points along the route, and add a gentle sway. Then draw the route: add a line through the same places, lying on the map in perspective, so it draws itself on as the ship travels. Set the camera to pull-out, or leave the zoom unset so the studio frames both ports at once, and the whole crossing stays in view from departure to arrival. Finally, add a flag sticker for the destination port, timed to pop up as the ship arrives and the narration names it. Preview the scene once through. The three faults to look for are the ship arriving before its line has finished drawing, the flag appearing early, and the far port sliding out of frame. Each one is fixed by timing or by the camera, not by taking items out. ### Know the limits Each scene has caps so a video stays smooth to preview and export. The caps are per scene, not per video, so a long story is rarely blocked by them: split a crowded moment across two scenes at a natural pause and each half gets a full allowance. What the caps really punish is stacking everything into one hero scene, which usually reads worse on screen anyway. - Up to 30 stickers, 24 pictures, GIFs or videos, 12 lines and 12 titles per scene. - A path holds the anchor plus up to 12 more places. - Sticker width is 4 to 70 percent of the frame, and picture width 2 to 100 percent. - Your library holds 200 assets and 1 GB in total, and a single video can be up to 100 MB. - Many large moving items on screen at once will slow the preview and the export, so keep scenes focused. ### Common mistakes The same few faults show up in most first attempts at movement, and each has a one-setting fix. - Expecting the item to draw its own route: it does not. Add a line through the same places if you want the route visible. - Leaving follow off: the icon slides sideways like a chess piece instead of pointing where it is going. Turn follow on for anything with a front and a back. - No float or sway: a perfectly rigid icon looks pasted onto the map. A small sway is enough to fix it. - A camera that crops the trip: a push-in or a hand-set zoom cuts the start or the end of the route out of frame. Use pull-out, a drift along the route, a camera path, or no zoom at all. - Everything moving at once: when five items travel together, the viewer follows none of them. Move one thing per narration beat and let the rest wait their turn. - Screen position where an anchor belongs: an unanchored ship stays on the screen while its port flies away underneath it. Anchor anything that belongs to a place. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Can an item follow another item? A: No. Everything is placed by an anchor, a path or a screen position. Q: Can I use my own artwork? A: Yes. Upload pictures, SVGs, GIFs or short videos to your asset library, or have your agent add them, then place them on any scene. The library holds 200 assets and 1 GB in total, and a single video can be up to 100 MB. Q: Why do my boats leave the frame? A: The camera is zooming in or the zoom is too tight for the route. Use a pull-out or a wider zoom so the whole route stays in view. Leaving the zoom unset lets the studio frame every place on the path automatically. Q: How many places can one item travel through? A: An anchor plus up to 12 more places on its path. For a longer journey, split the trip across scenes at a natural stopping place, with the item starting the next scene where it ended the last one. Q: Does the moving item draw its route automatically? A: No. Lines are separate items. Add a line through the same places and it draws itself on as the item travels, lying on the map in perspective or sitting flat on the screen. Q: Can my AI agent set up movement for me? A: Yes. Anchors, paths, follow, float and sway, lines and pop-ups can all be set by your connected agent from a description, or by hand in the editor. The agent cannot export, so you preview and export the result yourself. Q: What does it cost to export a video with movement in it? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## How to make a short map explainer with AI, from idea to export URL: https://mapflyover.com/guides/map-explainer-short-with-ai Published: 2026-10-07 · Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover By the end of this guide you will be able to take one geography question and turn it into a finished vertical map explainer: a tight script of under a minute, one scene per place, narration and captions timed to the words, a camera that shows the answer while the voice explains it, and an exported MP4 ready for Shorts, Reels or TikTok. You will also know how to check the video before you export it, how to fix the problems that show up most often, and exactly what the free plan covers. The workflow uses an AI builder to do the heavy lifting, but nothing here depends on the AI getting it right first time. Every scene, caption, camera move and card can be changed by hand in the editor, so treat the first build as a draft you improve, not a result you have to accept. ### How do I make a short map explainer video with AI? Start with one question, write a script of about 100 to 130 words for 45 to 55 seconds with one scene per place, and build it with Create with AI (3 videos per account) or your connected Claude or ChatGPT agent. Check the preview with sound on and muted, then export yourself as a vertical 9:16 MP4 — free exports are up to 90 seconds at 720p with the Mapflyover mark. ### Start with one question The best map shorts answer one question in under a minute: why is this border here, where do people actually live, how big is it really. A video that tries to cover a whole country rarely holds attention, because the viewer has no single thing to wait for. A video that answers one question does, because every scene moves the answer forward. Write the question in one sentence before you write anything else, and test it honestly. A good explainer question has a map-shaped answer: the answer becomes clearer when you see places, borders, distances or movement. 'Why does this country have a panhandle?', 'Which city is actually furthest north?' and 'Why does this river change country three times?' all pass that test. A question whose answer is mostly dates, names or politics may still work, but the map will be decoration rather than explanation, and viewers feel that difference quickly. Open with the hook, which is the surprising part, not the background. If the answer contains an odd border, a strange exclave or a capital in an unexpected place, show that place in the first seconds. Background can come second, once the viewer has a reason to stay. ### Write a script that fits under a minute Ask for a script of about 100 to 130 words, which is roughly 45 to 55 seconds of speech. That length forces choices: one hook, two or three supporting points, and a short ending. If your draft runs to 200 words, do not speed up the voice to fit it in. Cut a supporting point instead, or split the topic into two videos, each with its own question. Structure the script so the map can keep up. Name one place at a time, and let each place carry one idea. A sentence that names four countries in a row gives the editor nowhere clean to cut, because a new scene starts when a new place becomes the subject. Short sentences help too: they make caption pages shorter, they give the camera a natural pause at each scene change, and they are easier for a viewer reading on a phone. Write numbers the way you want them spoken and shown. If a distance, population or date matters, put it in the script plainly and plan a stat card for it later. Stat cards are timed number or fact cards that sit on a scene, and they work best when the number in the voice and the number on the card are the same. End the script with a line that points somewhere: a follow, a next question, or a contrast the viewer can check on the map themselves. ### Let the AI build the scenes There are two ways to build with AI, and the workflow after the build is the same. The built-in Create with AI option takes a sentence or two describing the video and builds it in the studio; each account gets 3 AI-built videos this way. The second way is to connect your own AI agent, such as Claude or ChatGPT, through the Mapflyover connector. The agent writes the script, builds a scene for each place and saves the project, and you review the result in the editor. Whichever route you use, say the format in your request, usually vertical 9:16 for a short. Mapflyover offers vertical 9:16 and landscape 16:9 only, so decide before the build rather than reframing afterwards. Also ask for the specific things you want to see: a stat card for a number, a flag sticker when a country is named, a line showing a distance, or a highlight on a neighbouring place. The more concrete the request, the better the result, because vague requests leave the builder guessing about the parts viewers notice most. Two limits are worth knowing. An agent can build a project but cannot export it and cannot spend your plan credits; exporting is always done by you in the editor. And when an agent saves new scenes, the previous scenes are kept as a backup, so asking for a rebuild does not destroy the version you already liked. ### Worked example: a 45-second vertical explainer end to end Take the question 'Why is Kaliningrad not connected to the rest of Russia?'. The script runs to about 115 words: a hook naming the disconnected region, one scene on Kaliningrad itself, one on the Baltic coast and the countries between it and mainland Russia, one on mainland Russia for the contrast, and a closing line asking which other exclave viewers want next. Four places, four scenes, one idea each. The build request asks for a vertical video, a location chip when Kaliningrad is first named, a line drawn across the gap to mainland Russia in the third scene, and a stat card only if a number is used. In the editor, the outline for each place comes from real OpenStreetMap boundaries. If the search returns more than one candidate match, the ranked matches let you switch to the right one in one tap. The camera is set mostly straight down for clarity, with one tilted scene over the coast, because a pitch somewhere between straight down and 85 degrees gives the flyover feel without hiding the border that the whole video is about. Narration uses a built-in Google WaveNet voice, with no key to add, and the captions are timed from the narration word by word. In the preview, the line across the gap appears a moment after the voice mentions the distance, so it is nudged earlier by hand. The final caption page is shortened so it clears the location chip. The export is a vertical MP4 at 720p on the free plan, under the 90-second free limit, ready to upload. ### Check the preview like a viewer Open the preview and watch it through once with the sound on, on the closest thing you have to a phone-sized view. Do not stop at the first problem you see. Note everything, then fix in one pass, because small timing changes in one scene often shift how the next scene feels. Then watch it once more with the sound off. A large share of short-form viewing starts muted, and your captions have to carry the explanation alone. If a scene only makes sense with the voice, the caption page, title or card in that scene needs to do more work. - Does each outline appear as its place is named, not a second before or after? - Is every important label readable on a phone screen, and clear of the captions? - Does the camera stay on each place long enough to read it before moving on? - Do caption pages break at natural pauses rather than in the middle of a place name? - Does the last second invite the viewer to follow or watch the next video? ### Common mistakes and how to fix them The most common mistake is a script with too many places. Ten places in 45 seconds means about four seconds each, which is not enough time to find a place on the map, read its label and understand why it matters. Cut the script to the places the answer actually needs. If a place is only mentioned in passing, keep it as a highlight inside another scene instead: a scene can highlight up to 12 extra places without giving each one its own camera move. The second mistake is trusting the first place match. Common names exist in several countries, and a wrong outline can sit unnoticed until a viewer points it out. Check each scene against the ranked candidate matches and switch the match where needed. For a place with no outline, you can draw a circle instead, or import your own GeoJSON shape. The third mistake is decoration that fights the explanation: a soundtrack track that sits over the voice, captions styled so heavily they cannot be read at phone size, or a tilted camera on a scene whose point is a precise border. Soundtrack audio comes from your own uploads only, and ducking under narration is set to -12 dB by default, so check that setting before blaming the mix. Keep one scene simple whenever the fact in it is the point of the video. ### Export and post it Change anything by hand in the editor, or ask your AI to change it, for example 'make the camera look straight down in scene 3'. Then export from the editor yourself. Exporting renders an MP4 in your browser, so there is no render queue and nothing to install. Choose vertical 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, and keep the project itself, because a project you keep is a template for the next question in the same series. If you publish on a schedule, a saved exported video can be sent to Buffer, queued for the next free slot or set for an exact time, across several channels at once. Buffer is not available on the free plan; it needs Pro or Studio, and the paid trial counts as Pro for this. On the free plan, download the MP4 and upload it yourself, which takes a minute and costs nothing. Judge the finished short on the question, not on the polish. If viewers can repeat the answer back after one viewing, the explainer worked, and the next one will be faster to make. ### Frequently asked questions Q: How long should a map short be? A: Between 30 and 60 seconds works well for a single question, which is roughly 75 to 150 words of script. Shorter is fine if the question has a quick answer. Keep the free plan limit in mind too: free exports are capped at 90 seconds, so a short built for the free plan should stay comfortably under that. Q: Do I need my own AI account to make one? A: No. The built-in Create with AI builds a video from a sentence or two inside the studio, and each account gets 3 AI-built videos that way. Connecting your own Claude or ChatGPT is the other route: the agent builds the scenes and you review and export them in the editor. Free Claude and ChatGPT accounts allow only one custom connector, which is their limit, not a Mapflyover limit. Q: Can the AI export the video for me? A: No. An agent connected through the connector can build and save scenes, but it cannot export and cannot spend your plan credits. Exporting is always done by you in the editor, which is also where you choose the format and check the final preview. Q: Can I use my own voice instead of the built-in narration? A: Yes. The built-in narration uses Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, free with no key needed. If you record your own narration, upload it as MP3 or WAV. Captions for your own recording are timed with Groq Whisper: free from the studio key up to 60 minutes a month per person, and after that you add your own free Groq key in Settings. You can export an SRT file, and every word timing can be edited by hand. Q: Can I schedule the video after export? A: Yes, on a paid plan. A saved exported video can be sent to Buffer, queued for the next free slot or set for an exact time, on several channels at once. Buffer is not available on the free plan; it is Pro and Studio only, and the paid trial counts as Pro. On the free plan, download the MP4 and upload it to each platform yourself. Q: What if I do not like the result? A: Ask the AI to change specific scenes, or edit them by hand in the editor. Being specific helps: name the scene, the place and the change. When an agent saves new scenes, the earlier version of the scenes is kept as a backup, so a rebuild does not destroy the version you liked. Q: What does it cost to make and export a short? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Map animation video maker: how to choose one and make your first video URL: https://mapflyover.com/guides/map-animation-video-maker Published: 2026-10-07 · Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover By the end of this guide you will know how to judge a map animation video maker before you commit to one, and how to make a complete first video: pick a subject, start from a template or a blank project, build scenes on real place outlines, set the camera, add narration and captions, and export an MP4 in vertical or landscape format. A map animation video maker turns places into moving pictures: a camera flies to a country, its border lights up, a label appears and a voice explains why it matters. The tools differ a lot in how much they do for you. Some are general video editors with a map picture dropped in. Others, Mapflyover included, are built around the map itself, so outlines, camera moves and timing are the starting point rather than an afterthought. ### How do I make my first animated map video? Pick a subject, start from a template or a blank project, build scenes on real OpenStreetMap outlines, set the camera, add narration with captions timed from it, and export as MP4 in 9:16 vertical or 16:9 landscape only. Building and previewing are free; the Free plan exports 2 videos a month at 720p up to 90 seconds with the mark and 3 projects, Pro is USD 20 per month and Studio is USD 70 per month. ### What a good map animation maker should do Before comparing tools, decide which of these you actually need. Each one saves a different amount of time, and paying for a tool that lacks the one you need most is the usual way people waste money here. Real place outlines matter first. If a tool draws a country as a rough circle or a hand-traced shape, every video built on it looks approximate. Look for outlines taken from real map data, with a way to correct a wrong match. Second is camera control: straight down for clarity, tilted for drama, and smooth flights between places. Third is narration and captions, because most map videos are watched on a phone, often starting with the sound off. A tool that leaves voice and captions to a second program doubles your work on every video. - Real place outlines, so a country or region is drawn with its true border and not a rough circle. - A camera you can control: straight down for clarity, tilted for drama, and smooth flights between places. - Captions and narration built in, timed to each other rather than added in a second tool. - Vertical and landscape export, so one project can go to Shorts, Reels, TikTok and YouTube. - Items that move on the map, such as routes, planes and ships, and a place to add your own pictures. - A way to work fast: either an editor with sensible defaults, or an AI agent that builds the scenes for you. ### How Mapflyover works You write a script and name the places, or describe the video and let the AI build it. Mapflyover looks up each place on OpenStreetMap, draws its outline on the map, frames the camera and times the captions to the narration. A script can run to 20,000 characters, with one scene per place and your exact wording kept into the captions, and a project can hold up to 60 scenes. You can change every part by hand in the editor afterwards. There are two ways to build with AI. The built-in Create with AI takes a sentence or two and builds the video in the studio, with 3 AI-built videos per account. Or you connect Claude or ChatGPT as a custom connector, and your own agent builds the scenes from a one-sentence request while you review the result. Agents can build but cannot export, and cannot spend your plan credits; exporting is always done by you in the editor. Narration is built in: Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, free with no key to set up, or your own uploaded recording. Captions are timed from the narration word by word, with 7 caption style presets and 8 fonts. There is no separate AI bill from Mapflyover for any of this. ### Worked example: your first video from a template Start from a template rather than a blank page. Mapflyover has 6: History explainer and Comparison in landscape 16:9, Top list, Travel guide and Country profile in vertical 9:16, and Journey or route in landscape. For a first video, pick the Country profile template and a country you know well, because you will spot mistakes in the content instead of wondering whether they are there. Replace the template places with three of your own: the country itself, its capital, and one region or neighbouring country that gives the profile a point of contrast. The outline for each place is drawn from OpenStreetMap data; if a name returns several candidate matches, they are ranked and you can switch the match in one tap. Keep the template camera moves for the first two scenes, then change one thing yourself, for example setting the capital scene to a push-in hold, so you learn what a single change does to the feel of the video. Add one stat card with a number you can source, one location chip when the capital is named, and a title using one of the animated title presets. Record narration with a built-in voice, check that each caption page breaks at a natural pause, and preview the whole video. Export it as a vertical MP4. That single pass teaches you the full loop: template, places, camera, cards, voice, captions, export. Every later video is the same loop with better judgement. ### Camera, map looks and the honest meaning of 3D The camera is where a map video becomes a film instead of a slideshow. Pitch runs from 0 degrees, straight down, to 85 degrees, nearly horizontal. You also control bearing, field of view from 15 to 90 degrees, flight time and easing, and hold motions such as orbit, push-in, pull-out, drift, tilt-up, tilt-down, sweep or still. Keyframe camera paths, a globe intro and a cruise zoom-out are there when a video needs them. Each scene has its own camera, and the studio frames the whole outline automatically unless you set a zoom by hand. There are 10 map looks, from Satellite, the default, through Dark, Light, Streets and Topographic to Historic and Blueprint. Only satellite exports need a free Mapbox public token, added once; the other nine need none. One warning that saves embarrassment: outlines are current boundaries only, not historical borders. The Historic look is an aged-paper style, nothing more. When Mapflyover calls a video a 3D flyover, it means an angled camera, tilted up to 85 degrees with moves such as orbit, flying over real map and satellite imagery, plus optional terrain relief so hills and mountains rise in depth. It does not mean modelled 3D buildings or city models, and you should be suspicious of any tool page that blurs that line. ### Beyond the basics: movement, data and your own media Once the basic loop works, three additions cover most of what viewers ask for. Movement: props from the library, such as a ship, plane, train or camel, can be pinned to real places and sent along a path of up to 12 more places, pointing along their direction of travel. Lines, routes and arrows draw themselves on, in map perspective or flat on the screen, and a line can trace the border two places share. Sticker pop-ups, from flags to landmarks, come from a searchable catalog and several can appear at once. Data: choropleth data maps and racing bar charts can be built from a CSV import, up to 8 datasets with 1,500 rows and 40 columns. Overlays: stat cards carry a timed number or fact per scene, focus cards are a second, distinct card type for drawing the eye to one point, and a location chip shows the current place with its country flag. Place fills can be solid, gradient, pattern, picture, video, text or a stat, and can stay on after the camera leaves. Your own media lives in a personal asset library: pictures, SVGs, GIFs, short videos and audio, up to 200 assets and 1 GB in total, with a single video up to 100 MB. A soundtrack can use up to 8 tracks, but only from audio you upload yourself. There is no stock or built-in music library, in Mapflyover or honestly in most tools at this level, so plan to bring your own. ### Common mistakes when choosing and building The most common choosing mistake is judging a tool by its showreel instead of by a test with your own subject. Make the same short video in the tools you are comparing, with a place whose border you know. Wrong outlines, clumsy camera moves and caption timing problems show up within one video, and they are the problems you would live with on every video afterwards. The most common building mistake is setting the camera by hand on every scene before watching a single preview. The studio frames each outline automatically, and most scenes are fine as framed. Watch first, then adjust only the scenes where the framing fights the point: a zoom too tight for a route, a tilted camera on a scene about a precise border, or a flight so fast the label cannot be read. Two more mistakes are quieter. Assuming a square 1:1 export exists: Mapflyover exports vertical 9:16 and landscape 16:9 only, so check formats before you design around one. And assuming your music is covered: there is no stock library, so a video planned around a track you do not have the right to use is a video you cannot publish. ### What it costs Building and previewing is free on every plan, and every editor feature is on every plan; narration and captions are never limited by plan. The plans differ on exports, resolution, length and project count. Free is USD 0: 2 exports a month at 720p, up to 90 seconds, 3 projects, with a small Mapflyover mark on exports. Pro is USD 20 a month: 30 exports a month at 1080p, up to 5 minutes, 50 projects, no mark. Studio is USD 70 a month: 300 exports a month up to 4K, up to 15 minutes, 500 projects, no mark. There is also a Pro trial at USD 3 for 7 days, with 8 exports at 720p and the mark still on, which becomes Pro unless cancelled, one trial per account. Judge which plan you need by exports per month and longest video, not by features, because the features are the same. One feature does depend on plan: sending a saved exported video to Buffer for scheduled posting is Pro and Studio only, with the trial counting as Pro. The free plan cannot use Buffer, so free-plan publishing means downloading the MP4 and uploading it yourself. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Is there a free map animation video maker? A: Yes, with honest limits. You can build and preview videos for free in Mapflyover for as long as you like, and the Free plan exports two short 720p videos a month, up to 90 seconds each, with a small Mapflyover mark. Exporting beyond that needs a paid plan or the trial week. Any tool promising unlimited free exports at full quality is usually paying for it somewhere you have not seen yet, so read the export terms before you build a channel on one. Q: Does it work online in the browser? A: Yes. The studio runs in your browser with nothing to install, and the export is rendered in your browser as an MP4. There is no render queue, but a long or high-resolution export does depend on your own device, so keep the tab open while it renders. Q: Do I need video editing skills? A: No. You write a script and name places, or describe the video and let the AI build it. The outlines, camera framing and caption timing are built for you, and every part can be adjusted by hand if you want more control. Skills help you judge the result, but they are not needed to produce one. Q: Can an AI agent make the whole video for me? A: It can build it, not finish it. A connected Claude or ChatGPT can write the script, build the scenes and save the project through the connector. It cannot export and cannot spend your plan credits, so the final preview check and the export are always yours. That split is deliberate: the step that uses your allowance is the step a person confirms. Q: What formats can I export? A: Vertical 9:16 and landscape 16:9, as MP4. There is no square 1:1 export. Free exports are 720p, Pro exports are 1080p, and Studio exports up to 4K, with maximum lengths of 90 seconds, 5 minutes and 15 minutes across the same three plans. Q: Does it make real 3D buildings? A: No. Mapflyover videos are 3D flyover videos in a specific sense: an angled camera, tilted up to 85 degrees, flying over real map or satellite imagery, with optional terrain relief so hills and mountains rise in depth. There are no modelled 3D buildings or city models, and this guide will not pretend otherwise. Q: What does it cost after the free plan? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Free map animation video maker: what is free and what is not URL: https://mapflyover.com/guides/free-map-animation-video-maker Published: 2026-10-07 · Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover People searching for a free map animation video maker usually want one of two things: to try the tool without paying, or to get a finished video without paying. These are different, so this guide draws the line exactly. By the end you will know what a free Mapflyover account can do, the precise limits on free exports, projects and video length, which free keys you may need and which you do not, and how to plan a complete video that fits inside the free allowance instead of discovering the limits at the export button. Nothing here is unlimited, and this guide will not say otherwise. What is true is that the creative work itself, building, previewing and editing, costs nothing for as long as you want to do it, and that two finished exports a month is enough to test whether map videos are worth your time. ### Can I make a map animation video for free? Yes — building, previewing and editing are free with the full editor, narration and captions, and the Free plan exports 2 MP4s a month at 720p, up to 90 seconds, with the Mapflyover mark, across 3 projects. Satellite exports need one free Mapbox public token added once, while the other nine map looks need none, and Buffer scheduling is not on Free — it is Pro and Studio only. ### What is free in Mapflyover A free account lets you do the creative work without paying anything. Building and previewing are always free, with no time limit on how long you can spend in the editor and no limit on how many times you preview. Every editor feature is on every plan, so the free plan is not a cut-down editor: the same camera controls, titles, captions, cards, lines, stickers and data tools are available to you as to a Studio account. That includes real place outlines from OpenStreetMap, all 10 map looks, narration with built-in voices and captions timed to them, and both ways of building with AI: the built-in Create with AI, with 3 AI-built videos per account, and connecting your own Claude or ChatGPT so an agent builds the scenes for you. There is also a no-account interactive demo, a Sydney Harbour flyover with a downloadable 2-second sample MP4, if you want to see the output style before signing up at all. - Up to three projects, each with up to 60 scenes. - Real place outlines, the full camera, titles, stickers, lines and captions. - A live preview of the whole video in the editor, as often as you like. - Built-in narration voices with captions timed to them, and no keys to add. - Connecting Claude or ChatGPT so an AI builds the video for you. - All 10 map looks while building and previewing. ### The Free plan limits, exactly Here is the complete list, because a free plan you cannot plan around is not worth much. Free exports are 2 per month. Each free export is at most 720p and at most 90 seconds long, and exports carry a small Mapflyover mark. You can keep up to 3 projects. Building and previewing beyond those numbers is fine: an unexported fourth idea is the problem, not a long preview session, because the project limit is about stored projects. If you hit the project limit, export or delete a finished project before starting the next one. Two more limits surprise people. Buffer, for scheduled posting of a saved exported video, is not available on the free plan at all; it is Pro and Studio only, and the paid trial counts as Pro. And the built-in Create with AI allowance of 3 AI-built videos is per account, not per month, so spend those three on ideas you actually want to finish. Connecting your own AI agent has no equivalent Mapflyover allowance, though a free Claude or ChatGPT account allows only one custom connector, which is their limit. What is not limited by plan also matters: narration and captions are never limited by plan, and no editor feature is held back. The free plan restricts how much finished video leaves the studio, not what you can make inside it. ### Worked example: a complete free-plan production Plan a 60-second vertical video, comfortably inside the 90-second free limit, on one question: 'Why does this island have two capitals on old maps and one today?' is the shape of it; pick your own place. Keep it to four scenes: the island, the two towns, and a closing scene returning to the whole island. Four scenes means each place gets about 15 seconds, enough to find it, read its label and hear one fact about it. Build it by hand or with one of your 3 built-in AI builds, then edit by hand either way. Use the Satellite look while building, but check the export requirement before you fall in love with it: satellite exports need a free Mapbox public token added once. That token is free to create, so the video still costs nothing, but adding it is a five-minute detour you want before export day, not during it. Add one location chip, one stat card with a number you can source, and captions in the Minimal or Pop box preset at a size you can read on a phone. Preview twice, once with sound and once muted, fix the one scene where the caption covers the label, and export. That is one of your two monthly free exports used, at 720p with the small mark, and the project stays in your account as the template for next month. Download the MP4 and upload it to your platform yourself, because Buffer scheduling is not part of the free plan. Total cost: nothing, and one free export still in reserve. ### The free keys you may need, and the ones you do not Most free users need exactly one key, and many need none. Narration needs no key at all: the built-in Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, are free, and captions are timed from that narration word by word. Captions, titles, camera work and outlines need no keys either. The satellite look is the exception. Exporting satellite imagery requires a free Mapbox public token, which you create on Mapbox and add once in the studio, because exported satellite frames use Mapbox imagery. The other nine map looks, including Dark, Light, Streets, Topographic and Blueprint, export with no token at all. If you want to avoid key setup entirely, build your video on one of those nine looks and skip Mapbox. One more key is genuinely optional. If you upload your own recorded narration instead of using a built-in voice, its captions are timed with Groq Whisper, free from the studio key up to 60 minutes a month per person. Only after that allowance would you add your own free Groq key in Settings. Most free-plan users, making two short videos a month, never reach it. ### Common mistakes on the free plan The classic mistake is spending a free export on an unchecked video. You get 2 exports a month, and an export spent on a video with a wrong outline or a caption covering the main label is gone. Preview the whole video with sound, then muted, and check each place match against the ranked candidates before you export. A circle drawn for a place with no outline is fine, but it should be a decision, not a surprise. The second mistake is designing past the limits: a 2-minute script for a 90-second export cap, a fourth project when you already keep three, or a publishing plan built around Buffer scheduling that the free plan does not include. Design to 60 to 75 seconds, keep one project slot free, and plan to upload by hand. The third mistake is assuming free means stripped down, and reaching for workarounds you do not need, such as recording narration on your phone to avoid a voice feature that is already free and unlimited by plan, or avoiding tilted camera scenes you think are paid. They are not. Every editor feature is on the free plan. What you are rationing is exports, length, resolution and projects, nothing else. ### When paying is worth it, and when it is not Stay free while you are learning or publishing occasionally. Two exports a month is a real publishing rhythm for a new channel, the mark is small, and 720p is the resolution most short-form platforms display at anyway. If your two monthly videos are experiments, paying removes limits you are not yet hitting. Pay when a specific limit starts costing you something concrete. You are deleting good projects to stay under three. You regularly need a third or fourth export in a month. Your video is genuinely longer than 90 seconds because the subject needs it, not because the script was not cut. Or the mark has to come off for client work or a channel that has started earning. At that point the comparison is simple: Pro at USD 20 a month gives 30 exports at 1080p up to 5 minutes with 50 projects and no mark, and Studio at USD 70 a month gives 300 exports up to 4K and 15 minutes with 500 projects. The USD 3 trial week sits between the two: 8 exports at 720p with the mark still on, for 7 days, becoming Pro unless cancelled, one per account. It is a sensible way to clear a backlog of built projects in one week. It is not a way to get mark-free exports cheaply, because trial exports keep the mark. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Can I really export a video without paying? A: Yes. The free plan exports 2 videos a month, each up to 90 seconds at 720p, with a small Mapflyover mark on the export. That is a finished, publishable MP4, not a preview or a draft. What you cannot do for free is export a third video in the same month, export without the mark, or export something longer or sharper. Q: Is there a watermark on free exports? A: Free exports carry a small Mapflyover mark, and so do exports from the USD 3 trial week. Exports from the paid Pro and Studio plans have no mark. There is no setting that removes the mark on the free plan, and this guide will not suggest cropping or covering it, because the mark is the stated condition of the free exports. Q: Do I pay for the AI or the narration? A: No. Mapflyover does not charge for its built-in AI build, its narration voices or its caption timing. The built-in Create with AI includes 3 AI-built videos per account. Narration uses built-in Google WaveNet voices at no cost and with no key. If you connect your own Claude or ChatGPT, whatever that account costs is between you and that provider; Mapflyover adds no charge on top. Q: Can I schedule free videos with Buffer? A: No. Buffer is not available on the free plan. Sending a saved exported video to Buffer, queued or at an exact time, is Pro and Studio only, and the paid trial counts as Pro. On the free plan, download the exported MP4 and upload it to each platform yourself. Q: What happens when I reach three projects? A: You cannot keep a fourth project until you make room. Export the finished ones you want to keep as MP4s, then delete a project, or upgrade: Pro allows 50 projects and Studio allows 500. Projects are where your scenes, scripts and settings live, so export before deleting anything you might want to rebuild or re-export later. Q: Why does the satellite look ask for a Mapbox token? A: Exported satellite frames use Mapbox imagery, and Mapbox requires a token for that use. A Mapbox public token is free to create and you add it once in the studio. The other nine map looks export without any token, so if you want zero key setup, build on one of those looks instead. Q: What does the free plan actually cost in the end? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## AI map animation generator: describe a video and let your AI build it URL: https://mapflyover.com/guides/ai-map-animation-generator Published: 2026-10-07 · Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover After reading this guide you will be able to do three things. First, choose between the two different ways to build a map video with AI in Mapflyover, because they have different limits and suit different people. Second, write a prompt that gives the AI enough to work with: the topic, the length, the format, the places in order and the things you want to see on screen. Third, review what the AI built, fix a single scene without starting again, and export the finished MP4 yourself in the editor. You do not need video editing experience for any of this. You do need to know where the AI stops and you take over, and that line is simple: the AI builds, you preview, change and export. Everything below follows the way the studio actually behaves, including its limits, so you can plan around them instead of discovering them halfway through a build. ### How does the AI map animation generator work in Mapflyover? Describe the video in the studio with built-in Create with AI, which includes 3 videos per account, or connect your own Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code or Cursor agent over MCP to build in your account. The AI writes the script, records free narration, times captions from it and looks up real OpenStreetMap outlines, but it cannot export — you review, edit and export the MP4 yourself. ### Two ways to build with AI, and how they differ Mapflyover gives you two separate routes, and mixing them up is the most common source of confusion. The first is the built-in Create with AI. You describe the video in a sentence or two inside the studio, and the studio's Gemini builds it for you. There is nothing to connect and no other app to open. The limit is three AI-built videos per account, so this route suits trying the idea, making a first video, or building the occasional video without setting anything up. The second route is your own AI agent, connected through MCP at https://mapflyover.com/api/mcp. In Claude or ChatGPT you add Mapflyover as a custom connector, sign in and tap Allow. If you use Claude Code or Cursor, you connect with a personal access token instead. Your agent then works inside your account: it can create a project, write the script, record the narration, time the captions, look up real place outlines and save the scenes, then hand you a link to preview. Two limits belong to the AI apps, not to Mapflyover. Free Claude and ChatGPT accounts allow only one custom connector, so if that slot is taken you need to remove the other connector or use a paid plan in that app. And whichever route you use, the result is a normal project. Everything the AI set can be changed by hand afterwards. - Built-in Create with AI: describe it in the studio, Gemini builds it, three AI-built videos per account. - Your own agent via MCP: Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code or Cursor builds in your account, using your plan in that app. - Agents can build but cannot export, and cannot spend your plan credits. Exporting is always done by you in the editor. ### Write a prompt that gives the AI something to work with A vague prompt gets a vague video. A specific prompt gets scenes you can use. You do not need special wording or prompt tricks; you need to state the decisions a human editor would otherwise have to guess. Start with the question or topic, in one sentence. Then give the length, because length decides how much script there is and how many places the video can cover without rushing. State the format before anything is generated. Mapflyover exports vertical 9:16 and landscape 16:9 only, and the format is chosen before generating, not switched at the end. Choose 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, and 16:9 for YouTube and presentations. Then list the places in the order you want them visited. The AI builds one scene per place, so the order in your prompt becomes the order on screen. Finally, name the things you want to see. Ask for a stat card when a number matters, a highlight when several places should appear together, a line when a route or a shared border carries the story, an animated title for the opening, or a straight-down camera when clarity matters more than drama. If you already have a script, you can give the wording instead: a script can run up to 20,000 characters, with one scene per place, and your exact wording is kept into the captions. - Topic or question, stated in one sentence. - Length, for example 45 seconds, and format: 9:16 or 16:9. - Places in visiting order, plus anything specific: a stat card, a flag sticker, a border line, a tilted camera. - Tone or audience if it changes the script, for example for beginners or for students. ### What the AI builds for you, step by step Whichever route you chose, the build follows the same shape. The AI writes a script sized to your length, records narration, and times the captions from the narration word by word, so the words on screen land when they are spoken. Narration uses built-in Google WaveNet voices: 48 voices across 13 language variants, free, with no key needed. If you would rather use your own recording, you can upload an MP3 or WAV instead, and captions for your own recording are made with Groq Whisper. For each place in the script, the AI looks up the real outline. Borders come from OpenStreetMap, never from the AI's imagination. Matches are ranked, so the right place is normally chosen first, and you can switch the match in one tap if a name is shared by several places. The studio frames the whole outline automatically unless you set a zoom by hand. A project can hold up to 60 scenes, which is far more than a short video needs. When an agent saves scenes, the previous scenes are kept as a backup, so an AI rewrite does not destroy the version you liked. Scene checks also run over the result and report gaps, overlaps, missing outlines and places that only have a drawn circle, which tells you exactly what to fix before you export. ### Worked example: a 45 second video about Ireland Say you want a vertical short answering why Ireland is two countries. Using the built-in route, you open Create with AI and write: 'Make a 45 second vertical video explaining why Ireland is two countries. Show Ireland first, then highlight the two countries in different colours, trace the border they share, and end with a stat card for the key date. Narration and captions on, camera mostly straight down.' That single prompt contains the topic, the length, the format, the order, and three specific things to see. The studio builds the project: an opening scene framing the whole island, a scene where the second country is added as an extra highlight in the same view, a scene where a line traces the shared border, and a closing scene with the stat card. You open the preview and watch it once with the sound on. Suppose the border scene is tilted and the line is hard to follow. You do not rebuild the video. You open that one scene and set its pitch to 0, or ask the agent route to make scene 3 look straight down, and preview again. When it reads well, you export it yourself from the editor. The export is an MP4 rendered in your browser. Because you chose 9:16 at the start, it is ready for Shorts, Reels or TikTok with no reframing and no second build. ### Review, refine and export it yourself Treat the AI's first build as a draft, not a finished video. Building and previewing are always free, so watch the whole thing before you change anything, and note the scenes that are wrong rather than the moments. Most fixes are small: a wrong outline match switched in one tap, a caption word whose timing you edit by hand, a camera that pushes in too far, a scene that needs a few more seconds. Every per-scene editor is available to you, and undo history is there if a change makes things worse. You can also hand a fix back to your agent in plain words, for example 'shorten scene 2' or 'add a focus card when the capital is named'. A focus card is a second, separate card type from a stat card, so name the one you mean. The agent can change a single scene without redoing the whole video, and the earlier scenes stay backed up when it saves. Export is the one step no AI can do for you. Agents cannot export and cannot spend plan credits, by design. You export in the editor, in the format you chose before generating: 9:16 or 16:9, as an MP4. That keeps the paid decision, and the file, in your hands. ### Common mistakes Most failed AI videos fail in the prompt, not in the build. The mistakes below come up again and again, and each has a simple fix. - Asking for 'a video about France' with no length, format or order. Add all three and the second build is usually the keeper. - Asking the agent to export, post or upgrade you. It cannot export or spend credits; export yourself in the editor. - Expecting a square video. There is no 1:1 format. Choose 9:16 or 16:9 before generating. - Trying to add Mapflyover as a second custom connector on a free Claude or ChatGPT account. Free accounts in those apps allow one custom connector only. - Counting the built-in limit against your agent. The three AI-built videos per account limit belongs to built-in Create with AI, not to your own connected agent. - Asking for historical borders. Outlines are current OpenStreetMap boundaries only; the Historic map look is an aged-paper style, not old borders. - Asking for stock music. There is no built-in music library. You can add up to 8 tracks of your own uploaded audio as a soundtrack. - Skipping the preview. Scene checks report gaps, overlaps and missing outlines, but only your eyes catch a label hidden behind a caption. ### Frequently asked questions Q: What is the difference between Create with AI and connecting my own agent? A: Create with AI is built into the studio: you describe the video in a sentence or two and the studio's Gemini builds it, with a limit of three AI-built videos per account. Connecting your own agent through MCP lets Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code or Cursor build in your account instead, using your plan in that app, with no three-video limit from Mapflyover. Q: Is the AI free? A: Mapflyover does not charge separately for building with AI. The built-in route includes three AI-built videos per account. Your own agent uses whatever plan you have in Claude or ChatGPT. Narration is free with no key needed, using built-in Google WaveNet voices. Q: Can the AI export or post the video for me? A: No. Agents can build but cannot export and cannot spend your plan credits. Exporting is always done by you in the editor, and a saved exported video can then be sent to Buffer by you if your plan allows it. Q: Does the AI make up places or borders? A: No. Every place is looked up as a real OpenStreetMap outline, with ranked candidate matches you can switch in one tap. Scene checks report any place that cannot be matched, and outlines are current boundaries only. Q: Which AI apps work? A: Claude and ChatGPT work as custom connectors: add Mapflyover, sign in and tap Allow. Claude Code and Cursor can use a personal access token. Any app that supports MCP over HTTP can connect. Free Claude and ChatGPT accounts allow only one custom connector, which is their limit, not Mapflyover's. Q: What does it cost to export? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. Q: Can I edit the video after the AI builds it? A: Yes. The build is a normal project in the editor. Every scene, camera, caption, card and outline can be changed by hand, you can ask your agent to change a single scene, and when an agent saves scenes the previous scenes are kept as a backup. ## How to make an animated travel map video with routes and moving icons URL: https://mapflyover.com/guides/animated-travel-map-video Published: 2026-10-07 · Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover After reading this guide you will be able to build a complete travel map video of your own trip: one scene per stop in the order you visited, a route line that draws itself between the stops, a plane, ship or other icon travelling along it, your own photos placed at the stops where they were taken, and narration with captions timed to it. You will also know the one behaviour people most often get wrong: how the camera actually travels between stops, and why your route line is a separate thing you draw yourself. By the end you will be able to choose the right format before you start, keep the whole route in frame, and export a video that is ready for a trip recap, a travel Short or a longer YouTube video. ### How do I make an animated travel map video? Make one scene per stop in visiting order, choose 9:16 vertical or 16:9 landscape before generating, draw the route line yourself between stops, and anchor a plane, ship or other icon to the first stop with a path through up to 12 more places. The camera flies the shortest path between stops, so add waypoint stops to bend it, and add your own photos and up to 8 uploaded soundtrack tracks — there is no stock music library. ### Plan the trip as one scene per stop Start by writing your trip as a list of stops in the order you visited them. Each stop becomes its own scene, and the video visits them in that order. A project can hold up to 60 scenes, so even a long trip fits, but a watchable video rarely needs more than a scene per real stop. If two places were a single afternoon, they are usually one scene, not two. Choose the format before you generate anything. Mapflyover offers vertical 9:16 and landscape 16:9 only, and the format is chosen before generating. Pick 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, where most trip recaps are watched on a phone, and 16:9 for YouTube or a screen at home. There is no square format, and switching later means rebuilding the framing, so decide first. Keep the narration for each stop to a sentence or two. That pace is what makes a travel video feel like a journey instead of a lecture. If you write your own script, it can run up to 20,000 characters with one scene per place, and your exact wording is kept into the captions. You can also pick a map look at this stage: there are 10, with Satellite the default, plus Dark, Light, Streets, Topographic, Shaded relief, Ocean, National Geographic, Historic and Blueprint. ### How the camera actually travels between stops This is the point to get exactly right. The camera flies from place to place along the shortest path between the two stops. It does not trace roads, and it does not follow a real flight path. If your trip went around a mountain range or followed a coast road for six hours, the camera still takes the direct line unless you add an intermediate stop for it to pass through. Plan for that: a stop you add purely as a waypoint, with little or no narration, bends the journey where you need it bent. Each scene has its own camera. The studio frames the whole outline of the place automatically unless you set a zoom by hand, so a small town and a whole country both arrive properly framed. You control the flight itself with flight time, speed and style, and a bezier curve, and once the camera lands you can give it a hold motion such as orbit, push-in, pull-out, drift, tilt-up, tilt-down, sweep or still. For travel videos, the hold motion matters more than people expect. A push-in feels exciting but crops the edges as it zooms, so the start of your route can slide out of view. A pull-out, a slow drift along the direction of travel, or your own keyframe camera path keeps the whole trip visible, which is usually what a recap needs. ### Draw the route and move an icon along it The route line is yours to draw, separate from the camera flight. Add a line between stops and it draws itself on as the video plays. Lines can lie on the map in perspective and follow the camera, or sit flat on the screen. Use a curve for a flight leg and a straighter line for a drive, and add a glow or an arrowhead if the line needs to read at a glance on a phone. A scene can hold up to 12 lines. To move something along the route, pick an icon from the props library, which includes a ship, a plane, a train, a camel, a castle and more. Pin it to the first stop as its anchor, then give it a path of up to 12 more places to travel through. It travels through them over the time it is on screen. Turn on follow so the icon points along its direction of travel, and add a gentle float or sway so it does not look pasted on. Note that the moving icon does not draw the line for you. The icon's path and the visible route line are two separate things, so add both: the line so viewers can see the whole journey at once, and the icon so they can follow where they are in it. - Camera flight: shortest path between stops, never an automatic road or flight path. - Route line: drawn by you, straight or curved, in map perspective or flat on the screen. - Moving icon: anchored to a real place, with a path through up to 12 more places, follow and float or sway turned on. ### Add your photos, titles and sound A travel map becomes personal when your own material appears on it. Upload photos to your asset library and place them over the map at the stop where they were taken. Your library holds pictures, SVGs, GIFs, short videos and audio, up to 200 assets and 1 GB in total, with a single video up to 100 MB. A scene can hold up to 24 media items and 30 stickers, which is plenty; a photo or two per stop is usually the right amount. Sticker pop-ups from the searchable catalog, such as flags, landmarks, animals and weather icons, mark the moments a photo does not cover, and several can appear at once with entrance animations. Animated titles open the video and name each stop: letter-by-letter, word by word, glitch, typewriter, ticker and count-up numbers are among the styles, with presets including headline, neon, plate and subtitle. For sound, narration uses built-in Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, free with no key needed, and captions are timed from the narration word by word. You can upload your own recording instead. A soundtrack is built from your own uploaded audio only, up to 8 tracks, with start time, fades, looping, volume and ducking under narration, set to minus 12 dB by default. There is no stock music library, so bring a track you have the right to use. ### Worked example: a four stop trip as a vertical short Say you travelled to four stops in order and want a 60 second vertical recap. You create the project in 9:16 before generating, pick the Satellite look, and make four scenes, one per stop, each with a sentence or two of narration naming what happened there. The camera will fly between the stops along the shortest path, so between stop two and stop three, where your real journey detoured around a bay, you add the bay town as a short waypoint scene with no narration, and the flight now bends around the water the way your trip did. Next you draw one curved line through all four stops so the whole journey is visible, and you anchor a plane prop to the first stop with a path through the other three, follow turned on so it points where it is going. At each stop you place one photo from your library, timed to appear as the narration names the place, and a location chip shows the place name with its country flag. You set the hold motion on the wide scenes to pull-out, so the route never leaves the frame. You preview the full video once, fix the one photo that covers a caption, and export the MP4 from the editor. The result is a vertical travel map that shows the journey, not just the destinations, and it is ready to post as a Short, Reel or TikTok video. ### Common mistakes Travel videos fail in predictable ways, and most of them come from expecting the map to behave like a navigation app. It does not, and once you know that, the fixes are quick. - Expecting the camera or the line to follow real roads or a real flight path. The camera flies the shortest path between stops. Add waypoint stops and extra line points to follow a winding route. - Choosing the format at the end. The format is chosen before generating, and only 9:16 and 16:9 exist. Decide where the video will be posted first. - Using push-in on route scenes. It crops the edges and the start of the trip slides out of view. Use pull-out, drift, or a keyframe camera path instead. - Setting a zoom by hand on every scene. Leave it out and the studio frames the whole outline automatically; set it only for a deliberately tighter or wider view. - Cramming in stops. Sixty scenes are allowed, but a recap with a sentence or two per stop watches far better with fewer, clearer stops. - Looking for built-in music. There is no stock library. Upload your own audio, up to 8 tracks, and let ducking keep the narration clear. - Planning to post through Buffer on the free plan. Buffer is Pro and Studio only; the paid trial counts as Pro, and the free plan cannot use it. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Can I show a real road route? A: Not automatically. The camera flies between stops along the shortest path and does not trace roads or flight paths, and lines go straight or curved between the points you give. To follow a winding road, add several points along it, or add waypoint stops the camera should pass through. Q: Can I make it vertical for TikTok? A: Yes. Choose 9:16 before you generate the video. The only formats are vertical 9:16 and landscape 16:9; there is no square format. Overlays and captions are laid out for the format you chose. Q: How many stops can I have? A: Up to 60 scenes per project, one scene per stop. A moving icon can travel through up to 12 more places after its anchor, and a scene can hold up to 12 lines, 24 media items and 30 stickers. Q: Can I use my own photos and music? A: Yes. Your asset library holds pictures, SVGs, GIFs, short videos and audio, up to 200 assets and 1 GB in total, with a single video up to 100 MB. A soundtrack uses up to 8 tracks from your own uploaded audio only; there is no stock or built-in music library. Q: Do I need to record my own voice? A: No. Narration uses built-in Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, free with no key needed, and captions are timed from the narration word by word. You can upload your own MP3 or WAV recording instead if you prefer your own voice. Q: What does it cost to export? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. Q: Can I schedule the finished video? A: A saved exported video can be sent to Buffer from the studio, queued for the next free slot or set for an exact time, on several channels at once. The free plan cannot use Buffer; it is Pro and Studio only, and the paid trial counts as Pro. ## How to highlight countries and borders in a map animation URL: https://mapflyover.com/guides/highlight-countries-map-animation Published: 2026-10-07 · Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover After reading this guide you will be able to highlight places in a map video properly: pick the correct real outline for a country, region or city and fix it in one tap if the wrong match was chosen, fill it in a way that stays readable over satellite imagery, show up to a dozen extra places alongside it in one scene, trace the exact border two places share, and colour a whole set of countries by data from a spreadsheet. You will also know the hard limit that shapes all of this: outlines are current boundaries only, so you will be able to plan videos that the map can honestly show, and avoid the ones it cannot. No design software and no video editing experience are needed for any of it. What you need is a clear choice about which places carry the story, and why those places and not others. ### How do I highlight countries in a map animation? Name a place and pick its correct ranked OpenStreetMap match — outlines are real current boundaries only, not historical borders — then set its fill, outline and label, switching the match in one tap if needed. One scene can add up to 12 extra places, each with its own colour and timed reveal, and a line can trace the border two places share or a CSV can colour countries by data as a choropleth. ### Start with the right outline Every highlight begins with a real outline from OpenStreetMap. When you name a place, you are offered ranked candidate matches, because many names are shared: a country, a region and a town can all carry the same name. The right match is normally ranked first, but check it, and if the wrong one was picked you can switch the match in one tap rather than deleting the scene and starting again. Places are not limited to countries. You can highlight regions, cities, districts, landmarks and bodies of water, which is what makes the same tool work for a national story and a neighbourhood story. If a place has no outline, you can draw a circle for it instead. And if you need a shape no map has, such as a sales territory or a proposed zone, you can import your own GeoJSON shape for the scene. One rule governs all of this: outlines are current boundaries only. They are not historical borders, and there is no way to ask for a country as it looked in another century. The Historic map look does not change this; it is an aged-paper style applied to the modern map, not a set of old borders. Plan historical stories around narration, titles and the shapes you import yourself, not around outlines the map does not have. ### Outline, fill and labels that stay readable Each scene draws the outline of its place with a glow, and the outline appears when the camera lands on the place, so the highlight arrives with the narration instead of waiting on screen beforehand. Set the colour, the strength of the fill and the width of the line. A thin line suits a country, where the shape is large and familiar, and a thicker one suits a city or district that would otherwise be lost at video scale. A fill is more than a tint. It can be solid, a gradient, a pattern, a picture, a short video, text or a stat, and it can be revealed with an animation rather than appearing all at once. A fill can also stay on after the camera leaves, which is how you build a map up piece by piece: each country keeps its colour as the camera moves to the next one, and the final scene shows the whole set coloured together. Two card types support the highlight, and they are not the same thing. A stat card is a timed card carrying a number or fact for the scene. A focus card is a second, distinct card type; use it for a different kind of callout rather than as a spare stat card. The location chip is separate again: a timed place chip with the country flag, with position, size and colours set project-wide so every stop in the video is labelled the same way. - Check the ranked match before you style anything; switching it later keeps your styling but changes the shape. - Let fills stay on after the camera leaves when the video is building a set, and turn that off when each scene should start clean. - Set the location chip once, project-wide, instead of labelling each scene by hand. ### Show several places together in one scene A single scene can highlight more than its main place. You can add up to 12 extra places in one scene, each with its own colour and name tag, and each can be revealed at a chosen moment rather than all appearing when the scene starts. The camera frames all of them automatically, so a comparison that spans a continent and one that spans a city both arrive in frame without you setting a zoom. This is the right tool for comparisons and groups: the countries in an agreement shown together, the regions that share a language, the cities competing on one measure, the neighbours on either side of a border. Revealing them one at a time, in the order the narration names them, is what turns a list into an argument. Revealing all twelve at once usually reads as noise. Keep the set honest about scale. The studio frames the whole group, which means one very distant extra place will pull the camera far out and shrink everything else. If one member of the set sits far from the rest, give it its own scene and let the group scene stay tight, or leave the zoom alone and accept the wide frame knowingly rather than discovering it in the preview. ### Trace a shared border, and colour countries by data Sometimes the border itself is the story. A line can trace the border two places share, following the real outline where one ends and the other begins. Give it a glow so it reads clearly against satellite imagery. This is the clearest way to show a disputed line, a river boundary, or the exact place a traveller crosses from one country into another, and it pairs well with both places filled in different colours in the same scene. For a whole set of countries coloured by a number, import a CSV. This builds a choropleth data map: countries are coloured by the value in your table, with a legend, and the colours can animate in. Names in the table are matched to countries for you, and unmatched names are reported so you can fix the spelling or the name form and import again. You can hold up to 8 datasets, with up to 1,500 rows and 40 columns each. The same CSV import also drives racing bar charts, which are a different visual from a choropleth: bars that reorder over time instead of a coloured map. Pick the map when geography is the point, and the bars when ranking is the point. Using both for the same dataset in one video is rarely necessary. ### Worked example: three neighbours, one shared border story Say your video explains how three neighbouring countries divide a region between them. You make the first scene about the whole area: name the first country, check the ranked match is the country and not a town of the same name, give it a solid fill and a thin outline, and set the location chip to show its name and flag. Then, in the same scene, you add the other two countries as extra highlights, each in its own colour, revealed at the moments the narration names them. The camera frames all three automatically. The second scene carries the border story. You keep both fills on from the first scene, since fills can stay on after the camera leaves, and you add a line that traces the border two of the countries share, with a glow. The narration explains the line while the viewer watches exactly that line light up, instead of a generic arrow pointing at the area. The third scene adds the data. You import a CSV with two columns, country and the value you are comparing, check the report for any unmatched names and fix them, and the three countries are recoloured by value with a legend on screen. You preview once, notice one fill is strong enough to hide the coastline, lower its strength, and export. Every step used a real current outline, which is why the video can be checked against any map the viewer opens. ### Common mistakes Highlighting looks simple, which is why the same handful of errors appear in so many map videos. Most of them are quick to fix once you know they are possible. - Asking for historical borders. Outlines are current OpenStreetMap boundaries only, and the Historic look is only a paper style. For a historical story, import your own GeoJSON shape for the old boundary. - Accepting the first match without looking. Names repeat across countries, regions and towns. The matches are ranked and switchable in one tap; use that. - Making the fill so strong that the map underneath disappears. The satellite image carries context the viewer needs; lower the fill strength before you thicken the outline. - Revealing all 12 extra places at once. Stagger the reveals to the narration, or the scene reads as a coloured blur. - Confusing stat cards and focus cards. They are two distinct card types with different jobs; pick the one you mean. - Ignoring the unmatched names report on a CSV import. An unmatched country is simply not coloured, and the video will quietly show a gap in your data. - Setting a zoom by hand on a group scene. The studio frames the main place and every extra highlight automatically; a manual zoom is the usual reason a place is cut off. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Are the borders accurate and current? A: Outlines come from OpenStreetMap and are current boundaries only. Matches are ranked so the right place is chosen first, and you can switch the match in one tap. They are not historical borders, and the Historic map look is only an aged-paper style. Q: Can I highlight a region or a city, not just a country? A: Yes. Places can be countries, regions, cities, districts, landmarks and bodies of water. For a place with no outline you can draw a circle, and for a custom area you can import your own GeoJSON shape. Q: How many places can I highlight in one scene? A: The scene's main place plus up to 12 extra places. Each extra place gets its own colour and name tag, can be revealed at a chosen moment, and the camera frames all of them automatically. Q: Can a fill be a flag, a picture or a video? A: Yes. A fill can be solid, a gradient, a pattern, a picture, a short video, text or a stat, with reveal animations. A fill can also stay on after the camera leaves, so a set of places can build up across scenes. Q: How do I colour countries by data? A: Import a CSV with place names and a number, and the countries are coloured by value as a choropleth, with a legend. Unmatched names are reported so you can fix them. You can hold up to 8 datasets, each up to 1,500 rows and 40 columns. The same import can also drive racing bar charts. Q: Can I use my own shape instead of a map outline? A: Yes. You can import your own GeoJSON shape for any scene, which is the way to show a territory, a catchment, a proposed zone, or a historical boundary you have drawn yourself. Q: What does it cost to export? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## 3D map animation: tilted flyovers, terrain and camera moves URL: https://mapflyover.com/guides/3d-map-animation Published: 2026-10-07 · Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover After reading this guide you will be able to build a 3D map animation that looks cinematic without becoming unreadable. You will know exactly what 3D means in Mapflyover and what it does not mean, how to set pitch, bearing and field of view for a scene, which hold motion to pair with a tilt, and when to turn terrain relief on. You will have worked settings for an opening shot, a mountain or coastline scene, a plain explainer scene and a closing shot, so you can copy a starting point instead of guessing. And you will be able to judge, scene by scene, whether a tilt is earning its place or whether straight down would tell the story better. You do not need to learn the whole editor first. Every setting used below lives in a scene's own camera controls, and every one of them can be changed after you preview, so nothing here is a one-way decision. ### How do I make a 3D map animation? Set a scene's pitch above 0 — 40 to 60 for a coastline or mountain reveal, 70 to 85 sparingly for an opening or close — pair it with orbit, drift or sweep, and turn on terrain relief where the land has height. 3D in Mapflyover is a camera tilted up to 85 degrees over real map or satellite imagery with optional terrain relief, not modelled 3D buildings, and most explainer scenes stay clearest at pitch 0. ### What 3D means here, and what it does not Mapflyover videos are 3D flyover videos. That means an angled camera flying over real map and satellite imagery: the camera tilts away from straight down, it can orbit a place, and it travels over imagery that comes from the real world rather than from a generated landscape. On top of that, an optional terrain relief setting makes hills and mountains rise in depth, so a range reads as raised ground instead of a photograph of raised ground. Be exact about the other half, because viewers will assume it: there are no modelled 3D buildings and no city models. A skyline in a 3D scene is the real satellite image of that skyline seen from an angle, not a set of extruded towers you can fly between. If your video needs to show the height of individual buildings, this is the wrong tool, and saying so in your own description keeps viewers from expecting it. That combination is still powerful. An angled camera over real imagery, with your own outlines, labels, titles and routes on top, gives the sense of flying over a place while keeping the geography checkable. There are 10 map looks to fly over, with Satellite the default, plus Dark, Light, Streets, Topographic, Shaded relief, Ocean, National Geographic, Historic and Blueprint. ### The camera controls, in plain terms Pitch is the tilt, and it is measured from straight down. A pitch of 0 looks directly down at the map, like a satellite. Higher values lean the camera toward the horizon, up to 85 degrees, which skims almost along the ground. Pitch is a per-scene setting, so one video can be mostly top-down with two tilted scenes, and a camera path can change pitch during a single scene. Bearing is the direction the camera faces, which decides which way is up on screen. Field of view runs from 15 to 90 degrees: a narrow field of view flattens and zooms the feel of a scene, while a wide one takes in more and makes low tilts feel faster and more dramatic. Flight time, speed and style, and a bezier curve shape how the camera travels between places, and each scene has its own camera throughout. After the camera lands it keeps moving, which is the hold motion. The options are orbit, push-in, pull-out, drift, tilt-up, tilt-down, sweep and still. Pair them with pitch deliberately. At pitch 0, push-in, pull-out, drift and sweep keep the straight-down look, while orbit turns the map and tilt-up leaves the top-down view entirely. Still holds a frozen frame, which suits a moment you want read, but it is not the safe default for a whole video. - Pitch 0: straight down, for borders, sizes, labels and data. - Pitch 40 to 60: a cinematic reveal of a coastline, a city or a mountain range. - Pitch 70 to 85: a dramatic opening or closing shot, used sparingly. - Leave the zoom unset where you can: the studio frames the whole outline automatically unless a zoom is set by hand. ### Terrain relief, and where tilt helps or hurts Terrain relief is optional and per video it is the setting that most changes a tilted scene. With relief on, hills and mountains rise in depth as the camera leans, so a valley has a floor and a ridge has an edge. Over flat country it changes very little, which is expected: there is no height to show. Turn it on when the land itself is part of the story, and leave it off when the story is borders, cities or data laid over the land. Tilt helps when height and depth are the point. Mountain ranges, coastlines, valleys and river gorges all read better at an angle, because straight down they flatten into texture. A low opening shot over the land sets a sense of place before any facts arrive, and a tilted closing shot gives a video an ending instead of a stop. Following a route across varied terrain also benefits, since the viewer can feel the climb. Tilt hurts when the viewer has to measure, compare or read. Comparing the sizes of two places, following a border, reading a data map or placing labels are all clearer from straight above, where nothing hides behind anything else and distances are not foreshortened. At a steep tilt, far places compress, near labels crowd, and a highlight on the far side of a ridge can sit out of sight. Most good map videos are mostly top-down, with tilt spent on one or two moments. ### Worked example: settings for four scene types Use these as starting points and adjust from the preview, not as rules. For an opening shot, set pitch to 70, turn terrain relief on if the land has height, choose orbit or a slow drift as the hold motion, and keep the field of view toward the wider half of its 15 to 90 degree range. The aim is place, not information: no labels that must be read, no numbers, just the land arriving. Keep it to a few seconds, then cut or fly to a clearer view for the first fact. For a mountain or coastline scene, set pitch between 40 and 60, relief on, and use drift or sweep so the camera travels along the feature rather than staring at it. That range is the working middle of 3D: steep enough that ridges stand up, shallow enough that the viewer still knows where they are on the map. If a route crosses the terrain, a keyframe camera path that follows it works better than a push-in, which crops the edges as it zooms. For an explainer scene, set pitch to 0, relief off, and use push-in, pull-out or still. This is where outlines, shared borders, stat cards and labels live, and straight down keeps all of them honest. For a closing shot, return to pitch 70 to 85 with a pull-out, so the place shrinks into its surroundings as the narration finishes. A four scene video built exactly this way, tilted opening, top-down middle, tilted close, is the most reliable shape this guide can give you. ### Build your own camera move with keyframes When the preset hold motions are not the move you want, give the scene camera keyframes. A keyframe is a time after landing, plus any of position, zoom, pitch and bearing. The camera glides through them in order, so you describe the move as a short list of moments instead of a single setting. Flight speed and style, with a bezier curve, shape how it eases between those moments. The most useful keyframed move in a 3D video starts wide and top-down, then tilts and pushes in as the narration reaches the key point. The viewer gets the context first, while the map is still readable, and the drama second, once they know where they are. The reverse also works: start low and tilted on a detail, then pull out and level to pitch 0 to reveal how big the place really is. Two framing warnings apply to every keyframed move. First, a push-in crops the edges, so a route, a second highlighted place or a label near the frame edge can slide out of view mid-scene. Second, a zoom set by hand overrides the studio's automatic framing of the whole outline, so if part of a place is missing, removing your zoom is the first fix to try. A project can also open with a globe intro or use a cruise zoom-out between scenes, which gives you the wide establishing move without spending a keyframe on it. ### Common mistakes Almost every weak 3D map video makes one of these errors, and they are all errors of excess rather than of skill. The camera can tilt a long way, so people tilt it everywhere. - Tilting every scene. If everything is dramatic, nothing is. Keep explainers at pitch 0 and spend tilt on the opening, one feature scene and the close. - Living at pitch 85. At the steepest tilt, labels crowd, far places compress and outlines hide behind terrain. It is a shot, not a setting for a whole video. - Promising 3D buildings. There are none, and no city models. Describe the video as a flyover over real imagery with terrain relief, which is what it is. - Turning terrain relief on and expecting flat country to rise. Relief shows the height that is there; over plains and deltas it changes little. - Setting a zoom by hand and then wondering why a place is cut off. Remove the zoom, or swap a push-in for a pull-out, before you rebuild the scene. - Putting text that must be read into a tilted scene. Stat cards, data legends and dense labels belong in a top-down scene where they stay flat and legible. - Judging the tilt from the editor alone. Preview the whole video at the size viewers will watch it, because a tilt that feels gentle on a monitor can swallow labels on a phone. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Are there 3D buildings or city models? A: No. There are no modelled 3D buildings and no city models. A 3D scene is an angled camera, up to 85 degrees, flying over real map and satellite imagery, with optional terrain relief so hills and mountains rise in depth. Q: Is it like Google Earth? A: It is similar in feel: a camera moving over real imagery, with your own outlines, titles, routes and cards on top. It is not a full 3D globe with modelled buildings, and the camera work, scenes and export are built for making a finished video rather than exploring a place. Q: How far can the camera tilt? A: Up to 85 degrees, which skims almost along the ground. Straight down is pitch 0. Most scenes work best at 0, feature scenes at 40 to 60, and 70 to 85 is best kept for an opening or closing shot. Q: Can I mix top-down and 3D in one video? A: Yes. Each scene has its own camera and its own pitch, and a camera path with keyframes can change pitch, bearing, zoom and position during a single scene. A common shape is a tilted opening, top-down explainers in the middle and a tilted close. Q: What does terrain relief actually do? A: It makes the ground rise in depth, so hills and mountains stand up as an angled camera flies over them, instead of staying as flat texture on the imagery. It is optional, and over flat country it changes little because there is little height to show. Q: Why does my camera cut off part of a place? A: Usually because a zoom was set by hand, which overrides the studio framing the whole outline automatically, or because a push-in is cropping the edges as it zooms. Remove the zoom or use a pull-out or drift instead, then preview again. Q: What does it cost to export? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. # Use cases ## Travel videos URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/travel-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover A travel video is mostly about places, and the map is the one thing that shows how those places fit together. A flyover from the globe down to the first stop, then across to the next, tells viewers where they are before you say a word. Mapflyover turns your script into that journey: one scene per place, the real outline of each place found for you, and a camera that rises, travels and lands on its own. The worked example in this guide is Italy in seven days, city by city: 12 scenes, 1 minute 36 seconds, made with Create with AI and then checked and styled in the editor. Follow the same steps for any trip, from a weekend city break to a month-long route. ### How do I make a travel map video? In Mapflyover, choose vertical 9:16 or landscape 16:9 first, then use Create with AI or a script to build one scene per stop in travel order, with each place's current OpenStreetMap outline over satellite imagery. Add free narration, word-highlighted captions timed from that narration, and one or two stat cards per stop, then preview and export as MP4. Building and previewing are free, and the Free plan exports 2 videos a month at 720p for up to 90 seconds with the Mapflyover mark. ### Why a map works for this - Viewers decide in seconds whether a place is close, far or somewhere they have never heard of. A map answers that instantly. - The outline of a country, island or park drawn on real satellite imagery makes a destination feel real in a way a title card does not. - A map gives every video in a series the same recognisable opening, so people know it is yours. ### Steps 1. Start with AI, and pick your format first: From the dashboard, choose Create with AI. Describe the video in a sentence or two, naming the journey, the stops and their order, not just the country. For the Italy example the prompt named a seven-day train journey, with one stat card per city, captions at the bottom and a place chip at the top left. Before you click Make my video, choose Vertical (Shorts, Reels) or Landscape (YouTube). The Italy example is vertical, 9:16. Do not try to fix the format after the video is built. 2. Let the AI write the story, then wait for it: Click Make my video and wait. The button changes to Writing the story, recording the narration, and the studio makes the narration, captions, camera and map. You get an editable project to review and export. The AI uses one of your AI videos, so do not click it twice for the same idea. When the editor opens, you have a full timeline to check, not a finished video to publish untouched. 3. Review the timeline and fix the Checks panel first: Read the whole timeline before you polish anything else. Check that every place is the right place, that the stops are in travel order, and that no scene repeats a location for no reason. The Italy project reported 1 error, 1 warning and 3 notes: Scene 2 (Italy) repeats the previous location, Scene 5 (Uffizi Gallery) uses a small circle because OpenStreetMap has no footprint for it, Scene 8 (Grand Canal) uses a circle because no outline was found, and Scene 12 (Italy) repeats the previous location. Merge repeated scenes unless the camera should fly away and back, and for a circle-only place choose another match, set a radius, or give a more specific name and country code. 4. Drag and resize every element into its own spot: Dragging is the same action for every element: click it, blue handles appear, drag it, resize from a corner handle if you need to, then click away and check the clean frame. The Italy title was dragged and its height on screen fell from 30 percent to 24 percent. The same drag moves a picture, a stat card and a caption. Do not leave everything selected when you judge the final look, because a selected element with blue handles is a work-in-progress shot, not a finished frame. 5. Add a picture or asset to a scene: Use Choose from your assets to pick a picture, GIF or video, or upload a new one. The dialog shows items such as a flag for a country fill and a house prop, each with a Use button. In a scene, Add picture or video sits alongside a text tag field for a name or caption next to the picture, boundary visuals, and Delete scene. A flag fill only works when the place is the right country, so check the place name and country before you add the picture. 6. Add icons and props, one per spot, no overlaps: Icons and props should sit beside a place, not on top of it or on top of each other. The Italy example uses a train prop on the Italy scene, appearing at 7621 milliseconds, staying 4200 milliseconds, at width 24, entering with Pop, with a choice of On screen or On the map. Give each icon its own spot. If two icons overlap, drag one clear and check the frame deselected, because overlapping icons were the first thing that looked wrong in early AI drafts. 7. Add one stat card per stop, in the upper frame: A stat card should add one fact, not a paragraph. Rome gets FCO, Airport Code. The Colosseum gets 50,000, Capacity. Both can be read in two seconds. Click a card to select it, then drag it to the upper part of the frame, clear of the pin, the place outline, the title and the captions. One or two cards per place at most; the map should stay the star, and a card in the middle of the frame will always fight the place it is meant to explain. 8. Style it once, globally, then leave it alone: Use the Style tab for the whole project instead of restyling every scene by hand. Map styles include Satellite, Dark, Light, Streets, Topographic, Shaded relief, Ocean, National, Historic and Blueprint. Dark is a dark gray base without labels, so bright fills and data maps stand out on it. In the Italy example the global badge (location) is at position X 2 percent and Y 6 percent, scale 1.1 and font size 14, and global stats are at X 50 percent and Y 15 percent, scale 1, centred, with value font size 22 and label font size 11. Change the global values when you want bigger chips or bigger stat text, so every city looks like the same video. 9. Check captions, preview the whole video, then export: Wait until the panel shows Audio active, ready for export, then check the captions. Styles include Karaoke, where bold white words turn yellow as they are spoken, Pop box, Karaoke fill and One word. In the Italy example captions sit near the bottom, at 90 percent from the top, with text width 86 percent, 3 words shown at a time, new groups at commas, and a Fade appearance. If a caption covers a place name or a card, move it. Then preview the whole video once, start to finish, with sound on, fix anything that does not match the spoken word, and export in the format you chose at the start: vertical for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, landscape for YouTube. ### Video ideas - Italy in seven days, city by city - A week in Japan, city by city - The five islands worth visiting in Greece - A road trip recap from coast to coast - Where to go in Europe in spring - A honeymoon route with a stop each day ### A simple scene outline 1. Opening: Italy from above, one line on a seven-day train journey 2. Stop 1: Rome, the arrival city, with a card for its airport code 3. Stop 2: the Colosseum, with a card for its capacity 4. Stops 3 to 5: the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Venice and the Grand Canal, one scene each 5. Closing: pull back to Italy and the whole route, and ask where to go next ### Tips - Open on a country or region, then tighten to cities and landmarks, so viewers always know where they are. - Give each place enough of the narration to land before the camera leaves. - Use one or two cards per place at most; the map should stay the star. - Fix the Checks panel before you polish style: repeated scenes and circle-only places are mistakes, not style choices. - Set map style, location badge and stat card sizes globally, so every stop looks like the same video. - Choose vertical or landscape before you generate, because the format is set when the AI builds the project. ### Common mistakes - Repeating the same place in back-to-back scenes for no reason, which makes the camera fly away and straight back to somewhere viewers have just seen. Merge repeated scenes unless a return is a deliberate part of the story, and fix it in the Checks panel before polishing anything else. - Leaving a circle-only place as a vague dot and hoping nobody notices. A small circle means no outline was found for that place, so choose another match, set a clear radius, or give a more specific name and country code so the spot reads properly. - Letting icons, props and pictures overlap each other or sit on top of the place they label, and stacking too many stat cards into a scene while you are at it. Give every element its own spot, keep cards to one or two per place, and let the map stay the star. - Judging the final frame while an element is still selected, with blue handles showing around a title, card or picture. Click away to deselect, then look at the clean frame, because a selected element is a work-in-progress view, not what viewers will see. - Choosing the format after the video has been generated, then trying to squeeze a vertical idea into landscape or the other way round. Pick 9:16 or 16:9 in the Create with AI dialog at the start, when the project is built. ### Best format Vertical 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok; landscape 16:9 for YouTube. Choose the format in the Create with AI dialog before you generate, as in the Italy example, which is vertical. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Can I show my actual route between stops? A: The camera flies from each place to the next along the shortest path over the map, so viewers see the order and distance of your stops. It does not trace roads or flight paths. Q: Do I need to film anything? A: No. The video is made from satellite imagery, so you can make a destination guide without footage. Many creators open a vlog with a flyover instead. Q: Can I make a travel video with AI? A: Yes. Choose Create with AI, describe the journey and its stops in order, pick vertical or landscape, and click Make my video. You get an editable project with narration, captions, camera and map. Review the timeline and the Checks panel before you export, because the first AI draft can repeat a scene, use a circle where no outline was found, or overlap icons. Q: What do the Checks warnings mean? A: A repeated location usually means two scenes should be merged, unless the camera is meant to fly away and back. A small circle means OpenStreetMap has no footprint for that place, so choose another match, set a radius, or give a more specific name and country code. Q: Can I change the format after the video is made? A: Choose vertical or landscape in the Create with AI dialog before you generate. The Italy example in this guide is vertical, 9:16, for Shorts and Reels. For YouTube, choose Landscape, 16:9, at the start. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Trip and route videos URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/trip-route-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover A route video is a story with a direction, and this guide shows you how to make one in Mapflyover. You will turn any journey, a coast-to-coast drive, a cycling tour, a backpacking loop or a family road trip, into a finished video where the camera rises from the start, flies stop to stop in travel order over real satellite imagery, and lands on each place as the narration names it. Each stop becomes one scene with its real outline, a location chip, timed captions and, where it helps, one card for distance, days or elevation. You will choose the format first, build scenes in order, fix Checks, add narration and overlays, set one style and soundtrack, preview the whole journey, and export for YouTube or Shorts. By the end you will also know the two honest limits of a route video: the camera flies the shortest path between stops rather than tracing roads, and scheduling to Buffer is a paid-plan feature, stated plainly where it appears below. ### How do I make a trip route map video? Add one scene per stop in the order you travelled, so the camera flies from place to place over satellite imagery along the shortest path between stops, not tracing roads. Add free narration and word-highlighted captions, plus stat cards for distance, days or elevation where they help, and choose 9:16 for a short recap or 16:9 for a longer YouTube diary before you build. You can write the script yourself (up to 20,000 characters) or use Create with AI, then export as MP4 in 9:16 or 16:9 only. ### Why a map works for this - Order matters in a journey, and a map is the clearest way to show order. Town names in narration leave viewers guessing which came first and how they connect. On a map the sequence is visible: the camera leaves one place and arrives at the next, followable even with the sound down. - The camera rising before it travels shows the distance between stops, so a long leg feels long and a short hop feels short. That sense of scale is what a slideshow of pins can never give. A short hop and a full day of driving look different because the flight differs. - One finished route video can be reused as the opening of every episode in a series, giving a channel a recognisable signature. Make the full journey once, then cut single legs as their own videos. A viewer joining at episode four still understands the whole journey at a glance. Every time. ### Steps 1. Choose the format first: 9:16 or 16:9: Decide where the video will live before building anything, because Mapflyover offers exactly two formats. Landscape 16:9 suits a YouTube trip diary or tour page, where wide flights between distant stops have room to breathe. Vertical 9:16 suits a one-minute recap on Shorts, Reels or TikTok, where stops sit larger and cards stay central. The Journey and route template is 16:9; the Travel guide template is 9:16. Pick now, in the project or Create with AI dialog, and do not try to rescue the wrong shape later by cropping. Write the choice down so a series stays consistent. Both shapes are real productions, not crops of each other. 2. Write the prompt or script, then build the scenes: With built-in Create with AI, describe the journey in a sentence or two, naming the start, every stop in order and the finish; the studio builds an editable project, and you get three AI-built videos per account. Or write a full script yourself, up to 20,000 characters, and script-to-video makes one scene per place, keeping your exact wording into captions. An AI agent connected over MCP can also build scenes, though agents cannot export. Either way, write a story: why you left, what changed at each stop, what the finish means. Plain language narrates better than brochure language later. That story is what the narration will later follow. 3. Add the places in travel order: Add one scene per stop, in the order you actually travelled, because the camera follows that order exactly. Give a country code or fuller name for any place that could be confused with another of the same name, and check each outline: outlines come from OpenStreetMap with ranked candidates, switchable in one tap. A project holds up to 60 scenes, far more than needed; strong recaps use six to fifteen stops. Keep the order geographic where you can, because a route that zigzags makes the camera cross its own path repeatedly. Mark pass-through stops now, so they get short scenes later. 4. Fix the Checks panel before you polish: Clear Checks before touching style, because route projects collect two predictable problems. First, repeats: the start city appearing again later, or a region scene directly before the city inside it, making the camera fly away and straight back. Merge repeats unless the journey genuinely returns, and say so in the narration. Second, circle-only places: a campsite, viewpoint or trailhead with no outline gets a drawn circle. Set its radius deliberately so it matches how big the place feels, and heed any gaps or overlaps Checks reports. Do not skip it to save time. Also fix any scene whose outline belongs to the stop before or after it, a common copy-over slip in long route lists. 5. Add narration: built-in voices or your own recording: Record or generate narration once the stops are settled. Built-in Google WaveNet voices are free, no key needed, 48 voices across 13 language variants. For a personal diary, upload your own recording as MP3 or WAV instead; captions for your own recording use Groq Whisper, free from the studio key up to 60 minutes a month, then your own free Groq key in Settings. Narrate in travel order, naming each place as its scene begins, and give longer stops more words, because scene times follow the spoken words. Read it aloud once; tangles on the page tangle on the microphone. 6. Set captions that follow the voice word by word: Captions are timed from the narration word by word, and every timing is hand-editable if a name lands early or late. Pick one of the seven presets and keep it across the series: Karaoke and Karaoke fill highlight each word as spoken, Pop box and One word suit fast vertical recaps, Minimal or Cinema suit slower diaries. Set size, position and words per page once, clear of the chip and cards, and export an SRT if you need captions elsewhere. Muted feed viewers learn the route from the highlighted names alone. Confirm names are readable at full size before moving on. 7. Add route overlays: lines, chips, cards and props: Overlays should explain the journey, not decorate it. Lines draw themselves on between stops, in map perspective or flat on screen, and a prop such as a plane, train or ship can travel a path of up to 12 places, pointing along its direction. Be accurate: the camera flies stop to stop along the shortest path, and a line joins your stops; the product does not trace actual roads. Add the timed location chip with its flag, stat cards for distance, days or elevation, and focus cards, a distinct second card type, for short notes. Add a second overlay only when a leg has two things to say. 8. Style, soundtrack, preview, export and share: Set one map look from the ten available. Satellite is the default and the only one needing a free Mapbox token added once for export; Dark, Light, Streets, Topographic, Shaded relief, Ocean, National Geographic, Historic and Blueprint need none. The soundtrack is your own uploaded audio only, up to eight tracks with fades, looping and ducking under narration by 12 dB by default; there is no stock music library. Preview with sound on, export the MP4, and optionally send it to Buffer, queued or at an exact time. Plainly: Free cannot use Buffer; Pro and Studio can, trial included. Keep the checked project, so corrections never mean a rebuild. ### Worked example: a coast-to-coast route recap in landscape Take a concrete production: a 90-second landscape recap of a drive from one coast of a country to the other, built as twelve scenes: a globe intro to the departure city, ten stops in travel order, cities with real outlines plus two circle-only stops, a roadhouse and a pass viewpoint, each given a deliberate radius. The narration is the creator own MP3 recording, so captions are transcribed word by word and hand-checked. Each arrival gets the timed location chip with its flag, and only three stat cards appear: total distance at the start, the longest driving day in the middle, and days taken at the end. The camera work stays simple. Every stop uses a gentle push-in, except the pass, which gets a slow orbit at a steep pitch so terrain relief reads, and the destination, which pulls out to the whole route. A drawn line joins the stops as the journey progresses, presented honestly in the narration as the stops joined in order, never as the exact roads driven, because the camera flies the shortest path between stops. One uploaded track loops under the voice, and Satellite stays on throughout. In Checks, this production had the two classic route problems: the departure city repeated as scene eleven because the script named it again in the closing line, which was merged, and the roadhouse arriving as a tiny default circle, which was widened. Previewed with sound on and one caption timing nudged, it exported inside Free limits, 90 seconds at 720p with the small mark. On Pro it exports at 1080p, no mark, and can be queued to Buffer. ### Video ideas - A coast-to-coast drive in one minute - A cycling tour across a country, stage by stage - A backpacking route through South East Asia - A pilgrimage or trekking route with its overnight stops - The route of a family reunion tour - A train journey broken into its stations in order ### A simple scene outline 1. Start: departure place, why you left, destination promised 2. Early legs: first stops, short scenes setting rhythm and direction 3. Middle: the longest leg and the stop that changed the journey, with one card 4. Final legs: stops closer together as the finish approaches 5. Finish: the destination, then a wide view of the whole route ### Tips - Keep stops in sensible geographic order; zigzags make the camera fly back and forth. - Finish pulled back over the whole region, every stop in frame. - Put a card on the longest legs only; a number on every stop teaches viewers to ignore numbers. - Vary the hold motion between stops; identical holds make places feel the same. - Name each place exactly as its scene begins and its chip appears. ### Common mistakes - Listing stops from memory, not travel order, so the camera leaps back across the country. List the journey first, in order, and build from that list. - Claiming the line is the road you drove. The camera flies the shortest path; a line joins stops, but roads are not traced. - Giving every stop equal time and the same hold, flattening the journey. Stayed-in places deserve longer scenes; pass-throughs deserve a brief landing. - Ignoring Checks and publishing repeats and tiny default circles. Both are the most common route flaws, and both take a minute to fix. - Adding a card, prop, sticker and line to every scene until the map disappears. One clear overlay idea per scene is plenty. ### Best format Landscape 16:9 for YouTube trip diaries and longer journeys; vertical 9:16 for a one-minute recap on Shorts, Reels and TikTok. Those are the only two formats, there is no 1:1, so choose before you generate and keep a series in one shape. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Does it draw a line along my route? A: Yes, with a limit. Lines draw themselves on between stops, and a prop can travel up to 12 places. But the camera flies the shortest path and does not trace roads, so present the line as stops joined in order. Q: Can I include places that are not on the map as a named place? A: Yes. For a point without an outline, such as a campsite or viewpoint, draw a circle of a chosen radius. Checks flags circle-only places so the radius is deliberate. Q: How many stops can one video have? A: Up to 60 scenes in one project. Most watchable recaps use six to fifteen stops; beyond that, split the journey into episodes. Q: Which camera moves suit a journey? A: Each scene has its own camera: pitch to 85 degrees, field of view 15 to 90 degrees, flight time and a bezier path. Holds include orbit, push-in, pull-out, drift, tilts, sweep and still. Q: Can I narrate it in my own voice? A: Yes. Upload an MP3 or WAV recording, or use the built-in WaveNet voices, 48 across 13 language variants, free with no key. Narration and captions are never plan-limited. Q: Can I schedule a route video to my channels? A: A saved export can go to Buffer, queued or at an exact time, to several channels at once. Free cannot use Buffer; it is Pro and Studio only, trial included. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Geography and country videos URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/geography-and-country-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover Geography channels live on one question: where is it, and this guide shows you how to answer it on screen with Mapflyover. You will make country explainers, comparisons and quiz videos where the real outline of a country, region or city is drawn over satellite imagery, the camera dives from the globe to the exact place as its name is spoken, and one clear number, population, area, capital or highest point, appears as a card when it is mentioned. The outlines are the shapes in use today, the right tool for current geography: where a country sits, what borders it, how big it really is. You will choose the format first, write one fact per place, check every outline, add narration, captions and fills, preview, and export. By the end you will know how to keep a comparison honest at one scale, how to run a quiz without giving the answer away early, and which limits matter, including current outlines only and no historical borders. ### How do I make a geography or country map video? Write one fact per place and build one scene per country, region or city, checking each current OpenStreetMap outline and using a country code for ambiguous names. Add free narration, word-highlighted captions timed from the narration, a timed location chip and a stat card for the scene's single number, with highlights for up to 12 extra places in one scene for comparisons. Export as MP4 in vertical 9:16 for quick facts and quizzes or landscape 16:9 for longer explainers, choosing the format before you generate. ### Why a map works for this - A viewer remembers a shape far longer than a list of facts. Hearing that a country is large is forgettable; watching its outline fill a frame beside a neighbour they know fixes its size and position in memory. A moving map sticks in a way a narrated list never does. - Real outlines mean the country in your video matches the one in an atlas and on the viewer own phone. Mapflyover draws current OpenStreetMap boundaries over satellite imagery, frames the whole outline automatically, and lets you switch a ranked candidate in one tap. A wrong shape costs a geography channel its credibility instantly. - Stat cards put the numbers on screen exactly when you say them, so eye and ear receive the same fact together. A population or border count appearing as a timed card over the outline is easier to absorb than a paragraph of narration, and sound-off viewers following word-by-word captions get the same lesson. ### Steps 1. Choose the format first: 9:16 or 16:9: Pick the frame before the countries, because Mapflyover exports exactly two formats. Landscape 16:9 suits longer explainers and comparisons on YouTube, where neighbours can sit side by side and wide countries keep their shape. Vertical 9:16 suits quick facts, quizzes and single-country Shorts, framed tighter with larger cards. The Country profile template is 9:16 and the Comparison template is 16:9. Decide in the project or Create with AI dialog at the start; changing your mind later means rebuilding framing, card positions and fills by hand. Note the format in the project name if the channel runs both shapes. Wide countries especially punish the wrong choice. 2. Write the prompt or script, one fact per place: With built-in Create with AI, describe the video in a sentence or two, naming the question, the places and their order; you get three AI-built videos per account, so spend them on repeatable formats. Or write the script yourself, up to 20,000 characters, and script-to-video makes one scene per place, keeping your exact wording into captions. An agent over MCP can build scenes but cannot export. Either way, hold the discipline: one fact per scene. A country gets its area, or its border count, or its highest point, said once, shown once, then the camera moves on. Save other facts for the next video in the series. 3. Add the places and check every outline match: Add one scene per country, region or city, in narration order. Give the country code for anything confusable, a region sharing a name with a city or a name used in several countries, because search returns ranked candidates and a specific name gets the right one first. Check each outline: switch candidate in one tap if it is wrong, draw a circle for a place with no outline, or import your own GeoJSON shape. Projects hold up to 60 scenes, and the studio frames the whole outline automatically unless you set a zoom by hand. Use a circle or highlight for a landmark inside a country scene. 4. Fix the Checks panel: repeats and circle-only places: Clear Checks before styling. Geography projects have a repeat trap: a continent or region scene directly before the country inside it, or the same country twice because the script names it in both question and answer. In a quiz that return may be the point; keep it and say so, otherwise merge. Circle-only places appear when a site or island has no OpenStreetMap footprint: set the radius deliberately, or retry with a more specific name and country code. Also clear any gaps or overlaps Checks reports. Treat Checks as part of the writing, not an afterthought. Also merge any scene that exists only to repeat the opening question over the same outline. 5. Add narration and let captions set the timing: Choose a voice for the series and keep it. Built-in Google WaveNet voices are free, no key needed, 48 voices across 13 language variants including Brazilian Portuguese. Or upload your own recording as MP3 or WAV; captions for it use Groq Whisper, free from the studio key up to 60 minutes a month, then your own free Groq key in Settings. Captions are timed word by word, every timing hand-editable, with SRT export. Let those timings drive the scenes so the camera arrives as a name is spoken, and pause a beat before revealing a quiz answer. Reuse the same scenes for a second-language version rather than rebuilding. 6. Add geography overlays: fills, cards, chips and highlights: Overlays here make comparison visible. Place fills can be solid, gradient, pattern, picture, video, text or stat, with reveal animations, and a fill can stay on after the camera leaves, so the first country stays coloured while you fly to the next. Highlight up to 12 extra places in one scene, ideal for showing every neighbour at once. Use stat cards for the scene single short number, such as 54M, focus cards, a distinct second card type, for a short note, and the timed location chip with its flag to label every arrival. Animated titles, including count-up numbers, carry the question and the answer. Simplify overlays if a small shape is not obvious at phone size. 7. Set the map style and soundtrack for the whole project: Choose one of the ten map looks and hold it across the series. Satellite is the default and the only look needing a free Mapbox token, added once, for export. Dark and Light make fills and choropleth data maps stand out; Topographic and Shaded relief show why a border follows a range or a river; Ocean suits island topics. The Historic look is only an aged-paper style: outlines are current boundaries only, never historical borders. Data maps and racing bars come from CSV import, up to eight datasets. Soundtrack is your own uploads only, up to eight tracks, ducking under narration; there is no stock library. Decide the series soundtrack once and reuse it across episodes. 8. Preview, export, and share with Buffer on a paid plan: Preview start to finish with sound on, watching for three failures: a card appearing before its number is spoken, a fill left on from a previous country confusing the current one, and an outline framed too tightly to recognise. Fix timings by hand, then export the MP4, rendered in your browser. Free exports two short videos a month at 720p, enough to test a format. A saved export can go to Buffer, queued or at an exact time to several channels, but the Free plan cannot use Buffer; it is Pro and Studio only, with the paid trial counting as Pro. Keep the project, so corrections are a small edit, not a rebuild. ### Worked example: the five largest countries in Africa, as a landscape explainer Take a concrete production: a landscape explainer just under three minutes answering which five African countries are largest, and how much bigger the biggest is than the fifth. It opens with a globe intro diving to the continent, then works from fifth largest to largest, one scene per country, one fact only: its area, on a stat card in short form. As each country arrives, the previous ones keep their fills, so by the end all five shapes sit coloured on one map at one scale, and the ranking becomes something viewers can simply see. The location chip labels each arrival with its flag, and no other overlays are used. The script was written by hand, so wording stayed exact in the captions, and narration uses one built-in WaveNet voice kept for the series. Two problems appeared in Checks and were fixed before styling: one country name matched a same-named region first, corrected with the country code and switching the ranked candidate, and an introductory capital scene came back circle-only, replaced with the country outline the segment was actually about. The map stays on Satellite, and one uploaded track sits under the voice, ducking automatically. At three minutes this sits beyond the Free 90-second limit, so it is a Pro production: 1080p, no mark, one of 30 monthly exports, afterwards queued in Buffer for the channel regular slot. The same script cut to the largest country alone, under 90 seconds and reframed vertical, works as the promoting Short and fits Free. That pairing is the repeatable pattern. ### Video ideas - The five largest countries in Africa, flown smallest to largest - Countries that border the most others, with every neighbour highlighted - Landlocked countries explained, one region at a time - Island nations that are also countries, framed on their main landmass - Where a famous river starts, what it passes and where it ends - Five capitals viewers place in the wrong country, as a quiz ### A simple scene outline 1. Hook: a question about a place, shown from space 2. Context: the continent or neighbourhood, neighbours visible 3. Scenes: one country each, one fact each, one card each 4. Comparison: key countries filled together at one scale 5. Payoff: the answer plainly, all featured countries shown once more ### Tips - Open on the globe, then dive to the first country; it sets scale and continent at once. - Keep numbers short on cards, such as 54M; save full figures for narration. - Check framing on island nations; they are framed on their main landmass so shapes read clearly. - Leave a fill on during a comparison, so both shapes are coloured at the verdict. - In a quiz, ask over a wide shot, pause, then fly in as the answer appears. ### Common mistakes - Putting three or four facts in one scene so nothing is remembered. One fact per place, on one card, as it is spoken. - Trusting the first outline match. A shared name can pull the wrong candidate; check every match and use country codes for ambiguous names. - Presenting the Historic style as historical geography. Outlines are current only; import an old border yourself and say so if needed. - Comparing countries at different zooms, which quietly lies about size. Finish with both shapes together at one scale, fills on. - Writing long numbers digit by digit on cards. Shorten to 54M on screen; keep precision for narration or the description. ### Best format Vertical 9:16 for quick facts, country profiles and quizzes on Shorts, Reels and TikTok; landscape 16:9 for longer explainers and side-by-side comparisons on YouTube. Those are the only two formats, there is no 1:1, so choose before you generate. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Are the borders always correct? A: Outlines come from OpenStreetMap, ranked so the right place is chosen first. Wrong match? Switch candidates in one tap, draw a circle, or import your own GeoJSON shape. Q: Does it show disputed borders? A: It shows boundary data as it is in OpenStreetMap. For a specific representation, import your own outline and say which representation you are showing. Q: Can it show historical borders? A: Not automatically. Outlines are current only, and the Historic look is an aged-paper style. Import your own historical outline as a GeoJSON shape if needed. Q: Can I make a quiz video? A: Yes. Read the clue over a wide shot, pause, then fly to the answer as chip and card appear. Captions keep sound-off viewers playing along. Q: Can I compare two countries fairly? A: Yes. Frame each consistently, use fills that stay on after the camera leaves, and finish with both shapes at one scale. Up to 12 extra places can be highlighted in one scene. Q: Is the video really 3D? A: An angled camera, tilting to 85 degrees and able to orbit, flies over real imagery, with optional terrain relief. It is not modelled 3D buildings. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Top 10 and countdown videos URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/top-10-and-countdown-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover A countdown works because viewers stay to see number one. When every entry is a place, a map makes each step land harder: the camera flies to number five, the real outline appears on satellite imagery, the rank shows in a card, and the journey continues. With Mapflyover you will be able to make that video end to end, without filming anything. You will choose the format first, build one scene per entry, put the rank and its key figure in a stat card, add narration and word-timed captions, style the map once for the whole project, preview the full run, and export an MP4. Make a tight five-entry countdown for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, or a fuller ten-entry ranking for YouTube, using the same steady structure for every entry, so the list stays easy to follow from the first entry to the winner. That structure is the whole skill, and this guide walks through it in order. ### How do I make a top 10 countdown map video? Write the list from last to first, with one sentence and one figure per entry, then build one scene per place in countdown order and check each outline in the Checks panel. Put the rank and its key figure in a stat card in the same position for every entry, add free narration with word-highlighted captions, and finish with a wide view that can highlight up to 12 places together. Export as MP4 in vertical 9:16, where five entries suit a short, or landscape 16:9 for a ten-entry YouTube ranking. ### Why a map works for this - A ranking is an argument, and a map shows the evidence. When you say one lake is larger than another, the outline on real satellite imagery lets viewers see the size and shape themselves instead of taking your word for it. That proof separates a map countdown from a list read over stock footage. - Each entry arrives with a flight, so the screen keeps changing even though the structure stays the same. The camera rises, travels and lands, the new outline is drawn, and the next rank appears. That repeated rhythm is easy to follow, even with the sound off, and gives viewers a reason to wait for number one. - A countdown series needs a repeatable format, and a map supplies one. Same opening wide view, same card position, same caption style, same flight into each place: only the entries change. Once one episode works, the next list follows the same pattern instead of starting from a blank page each week. ### Steps 1. Choose the format first: 9:16 or 16:9: Decide where this countdown will live before you build anything. Choose vertical 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, or landscape 16:9 for YouTube. Those are the only two formats: there is no 1:1 export. Format shapes every later choice, from how many entries fit to where cards can sit. Five entries suits a Short, because each entry needs time to land and be read. Ten entries suits landscape, where each place can have a longer scene. You can start from the Top list template, which is 9:16, or build a fresh project. Picking format first avoids rebuilding later. Do it before the prompt, not after. 2. Write the list from last to first: Write the countdown in reverse: the weakest entry first, the strongest last, so the video builds towards number one. Give every entry one sentence and one figure worth showing. Build either way: use the built-in Create with AI and describe the video in a sentence or two, naming the list, the order and each figure, which uses one of the 3 AI-built videos per account; or paste a script of up to 20,000 characters and get one scene per place, with your exact wording kept into the captions. Your own AI agent, connected through MCP, can also build scenes, but cannot export. 3. Add one place per entry and check each outline: Add each entry as its own scene, in countdown order. Mapflyover finds the real OpenStreetMap outline for the country, city, park, lake or landmark you name, and frames the whole outline automatically unless you set a zoom by hand. Give a country code for any name that could be confused with another place. If the first match is wrong, switch to another ranked candidate in one tap. For a place with no outline, such as a viewpoint or small waterfall, draw a circle of a chosen radius, or import your own GeoJSON shape. A project can hold up to 60 scenes, far more than a countdown needs. 4. Fix the Checks panel before polishing: Open Checks and clear what it reports before styling a single scene. Checks flags gaps and overlaps in timing, missing outlines, and circle-only places, so you find structural problems while they are cheap to fix. Merge any repeated location unless the camera is deliberately meant to fly away and come back. For a circle-only entry, try a more specific name and country code, pick another candidate, or set the radius deliberately rather than leaving a default you have not judged. This matters more in a countdown than in most formats: viewers compare entries against each other, so one wrong outline undermines the whole ranking. 5. Add narration, then word-timed captions: Narration carries a countdown: the spoken rank tells viewers where they are in the list. Use the built-in Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, free with no key needed, or upload your own recording as MP3 or WAV. Say the rank and place together, in the same phrasing every time, and keep entry sentences close in length so none feels rushed. Captions are timed from the narration word by word, with every timing hand-editable. Pick one of the 7 presets, such as Karaoke, Pop box, One word or Minimal, and set size, colours, highlight and position once, identically for every entry. Own recordings are captioned via Groq Whisper, free from the studio key up to 60 minutes a month. 6. Put the rank in a stat card: The stat card is where the ranking lives: use it for the rank and the figure that justifies it, such as number 3 with a short label, or a value like 12.4M with what it measures. Stat cards are timed, per scene, with project-wide defaults, so set position and sizes once and every entry looks consistent. Do not confuse stat cards with focus cards, a separate type for a second point in the same scene. A timed location chip can show the place name with its country flag. Multi-place highlights, up to 12 extra places in one scene, suit a closing scene showing all entries together. 7. Set map style and soundtrack project-wide: Choose one of the 10 map looks: Satellite, Dark, Light, Streets, Topographic, Shaded relief, Ocean, National Geographic, Historic or Blueprint. Satellite is the default and suits most rankings; Dark makes bright fills and cards stand out. Only satellite exports need a free Mapbox public token, added once; the other nine need none. Vary the camera hold between entries, such as orbit, push-in, pull-out, drift or sweep, and tilt up to 85 degrees for a 3D flyover feel over real imagery, with optional terrain relief. Soundtrack means your own uploads only: up to 8 tracks, with fades, looping, volume and ducking under narration. There is no stock music library. 8. Preview, export, then Buffer on paid plans: Preview the complete countdown start to finish with sound on. Check that each flight lands as its rank is spoken, no card covers the outline it describes, and the rhythm stays steady to number one. Then export the MP4. Free exports are 720p, up to 90 seconds, with a small Mapflyover mark; Pro is 1080p up to 5 minutes; Studio up to 4K and 15 minutes. A saved export can then go to Buffer, queued or scheduled for an exact time, on several channels at once. Plainly: the Free plan cannot use Buffer; Pro and Studio can, and the paid trial counts as Pro. ### Worked example: five largest lakes, as a vertical countdown This is an example production, not a real customer story. Start a vertical 9:16 project and write the list in reverse, from the fifth largest lake to the first, with one sentence and one area figure per entry. Build the scenes from that script so each lake becomes one scene in countdown order, then open each scene and confirm the outline found is the lake you meant. Where a match is a town or region with the same name, switch the candidate match, or add the country code and search again. It is a good first project. Run Checks and clear the flags before styling; in a draft like this, expect at least one ambiguous or circle-only match to need attention. Add narration with a built-in voice, saying the rank and lake name together for each entry, then set Karaoke captions low in the frame. Put each rank and area in a stat card in the same position for all five scenes, choose the Satellite look, and add one soundtrack track from your own uploads, ducked under the narration. Preview the whole video, checking that each card appears as its rank is spoken and that number one gets the longest hold, with a slow orbit. Export at 9:16: 1080p on Pro, or 720p up to 90 seconds with a small mark on Free, which still fits a five-entry Short. On Pro or Studio, send the export to Buffer and queue it for your next slot. The finished piece runs just under a minute. ### Video ideas - Ten biggest cities in one country, ranked by a stated figure - Five waterfalls worth finding, from smallest drop to largest - The largest lakes in the world, counted down to number one - Five volcanoes you can find on a map - The most visited national parks in a country - The smallest countries in the world, in reverse order - Ten islands ranked by area, shown together at the end - The highest peaks on one continent, one scene each ### A simple scene outline 1. Hook: what is being ranked, and by what measure, over a wide view 2. Entries five to two, or ten to two: one scene, one flight, one card each 3. Number one: a slightly longer scene and the clearest card 4. Close: pull back to show the entries together; ask what to rank next ### Tips - Keep every entry close to the same length. If number seven gets twenty seconds and number two gets four, viewers feel the list is uneven. - Say the rank out loud as its stat card appears. Spoken number, card and landing flight together make an entry feel counted. - Use short numbers on cards, such as 54M, and give the exact figure in the narration. A card must be readable in two seconds. - End on a wide view showing entries together, using multi-place highlights: the comparison the list was building towards, in one frame. - State what you are ranking by in the opening line. Area, population and visitors produce different winners. ### Common mistakes - Building in the wrong format and trying to fix it later. Card positions and caption widths are set for the frame you chose first. - Giving entries uneven lengths. One long entry in the middle breaks the steady rhythm that makes a countdown easy to follow. - Putting a paragraph on the stat card. The card carries the rank and one figure; explanation belongs in the narration. - Skipping Checks, so a wrong outline reaches the export and undermines the ranking viewers are asked to trust. - Changing card style or caption preset between entries. A series then looks like several different videos stitched together. ### Best format Vertical 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, where five entries fits under a minute. Landscape 16:9 for YouTube, where ten entries have room. Choose before you build. ### Frequently asked questions Q: How many entries should a countdown have? A: Five suits Shorts, Reels and TikTok, under about a minute. Ten suits landscape YouTube, with longer scenes. A project holds up to 60 scenes, so pacing is the real limit. Q: Can I reorder entries after building the video? A: Yes. Scenes can be reordered in the editor and the camera schedule updates. Then check narration and cards: spoken rank and card rank must still match their scene. Q: Where does the rank go: narration, card or caption? A: All three. Say it in the narration, show it with its key figure in a timed stat card, and let captions carry the spoken words for sound-off viewers. Q: Does a countdown work for lists that are not places? A: It is built for places with an outline or a point on the map. For a list with no geography in it, a map is usually the wrong visual. Q: Can I show all entries together at the end? A: Yes. Multi-place highlights show up to 12 extra places in one scene, alongside that scene main place: ideal for a closing comparison frame. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## History and documentary videos URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/history-and-documentary-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover Most history questions have a where attached: where did it begin, how far did it spread, which places were involved, and why there? With Mapflyover you will be able to make a documentary map video that answers those questions on screen instead of in description alone. You will choose the format, write the story in order of place, build one scene per location, mark exact sites with a circle or your own imported shape, narrate it in your own voice or a built-in one, and add word-timed captions and date cards before exporting an MP4. One limit shapes the whole approach, and this guide states it plainly from the start: the outlines are today's boundaries. They show where something happened, on the ground as it lies now. They are not historical borders, and you should never present them as if they were. The result teaches geography and story at the same time. ### How do I make a history or documentary map video? Write the story in order of place, with one scene per location, and mark an exact site with a circle or an imported GeoJSON shape if it has no outline. The outlines shown are today's borders from OpenStreetMap, not historical ones, and the Historic map look is only an aged-paper style. Add narration (free with built-in voices, or your own recording), word-highlighted captions and date or fact cards, then export as MP4 in landscape 16:9 for documentary work or vertical 9:16 for a single-event explainer. ### Why a map works for this - Locating an event removes the need to explain geography in words. Instead of describing that a port sat at a river mouth, or that an army had to cross a range, you fly there and viewers see the coast, river and ground themselves. Real imagery and terrain relief often explain an outcome better than another paragraph. - History narration is dense: names, dates and places arrive quickly, and viewers lose the thread when they cannot place what they hear. A steady flight from place to place, with a location chip naming each stop and captions timed word by word, gives the ear something to hold on to. - A map keeps a documentary honest about distance and scale. Two places that sound close in a script may be a hard journey apart; a region that sounds small may cover a huge area. Flying the real distance, then pulling back, lets viewers judge the movement of armies, traders and ideas for themselves. ### Steps 1. Choose the format first: landscape or vertical: Pick the frame before you write a line. Landscape 16:9 suits documentary and long-form YouTube, where scenes need room and time. Vertical 9:16 suits a single-event explainer for Shorts, Reels or TikTok. Those are the only two formats; there is no 1:1 export. The History explainer template is 16:9 and is a sensible starting point for documentary work. Format decides how much of a region is visible at once, where the chip and cards can sit without covering the ground that matters, and how long a scene can run before the frame feels crowded. Do not revisit it mid-build. Decide it once. 2. Write the story in order of place: Group your sentences by location, so each scene has one clear place and one clear point. A script that jumps between places inside a paragraph produces confused scenes, so reorder the writing geographically before you build. Paste a script of up to 20,000 characters and get one scene per place, with your exact wording kept into the captions. Or describe the video to the built-in Create with AI in a sentence or two, naming the places in order; that uses one of the 3 AI-built videos per account. An MCP-connected agent can build scenes, but cannot export. Exporting is yours. 3. Add the places, precisely and honestly: Add one scene per place: the town, port, battlefield area, crossing or region the narration names. Mapflyover finds the real OpenStreetMap outline and frames it automatically unless you set a zoom by hand. Understand what you are showing: that outline is the boundary in use today. It locates the event; it does not show how a border looked at the time. If a match is wrong, switch the ranked candidate in one tap, or add a country code. For an exact site with no outline, draw a circle of a chosen radius. For a genuine historical outline, import your own GeoJSON shape: the only way to show one. 4. Fix the Checks panel before narration: Run Checks early and clear it. Checks reports gaps and overlaps in timing, missing outlines, and circle-only places. In a history piece, each flag deserves a deliberate decision, not a quick dismissal. A circle-only place may be exactly right for a battlefield or lost settlement, provided you chose the radius on purpose. A repeated location may be right too, if the story returns to a capital at a later date: keep it, but make the return clear in the script. Never export with flags you have not read: a wrong match puts the event in entirely the wrong place. Read every one. 5. Add narration, then word-timed captions: Documentary work usually suits your own voice: upload a recording as MP3 or WAV and time the scenes to it. Or use the built-in Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, free with no key needed. Read dates and place names slowly, use one pronunciation for a place every time it returns, and give a new location a beat before naming what happened there, so the camera lands first. Captions are timed from the narration word by word, with every timing hand-editable, so fix any name or date that highlights early or late. Choose one of the 7 presets, such as Cinema or Minimal for documentary tone. Own recordings are captioned via Groq Whisper, free from the studio key up to 60 minutes a month. 6. Add date cards, a chip, and careful detail: Use stat cards for facts a viewer must not miss: a date, a distance marched, a population, a number of ships. Stat cards are timed and per scene, with project-wide defaults for position and size. Focus cards are a separate card type, useful for a second point in the same scene, such as a consequence; do not treat them as extra stat cards. The location chip, with a country flag and project-wide settings, names each place as the camera arrives. Props such as a ship or castle, and lines drawn in map perspective, can mark a movement. Use them sparingly. 7. Choose a map style honestly; soundtrack is yours: There are 10 map looks, including Satellite, Topographic, Shaded relief, National Geographic and Historic. Be clear about Historic: it is an aged-paper style, nothing more. It changes no boundary to a historical one. Satellite, topographic and shaded relief often serve history best, because terrain is evidence; terrain relief makes hills and mountains rise in depth, and the camera tilts up to 85 degrees and can orbit, giving a 3D flyover over real imagery, not modelled buildings. Only satellite exports need a free Mapbox public token, added once. Music is your own uploads only: up to 8 tracks, with fades, looping and ducking under narration. There is no stock library. 8. Preview, export, then Buffer on paid plans: Preview start to finish with sound on, watching for three things: the camera lands before the place is named, the captions match the words, and nothing on screen claims a historical border you are not showing. Then export the MP4. Free exports are 720p, up to 90 seconds, with a small Mapflyover mark, suiting a single-event vertical explainer. Pro is 1080p up to 5 minutes; Studio up to 4K and 15 minutes, where most documentary work sits. A saved export can go to Buffer, queued or scheduled for an exact time, on several channels. The Free plan cannot use Buffer; Pro and Studio can, and the paid trial counts as Pro. ### Worked example: an expedition route as a landscape documentary short This is an example production, not a real customer story. Start a landscape 16:9 project, from the History explainer template if you like, and write the script in order of place: the port of departure, two stops along the coast, the inland turning point, and the return. Paste the script so each place becomes one scene, keeping your exact wording for the captions. In the opening narration line, state that the outlines shown are the boundaries of today, used to locate the journey, not the borders of the period. Keep each scene to one event or one leg of the journey. Open each scene and check the place matched. The port and towns should have real outlines; the inland camp probably will not, so mark it with a circle of a radius you can defend, and say camp area in the narration rather than naming a precise spot. Run Checks and resolve each flag deliberately. Record your own narration as an MP3, set Cinema captions, and check every place name and date in the word timings by hand. Add a stat card for the date at each stop and the total distance at the close, keep the location chip in one position, and choose the Topographic look so the pass the expedition crossed is visible. Preview the full piece, then export: at just over three minutes this sits in Pro at 1080p, or Studio for up to 4K. On Pro or Studio, send the saved export to Buffer for your usual publishing time. ### Video ideas - The route of a famous expedition, in travel order - Where a river civilisation began, and where it spread - The places involved in a historic treaty, and why each was there - The spread of an invention or crop across regions - Ten sites along an ancient trade route, one card each - A single battle explained through the ground it was fought over - The ports of one trading era, along a coastline - How a railway or canal changed the places it connected ### A simple scene outline 1. Set the scene: the region from above, period and question stated, boundaries noted as today's 2. The story place by place: one scene per location, a date card where it matters 3. The turning point: where the outcome was decided, given the longest scene 4. Close: pull back to the whole region and state the consequence ### Tips - Say early in the video that the boundaries on screen are today's. One honest sentence protects your credibility. - Use stat cards for dates and figures, not opinions. Cards read as facts; keep interpretation in the narration, where you can qualify it. - Slow down: longer scenes and gentle holds, such as a slow orbit or drift, let viewers read the terrain while listening. - Name your source where a figure is disputed. Saying which source you used is part of the work. - Prefer a modest circle over a confident outline you cannot support. A circle says roughly here, which is often the truth. ### Common mistakes - Presenting today's outline as a historical border. The most damaging error in this format, and the easiest to avoid with one sentence. - Letting the Historic map look imply period accuracy. It is only an aged-paper style; it changes no boundary and no geography. - Cramming several places into one scene because they sit in one paragraph. Group the script by place first. - Marking an exact site with false precision. If you only know roughly where it happened, an honest circle is the truthful choice. - Putting disputed figures on stat cards without a source. Cards read as settled facts, so qualify contested numbers in the narration. - Rushing the pacing. Fast cuts make documentary narration hard to follow and the terrain impossible to read. ### Best format Landscape 16:9 for documentary channels and longer explainers, where scenes need time and the frame needs width for terrain. Vertical 9:16 for a single event in under a minute. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Can it show historical borders? A: Not automatically. Outlines are current boundaries only, from OpenStreetMap: they show where something happened, not how borders looked then. To show one, import your own outline as a GeoJSON shape and check its accuracy yourself. Q: Does the Historic map style make the map period-accurate? A: No. Historic is only an aged-paper appearance. It changes styling, not boundaries, place names or geography. Everything underneath is still the modern map. Q: Is the imagery real? A: Yes: real map and satellite imagery, with optional terrain relief. The camera tilts up to 85 degrees and can orbit, giving a 3D flyover, not modelled buildings or a period landscape. Q: How do I mark a battlefield or site with no outline? A: Draw a circle of a chosen radius around the point, or import your own shape if you have one you trust. A circle is often more honest for a debated site. Q: Can I cite sources on screen? A: Yes. Use a stat card for a source or figure, a focus card for a second point, or name the source in the narration, where longer qualifications belong. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Real estate videos URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/real-estate-and-property-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover Buyers ask the same question about every listing: where exactly is it, and what is around it? A map flyover answers that in seconds, in a way a paragraph of suburb description cannot. With Mapflyover you will be able to make that video yourself. You will choose the format, plan a zoom path from region to suburb to the site itself, mark the property with a circle or your own shape, add the facts you supply as stat and focus cards, narrate the location story, add captions, and style it consistently so every listing looks like yours, before previewing and exporting an MP4 for the listing page and for social. Everything in the video is information you provide and check: the product does not fetch live listing data, and there is no MLS or portal integration, so nothing on screen is data you have not supplied yourself. The guide below follows that order, step by step. ### How do I make a real estate or property map video? Build the video in stages from region to suburb to the property itself, using the suburb's current OpenStreetMap outline and marking a single property, which usually has no outline, with a circle or your own imported shape. Add the facts you supply yourself as stat and focus cards — Mapflyover does not fetch live listing data, distances or prices — plus free narration and word-highlighted captions for sound-off viewing. Export as MP4 in landscape 16:9 for a listing page or vertical 9:16 for Reels, Shorts and TikTok. ### Why a map works for this - Location is the first thing a buyer judges, and a map shows it faster than text. In one flight a viewer learns which suburb the property sits in, what borders it, how the streets run, and whether the coast, the centre or open space is the dominant neighbour: the context buyers actually compare. - Zooming in stages, from region to suburb to site, mirrors how buyers think. They start with an area they know, narrow to a suburb they are weighing up, then to a specific street. Landing in that order means the property arrives already understood, not as an unexplained point. It works every time. - A consistent map opening makes a run of listings look like one agency: same starting framing, same chip position, same card style, same captions. Buyers recognise your videos before they read a word. Those settings can be set project-wide, then reused as your pattern for each property, with no extra design work. ### Steps 1. Choose the format first: 16:9 or 9:16: Decide where the video will be watched before building it. Landscape 16:9 suits a listing page, a presentation and YouTube. Vertical 9:16 suits Reels, Shorts and TikTok, where most property scrolling happens. Those are the only two formats; there is no 1:1 export. The frame changes how wide a suburb view can be and where cards can sit without covering the streets you are showing, so do not build in one shape and crop to the other later. Many agents build the landscape version for the listing first, then make a shorter vertical cut with fewer scenes for social. Always. 2. Write the location story as a script or prompt: Write four beats: region, suburb, immediate surroundings, then the property itself. Paste a script and get one scene per place, with your exact wording kept into the captions, or describe the video to the built-in Create with AI in a sentence or two, naming the suburb, site and points of interest in order; that uses one of the 3 AI-built videos per account. An agent connected through MCP can also build scenes, but cannot export. Nothing here pulls in listing data: price, features and distances are the ones you write. Check every figure as you write it, before you build. 3. Add region, suburb, then the property point: Add a scene for the city or region, one for the suburb, and one for the property itself. Suburbs and districts have real OpenStreetMap outlines; if a match is wrong, switch the ranked candidate in one tap or add a country code. A single property usually has no outline, so mark it with a circle around the point, with an honest radius, or import your own GeoJSON shape. The studio frames outlines automatically unless you set a zoom by hand. Up to 12 extra highlighted places in one scene suit showing a station, schools and shops together. Judge it for the buyer. 4. Fix Checks, especially circle-only places: Open Checks before adding any polish. It flags gaps and overlaps in timing, missing outlines and circle-only places. In property work, the circle-only flag is expected at the property scene: a house or development site normally has no public outline. Treat the flag as a prompt to choose deliberately, not an error to clear blindly. Confirm the point is in the right street, set the radius on purpose, and check you have not circled the neighbouring block. Also confirm the suburb scene matched the suburb you meant, not a same-named place elsewhere. A wrong location in a listing video is not a small mistake. 5. Add narration, then captions for sound-off viewing: Narrate the location story, not the internal features: photos and listing text already do that job. Cover where it is and what surrounds it. Upload your own recording as MP3 or WAV, or use the built-in Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, free with no key needed. Captions are timed from the narration word by word, with every timing hand-editable if a name lands wrong. Choose one of the 7 presets, such as Pop box or Minimal, and keep captions low, clear of the property circle. Own recordings are captioned via Groq Whisper, free from the studio key up to 60 minutes a month. Keep the script short: the property scene is the point. 6. Add stat and focus cards for facts you supply: This is where your local knowledge goes on screen. Use a stat card for one clear fact per scene, such as the suburb with its distance to the city centre, or the walk to a station, as you checked it. These are facts you supply: Mapflyover does not look up distances, travel times, school zones or prices, and it has no feed of live listing data. Focus cards are a separate card type, for a second point, such as a park. The location chip names each place with its country flag. You can also place your own uploaded pictures or a short clip in a scene, and add a line drawn between property and a point of interest. 7. Set one map style; soundtrack is your own uploads: Choose from the 10 map looks. Satellite shows roofs, streets, trees and the true shape of the blocks, usually what a buyer wants to judge. Streets and Light read cleanly for a development plan; Topographic helps where landform appeals. Only satellite exports need a free Mapbox public token, added once; the other nine need none. Use a gentle camera: a slow push-in or short orbit, tilting up to 85 degrees for a 3D flyover feel. That is an angled camera over real imagery with optional terrain relief, not modelled 3D buildings, so never call it a 3D model of the property. Soundtrack is your own uploads only: up to 8 tracks, with fades and ducking. There is no stock music library. 8. Preview, export, then Buffer on paid plans: Preview start to finish with sound on, checking: does the region make sense, does the suburb outline match the name on the chip, and does the final scene land on the right property? Then export the MP4. Free exports are 720p, up to 90 seconds, with a small Mapflyover mark. Pro is 1080p up to 5 minutes with no mark; Studio up to 4K and 15 minutes, also with no mark. A saved export can go to Buffer, queued or scheduled for an exact time, on several channels at once. The Free plan cannot use Buffer; Pro and Studio can, and the paid trial counts as Pro. ### Worked example: a suburb listing video, landscape with a vertical cut This is an example production, not a real customer story, and it uses no real listing. Start a landscape 16:9 project and write a four-beat script: the city region, the suburb, the streets around the property, and the property itself. Build one scene per beat. The region and suburb scenes should find real outlines; check the suburb match carefully, because a same-named suburb in another state is the classic error. The property scene will have no outline, so draw a circle around the point and set a radius covering the site and its immediate street, no more. It is deliberately ordinary. Run Checks, confirm the circle-only flag is the deliberate choice you made, and fix the suburb match if flagged as ambiguous. Record a short narration yourself, or use a built-in voice, keeping it to location: how the suburb sits relative to the centre, what is within walking distance, and what the street feels like. Set Minimal captions low in the frame. Add a stat card on the suburb scene for a distance to the centre you have checked yourself, a focus card for the nearby park, and highlights for the station and shopping street. Choose the Satellite look so buyers can judge blocks and trees themselves. Preview the whole video, export the landscape MP4 for the listing page, then build a shorter vertical version from the suburb and property scenes only. On Pro or Studio, send that vertical export to Buffer and schedule it for the morning the listing goes live. Nothing is rushed. ### Video ideas - A suburb guide introducing a listing, city to suburb to street - A new development in context, suburb around it - A holiday rental with beaches and town centre highlighted - A commercial site and its transport links on cards - A relocation guide to one city, suburb by suburb - A rural property where the circle and land tell the story - A weekly new-listing vertical, same style - A back-on-market repost leading with location, not photos ### A simple scene outline 1. Region or city: why this area is in demand, in one line 2. Suburb: outline, character, and facts you supply as cards 3. Surroundings: station, schools, shops or beach that matter, highlighted together 4. The property: circle or imported shape, key fact card, closing line on enquiring ### Tips - Spend the longest scene on the property itself. If they run long, viewers leave before the point arrives. - Choose a circle radius matching how people describe the area. Too tight hides the setting; too wide claims land you are not selling. - Only put a distance or time on a card if you checked it yourself. A wrong walk time is remembered. - Lead the vertical version with suburb and property, not the region. On social you have about a second to establish where this is. - Never call the flyover a 3D model, virtual tour or street-level imagery. It is an angled camera over real satellite imagery. ### Common mistakes - Claiming the video pulls in live listing data or connects to a portal or MLS. Every figure is text you supply. - Circling the wrong property or block. Check the point street by street before export; a location error here is a serious one. - Putting unchecked distances and times on stat cards. A card reads as a promise, so publish only figures you verified yourself. - Describing the result as a 3D model, virtual tour or street-level imagery. It is an angled flyover over real satellite imagery. - Spending most of the runtime on region and suburb, so the property appears for seconds at the end. - Restyling every listing differently. Inconsistent chips and cards make separate listings look like separate businesses. ### Best format Landscape 16:9 for listing pages, presentations and YouTube, where the wider frame shows a suburb properly. Vertical 9:16 for Reels, Shorts and TikTok, built shorter. Keep social versions under a minute. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Can I outline one specific property? A: Usually with a circle: a single house or site normally has no public outline, so draw a circle of a chosen radius around the point. Or import a GeoJSON plot boundary. Q: Does Mapflyover fetch listing data, prices or distances for me? A: No. There is no live listing feed and no MLS or portal integration. Prices, features and distances are facts you supply yourself, and you must check them. Q: Where do distance cards, such as distance to a station, come from? A: From you. A stat card shows a value and label you enter. The product does not calculate routes or travel times. Q: Does it show street level or the inside of the property? A: No. It is satellite imagery from above, camera tilting up to 85 degrees with optional terrain relief. No modelled buildings, street view or interiors. Q: Can I add my own photos, logo or a short clip? A: Yes. Upload pictures, GIFs, short videos and audio to your asset library, up to 200 assets and 1 GB total, and place them in scenes. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## News and explainer videos URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/news-and-explainer-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover Most news stories become clearer the moment a viewer can place them. A place name in a headline means little until you see where it sits, what borders it, how far it is from the capital, and what lies in its path. A short flyover does that work before the first fact is spoken: the camera drops from a wide view to the exact place, its real outline appears on satellite imagery, and the story starts with its geography already understood. Mapflyover is built for that pace. You write a tight script, name the places, and the scenes, framing and camera moves are built for you. There are no live news data feeds in the product, and nothing updates itself. You bring the reporting, the sources and the wording. The tool gives you an accurate, current map, timed captions and fact cards, so a same-day explainer looks deliberate rather than rushed. ### How do I make a news explainer map video? Write a tight script with one idea per place, then build one scene for each place the story visits, checking every current OpenStreetMap outline and importing your own shape if a story needs a specific border representation. Add free narration, word-highlighted captions timed from it, and one stat card per scene for a figure you have checked from your own sources, as there are no live news or data feeds in the product. Export as MP4 in landscape 16:9 for web and YouTube or vertical 9:16 for the social cut. ### Why a map works for this - Location is often the missing piece of context. A viewer who has seen a storm track, a border or a trade route on a map follows the rest of the story with far less effort, because each new fact has somewhere to land. That is true for local stories as much as for world news. - A map separates places that names alone confuse. Two towns with similar names, a region inside a larger country, or an island far from the mainland all become obvious once their outlines and distances are on screen together. That clarity matters most when a story moves quickly between several places. - The same map structure works for almost any story. Open wide, fly to each place in turn, put one figure on a card, then pull back for what happens next. Viewers learn the format once and follow every later video faster. It also makes an update easy, because only the affected scene changes. ### Steps 1. Choose the format before anything else: Decide where this video will run before you build it, because Mapflyover exports only two shapes: vertical 9:16 and landscape 16:9, and there is no 1:1 option. Choose 16:9 for a website, a broadcast package or a long YouTube explainer, and 9:16 for the social cut. If you need both, plan two projects rather than trying to reshape one later, since card positions, caption width and framing are set for the shape you chose. A news explainer usually works best in 16:9 first, where a wider region fits comfortably in one frame. Write the choice into your brief before you open the editor. 2. Write the script, or prompt the AI to draft it: Keep the script tight: one idea per place, the key figure spoken once, and no long lists of numbers in the narration. You can paste a script of up to 20,000 characters and get one scene per place, with your exact wording kept into the captions. Or use Create with AI, describe the story in a sentence or two, and let the built-in Gemini studio build a first draft; you get three AI-built videos per account. You can also connect your own AI agent through MCP to build scenes, but agents cannot export. Whichever route you take, you verify the facts; the tool does not check your reporting. 3. Build the scenes from the places in the story: Add one scene for each place the narration names, in the order the story visits them, up to 60 scenes in a project. Outlines come from current OpenStreetMap data, and matches are ranked, so the intended place is normally chosen first. Add a country code for any name that could be confused with somewhere else. For a site with no outline, such as a port, a crossing or a damaged neighbourhood, draw a circle of a chosen radius instead. Where a story involves several nearby places at once, one scene can highlight up to 12 extra places, so a region and its key towns can appear together. 4. Fix everything the Checks panel flags: Open the Checks panel before you style anything. It warns about gaps and overlaps in timing, missing outlines and circle-only places. Work through each warning: pick a better ranked match, add a country code, set a sensible circle radius, or merge a repeated scene. Accuracy matters most on borders. Outlines show boundaries as they are in OpenStreetMap, including how disputed borders are represented there. If your story needs a specific representation, import your own GeoJSON shape for that scene and say so in the narration. Never publish a border you have not looked at closely. Keep a note of any shape you imported yourself. 5. Add narration, then time the captions to it: Generate narration with the built-in Google WaveNet voices: 48 voices across 13 language variants, free and with no key needed. Or upload your own recording as MP3 or WAV if the piece needs your own voice. Captions are then timed from the narration word by word. For your own recording, captions use Groq Whisper, free from the studio key up to 60 minutes a month, after which you add your own free Groq key in Settings. Every word timing is hand-editable, and you can export an SRT file. Fix any misheard place name before export; in news, a wrong caption is a factual error. 6. Add overlays that carry the facts of the story: Use overlays for the numbers and labels the narration should not have to spell out. Stat cards carry one timed figure per scene, such as a wind speed, a population or a distance. Focus cards are a separate card type, suited to a single point you want the viewer to hold on to, such as a warning or a key date. The location chip adds a timed place name with its country flag, set once for the whole project. Animated titles handle the headline and section labels. Keep each card to one short fact, check it against your source, and keep the map itself visible underneath. 7. Set the map style and add your own soundtrack: Pick one of the ten map looks for the whole project. Streets or Light usually read best for news, because labels and boundaries stay clear; Satellite suits storms, fires and terrain, and Dark makes bright fills and data stand out. Only the satellite look needs a free Mapbox public token, added once; the other nine need none. If the story is data-led, you can also build a choropleth map or a racing bar chart from a CSV, up to eight datasets. For sound, there is no stock music library. You add up to eight tracks from your own uploaded audio only, with start times, fades, looping and volume, ducked under narration by 12 dB by default. 8. Preview the whole piece, export it, then share it: Preview the full video once, start to finish, with sound on. Check that each scene lands as its place is named, and that no card or caption covers a border you are discussing. Export as MP4, rendered in your browser. Free gives 720p and up to 90 seconds, Pro gives 1080p and up to five minutes, and Studio gives up to 4K and up to 15 minutes. After export, a saved video can be sent to Buffer, queued for the next free slot or scheduled for an exact time. Be plain about the limit: the Free plan cannot use Buffer; Pro and Studio can, and the paid trial counts as Pro. ### Example production: a storm landfall explainer, built the same day This is an example production, not a real broadcast. The brief is a 75-second landscape explainer on a storm approaching a coastline, needed for a website and a YouTube channel on the day the forecast firms up. The script is written first, in five short sections: where the storm is now, where it is expected to make landfall, which towns sit in the projected path, what figure matters most, and what happens next. Each section becomes one scene, so the video is planned before anything is built. That planning is what makes the deadline comfortable. In the editor, the coastal region opens the video, then the camera flies to the landfall town, where a circle marks the immediate area because a storm zone has no official outline. Three towns in the path are highlighted together in one scene, each with the location chip on. A stat card carries the forecast wind speed, timed to appear as the narration says it. The Streets look keeps labels readable, captions use the Cinema preset low in the frame, and a short piece of the producer's own uploaded audio sits under the voice, ducked automatically. The Checks panel flags one overlap where two scenes compete for the same seconds; the timing is fixed before export. The piece is previewed in full, exported at 1080p on Pro, and sent to Buffer for the channel's next slot. Nothing in it came from a live feed: every figure was typed in from the producer's own sources and checked again before it is shared. ### Video ideas - Where a storm made landfall and what is in its path - A border dispute and the places on each side - Where a new trade route or pipeline runs - A major event and its host cities on one map - A supply chain from source to port to shop - An election explained region by region - A river flood and the towns downstream - Why one strait matters to world shipping ### A simple scene outline 1. Headline over a wide view of the whole area 2. Each key place in turn, one scene and one figure each 3. A wider view showing how the places connect 4. Closing line on what to watch next ### Tips - Name your sources in the narration or on a card. - Keep scenes short and even in length, so the pace feels like news rather than a lecture. - Check every outline at full size; a wrong match is easy to miss in a small preview. - Write the headline title so it makes sense with the sound off. - Save the project after export, so you can correct and re-export if a figure changes. - Use the Historic map look only as an aged-paper style; it does not show historical borders. ### Common mistakes - Publishing the first AI draft without checking its outlines. - Treating a disputed border as settled, instead of checking how OpenStreetMap shows it or importing your own shape. - Putting three or four figures on one card, so none can be read in time. - Letting captions cover the place name or the border the narration is talking about. - Claiming the map shows live conditions, when it only shows what you put in. - Building in the wrong shape and trying to crop a landscape video into a vertical one afterwards. ### Best format Landscape 16:9 for web, broadcast and longer YouTube explainers, where a whole region fits in frame. Vertical 9:16 for the social cut. Choose the shape at the start; there is no square export. ### Frequently asked questions Q: How fast can I make a news explainer? A: A short script and a list of places is enough for a first cut the same day. Scenes, framing and camera moves are built from the place names, so most of your time goes on checking facts and outlines. Q: Does Mapflyover pull in live news or weather data? A: No. There are no live news, weather or data feeds in the product. You add the figures and wording from your own sources, as stat cards, titles or narration, and you check them before publishing. Q: How are disputed borders shown? A: Boundaries are shown as they are in current OpenStreetMap data. If a story needs a specific representation, import your own GeoJSON outline and explain the choice in the narration. Q: Are the outlines current or historical? A: Current only. Outlines reflect boundaries in use today. The Historic map look is only an aged-paper style; it does not change any border to a historical one. Q: Can an AI agent build the video for me? A: Yes. Connect Claude or ChatGPT through MCP, or use Create with AI. An agent can build and save scenes, with the previous scenes kept as a backup, but it cannot export; a person always exports in the editor. Q: Is it suitable for sensitive topics? A: You control the wording, places and figures. Check outlines, sources and captions before publishing, and import your own shape where a standard outline would mislead. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Education videos URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/education-and-classroom-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover Lessons that involve place are hard to teach from a still diagram. Students have to hold scale, direction and neighbours in their heads at the same time, and a flat map gives them no help with any of it. A flyover does the work out loud: the camera starts wide, travels to the place being taught, and settles while the outline appears, so the class sees where something is before they are asked to remember facts about it. Mapflyover lets you build that kind of lesson in a browser, free to build and preview, and export it as an MP4 you can play in class or add to a course. You bring the teaching. The product has no set syllabus, no certifications and no classroom management tools. What it does give you is clear outlines, readable captions, fact cards and narration in several languages, arranged one idea per scene, for any subject where place matters. ### How do I make a map video for the classroom? Turn the lesson into a script with one idea per place (up to 20,000 characters), then build one scene per place in lesson order, checking outlines in the Checks panel before adding polish. Add free narration in a built-in voice or your own recording, large word-highlighted captions for reading along, and stat cards for facts to remember and focus cards for a scene's main point or definition. Export as an MP4 in landscape 16:9 for a projector or course, or vertical 9:16 for short revision and quiz clips on phones. ### Why a map works for this - Movement makes location stick. When students watch the camera travel from a continent down to one river, city or park, they remember the journey as well as the place, which is why a short flyover often teaches more than a labelled diagram shown for the same time. It also gives revision a head start. - One idea per scene matches how a lesson is already structured. An objective, one place, one fact, then a question. Short scenes give you natural pause points, so you can stop the video, ask the class, and carry on without hunting for the right moment. Students know what each section is for. - Readable text matters more in a classroom than anywhere else. Word-by-word captions, large fact cards and a clear location chip stay legible on a projector at the back of a room, and they also help students who read along, revise later, or watch with the sound off. It helps students copying notes as well. ### Steps 1. Choose the format for where the lesson will be watched: Pick the shape first, because Mapflyover exports only vertical 9:16 and landscape 16:9, with no square option. For a projector, a whiteboard or a course video, choose landscape 16:9: the wider frame fits a region and its neighbours, and text has room to stay large. Keep vertical 9:16 for short revision clips students will watch on phones, in or out of class. Decide before you build, because caption width, card positions and framing are set for the shape you chose. A common pattern is one landscape lesson video per topic, plus a vertical quiz clip made separately from the same script for revision. 2. Turn the lesson into a script, one idea per place: Write the narration as you would say it in class: short sentences, the place named early in each section, and one teaching point per place. You can paste a script of up to 20,000 characters and get one scene per place, with your exact wording kept into the captions, which matters when definitions must be worded precisely. Or describe the lesson to Create with AI and edit the draft it builds; you have three AI-built videos per account. Read the result aloud once; hard-to-say sentences are hard to follow. Keep every technical term consistent from the first scene to the last. 3. Build one scene for each place you teach: Add a scene per place, up to 60 in a project, in the order the lesson visits them. Outlines are current OpenStreetMap boundaries, with ranked matches you can switch in one tap, a circle for a place with no outline, or your own imported GeoJSON shape when a lesson needs a specific area. Set project-wide defaults for the location chip and cards so every scene looks like part of the same lesson. For a place with several features, one scene can highlight up to 12 extra places. Give each scene a short title as well, so you can find it again quickly in the timeline. 4. Fix the Checks panel before you add polish: Run through the Checks panel as soon as the scenes exist. It flags gaps, overlaps, missing outlines and circle-only places. In a classroom those are not small faults: a missing outline means the class is looking at the wrong shape, and an overlap means two facts arrive at once. Switch any wrong match, add a country code to an ambiguous name, set a sensible radius on a circle, and merge scenes that repeat a place for no reason. A clean Checks panel is the point where the lesson is structurally sound. Tell the class about any circle-only place when it appears. 5. Add narration in a voice and language your class can follow: Use the built-in Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, free with no key needed, or upload your own recording as MP3 or WAV if students respond better to your own voice. Narration and captions are never limited by plan. The language variants include Brazilian Portuguese with four voices, which helps for language classes and for classes taught in more than one language; you can build the same lesson again with a different voice rather than re-recording yourself. Keep the pace steady and leave a beat after each key term and definition. That pause is where the learning happens. 6. Set captions for reading along, not just for sound-off viewing: Captions are timed from the narration word by word, and every timing can be edited by hand. Choose from seven presets, including Karaoke, Karaoke fill, One word, Minimal and Cinema, and set the font, size, colours, outline and shadow from the eight available fonts and style controls. For a projector, favour a larger size, a strong outline or plate, and fewer words per page, so a line can be read easily. Set the caption position and width as percentages and check them on the largest scene, where a wide outline can push text towards the action. An SRT file can also be exported. 7. Use stat cards and focus cards for the facts to remember: Stat cards and focus cards are two different tools, and a lesson uses both. A stat card carries a timed number or short fact, such as an area, a population or a height, with project-wide defaults for position and size so every card looks the same. A focus card is a separate card type for the one point a scene is really about, such as a definition or the answer to the opening question. Add animated titles for the lesson title and section headings. Keep cards short, put the number in the card rather than only in the narration, and leave the outline unobstructed. 8. Style it once, preview it at classroom size, then export and share: Set the map look and any soundtrack. Light, Streets or Topographic usually read best in a bright room; Satellite suits landforms and coasts, and terrain relief can be added so hills and mountains rise in depth. There are no modelled 3D buildings. Soundtrack music comes only from your own uploads, up to eight tracks, ducked under narration by 12 dB by default. Preview the whole video at classroom size. Export the MP4 and share the file through the channels you already use. There are no student accounts or LMS features in Mapflyover. Buffer is separate: the Free plan cannot use Buffer; Pro and Studio can. ### Example production: a rivers lesson with a quiz at the end This is an example production, written to show the workflow, not a report of a real class. The lesson teaches the main rivers of one country to a class watching on a projector, in landscape. The script is written as the teacher would speak it: an opening question about where the country's water flows, then one section per river, each naming the source, the direction of flow and one town on its banks. Each section becomes a scene, and the river's region is outlined while a line traces the shared border where the script mentions one. Stat cards carry the one number per river the class is asked to remember, in the same position and size throughout, set once as project-wide defaults. A focus card carries the definition of a tributary in the scene where the word is first used. Captions use a large Karaoke style with a dark plate, three words per page, positioned low so they never cover the outlines. Narration is generated rather than recorded, so the teacher can rebuild the lesson with a corrected fact without booking recording time. The last four scenes turn the lesson into a quiz. Each one reads a clue with no place name in the caption, holds on a wide view for a few seconds, then flies to the answer as its card appears. The Checks panel flags one circle-only place, a small reservoir with no outline, and its radius is set by hand. The finished video is previewed, exported as an MP4, and played from the teacher's own laptop in class. ### Video ideas - The continents and oceans, one scene each - Climate zones across one region, compared side by side - The river system of a country, source to mouth - A quiz: five clues, five flights to the answers - Where volcanoes and earthquakes happen, and why there - The countries that border one sea - A capital city and the regions around it - How a trade route linked its stopping places ### A simple scene outline 1. Opening question or objective over a wide map 2. One scene per place, each with one fact card 3. A short quiz or recap that revisits the places quickly 4. Closing wide view with the objective answered ### Tips - Test readability on the screen your class actually uses; text that looks fine on a laptop can vanish on a projector. - Build a quiz version of a lesson: read the clue, pause, then let the camera fly to the answer and reveal the card. - Keep the same card style, chip position and map look across a whole topic. - Say each place name as its outline appears, and repeat it once at the end of the scene. - Keep a scene long enough for a question; you can always pause the video. - Save the project, not just the MP4, so you can update one fact next term. ### Common mistakes - Cramming three facts into one scene, so students remember none. - Using small, thin captions that cannot be read from the back of the room. - Letting a card or title cover the outline the lesson is actually about. - Assuming the video matches a set syllabus. It teaches what you put in it; checking fit is your job. - Describing current outlines as historical borders in a history lesson, instead of importing your own shape and saying so. - Recording narration too fast, with no pause after key terms. ### Best format Landscape 16:9 for lessons played on a projector, whiteboard or in a course. Vertical 9:16 for short revision and quiz clips watched on phones. Choose at the start; there is no square export. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Is Mapflyover aligned to my curriculum or syllabus? A: No. There is no curriculum alignment, certification or set scheme of work in the product. You write the script and choose the facts, so you decide how a video fits your lessons. Q: Are there student accounts or an LMS integration? A: No. There are no student accounts, class lists or LMS features. You build the video in your own account, export an MP4, and share that file through your usual channels. Q: Can I make a quiz video? A: Yes. Read or write the clue in one scene, hold on a wide view, then fly to the answer place in the next scene and reveal its stat or focus card as the camera arrives. Q: Can I narrate a lesson in another language? A: Yes. Built-in narration offers 48 Google WaveNet voices across 13 language variants, including Brazilian Portuguese with four voices, at no cost and with no key. Or upload your own recording and have captions timed from it. Q: Does it work on a school laptop? A: It runs in a browser, and building and previewing are free. Export is rendered in the browser as an MP4, so a modern computer handles it best. Q: Can I use historical borders in a history lesson? A: Outlines are current boundaries from OpenStreetMap, not historical ones. For an older border, import your own GeoJSON shape for that scene and tell students it is the one you supplied. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Shorts, Reels and TikTok URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/youtube-shorts-tiktok-reels-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover Short-form feeds give you about a second. The video has to be moving, the subject has to be obvious, and the captions have to be readable on a phone. A vertical map flyover suits that well: the camera is already travelling in the first frame, the outline of a place tells viewers what the video is about before a word is read, and a question in the first line gives them a reason to stay for the answer. Mapflyover exports vertical 9:16 directly, times captions word by word, and lets you set the same global styles on every video, so a daily series looks like one channel. This guide covers the repeatable version: one format, chosen once, then produced the same way each time. What it gives you is a workflow short enough to keep up, on a free plan that fits these platforms, without any filming at all. None of it needs a camera. ### How do I make a map video for YouTube Shorts, TikTok or Reels? Start in vertical 9:16 only, write the first line as a question or claim that names the place, then build a short series with one scene and one fact per place. Set free narration and word-highlighted captions with few words per page so they stay readable on a phone, keep the location chip and one stat card per place in the same position every video, and use only your own uploaded audio (up to 8 tracks) if you want music, as there is no stock library. Export as a vertical MP4 — Free exports are 720p for up to 90 seconds with the Mapflyover mark, and Buffer scheduling is Pro and Studio only. ### Why a map works for this - Motion in the first second is the whole game in a feed, and a flyover starts moving immediately. There is no static title card to skip past, because the opening frame is already a camera dropping towards a place the viewer is trying to identify. The place is the thumbnail and the opening shot at once. - A place outline is a hook that needs no explanation. A recognisable country, island or lake shape makes people pause to check whether they know it, and the ones they do not know are the ones they watch to the end to find out. A shape also travels across languages, which matters in a global feed. - The format repeats cleanly. Five places, one fact each, the same caption style and the same card position, video after video. Viewers learn the shape of the series, and you can produce it quickly because most decisions are already made. It also makes a back catalogue look like one body of work. ### Steps 1. Choose vertical 9:16, and only vertical, for these platforms: Start every Shorts, Reels and TikTok project in vertical 9:16. Mapflyover exports 9:16 and 16:9 only, with no square option, and the shape is set when the project is built, so do not build in landscape and crop later. Vertical framing means one place at a time, large text, and nothing important near the edges. The free plan already fits this use case, with exports up to 90 seconds at 720p, which is enough for a Short and for most Reels and TikTok map videos. If a topic needs five minutes, it is a landscape YouTube video, not a short. 2. Write the hook and the script before you build anything: Write the first line as a question or a claim the rest of the video answers, and put the place name in it. Then write one short sentence per place, each with a single fact. You can paste a script and get one scene per place with your exact wording kept into the captions, use Create with AI from a sentence or two, or connect an AI agent through MCP to build the scenes. Keep the total under 90 seconds of speech on the free plan. Read it aloud and time it; cutting a place early is easier than trimming a finished video. 3. Build the scenes as a series, not as separate videos: Use the templates made for vertical series as your starting structure: Top list 9:16 for rankings, Travel guide 9:16 for a place-by-place guide, and Country profile 9:16 for a single-country short. Add one scene per place, up to 60 in a project, though a short rarely needs more than six. Outlines are current OpenStreetMap boundaries with ranked matches you can switch in one tap, plus a circle for a place with no outline. Add a movement prop or a sticker only where it earns its place; in a narrow frame, one ship, plane or flag is plenty in each scene. 4. Fix the Checks panel, because shorts have no room for errors: Open Checks before you style the video. It flags gaps, overlaps, missing outlines and circle-only places. In a 40-second video, a two-second gap is a hole, and an overlap means two facts fight at once. Fix each one: switch a wrong match, add a country code to an ambiguous name, set the circle radius, or merge a repeated scene. Also check the running time here. If the scenes add up past your target, cut the weakest place now rather than speeding up the narration later. A clean, even set of scenes is what makes a short feel quick instead of rushed. 5. Record or generate a fast, clear narration: Narration carries a short, because many viewers decide from the voice and captions together. Generate it with the built-in Google WaveNet voices, 48 voices across 13 language variants, free with no key, or upload your own MP3 or WAV recording if your own voice is part of the channel. Narration is never limited by plan. Keep sentences short and front-load the place name in each scene. Pause briefly between places. If you record yourself, record in a quiet room and keep the pace brisk but not hurried. Re-record any line where a place name is unclear, because there is no time to repeat it. 6. Set captions to be read on a phone: Captions are timed from the narration word by word, and their settings are where vertical videos succeed or fail. Choose a preset such as Karaoke, Karaoke fill, Pop box or One word, then set the details yourself: caption position as a percentage down the frame, width as a percentage of the frame, and the number of words shown per page. On a phone, keep the width generous but inside the safe middle of the frame, keep words per page low at around three or four, and use a size, weight, outline or plate that survives bright imagery. Check the captions over the busiest scene, not the quietest. 7. Add small overlays, set global styles, and use your own audio: Keep overlays small and consistent. The location chip, with its country flag, can sit in the same corner in every video, set once with project-wide position, size and colours. Use one stat card per place for the fact, and a focus card for the answer or the key point. Set map look, card sizes and title style globally rather than per scene, so episode twenty looks like episode one. For music, there is no stock library: add up to eight tracks from your own uploaded audio only, with fades and looping, ducked under narration by 12 dB by default on every track. 8. Preview in vertical, export, then queue it in Buffer: Preview the whole video in its vertical shape at phone size, and watch for text near the edges and cards covering the outline. Export the MP4: free gives 720p up to 90 seconds with a small Mapflyover mark, Pro gives 1080p up to five minutes and 30 exports a month with no mark, and Studio gives up to 4K, 15 minutes and 300 exports a month. After export, send the saved video to Buffer to queue for the next free slot or an exact time. State it plainly: the Free plan cannot use Buffer; Pro and Studio can, and the paid trial counts as Pro. ### Example production: a five-place smallest countries short This is an example production, not a report of a real channel or its results. The video is a 45-second vertical short counting five small countries, built from the Top list 9:16 template. The script opens with the question in the first line, then gives each country one sentence and one number. It is pasted in rather than generated, so the wording the creator wrote is exactly what the captions show, and the total spoken length is checked against the 90-second free limit before anything is exported. Each country is one scene, opening wide enough to show its neighbours before the camera settles, because a very small country outlined on its own gives no sense of scale. The location chip sits top left in every scene, set once for the project. A stat card carries the area for each country, in the same size and position throughout. Captions use Karaoke fill, positioned at 82 percent down the frame with a width of 86 percent and three words per page, checked against the brightest satellite scene so the text stays readable. A short track from the creator's own uploads runs underneath, ducked under the voice. Checks flags one overlap where the third scene starts before the second has finished speaking; the timing is corrected and the video is previewed at phone size. It is exported at 720p on the free plan, and the same structure is kept for the next videos in the series. ### Video ideas - Where is that? Five places in 40 seconds - The smallest countries in the world, one per scene - Five places that look unreal on satellite imagery - A new place every day, in the same format - Which of these two places is bigger? - One country, five facts, under a minute - The islands of one sea, in size order - A capital city and the places around it ### A simple scene outline 1. Hook: the question, with the map already moving 2. Four or five quick scenes, one fact each 3. The answer, with its card held a moment longer 4. A short reason to follow for the next place ### Tips - Put the question in the first spoken line and in the opening title, so muted viewers get it too. - Keep three to four words per caption page; more than that is hard to read at phone size. - End on the answer or the best place, not on a logo or a long call to action. - Reuse the same global styles, template and card positions for a whole series, and change the topic instead of the design. - Batch your work: write five scripts in one sitting, then build them in another. - Check the first and last frames; their join is part of a looping video. ### Common mistakes - Building in landscape and cropping to vertical afterwards, which cuts off cards, chips and captions set for the wide frame. - Using caption text that is too small, too wide or set too low, so platform buttons and captions cover it. - Putting the place name late in each scene, so mid-scroll viewers never learn what they are watching. - Changing the map look, card style and title design in every video, so a series never becomes recognisable. - Adding background music you assume is built in. There is no stock library; soundtrack audio is your own uploads only. - Trying to fit ten places into 60 seconds, so no fact has time to land. ### Best format Vertical 9:16 only for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok, usually under 60 seconds and never over 90 seconds on the free plan. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Which resolution should I export for Shorts, Reels and TikTok? A: 720p on the free plan suits a video up to 90 seconds on all three platforms. Pro exports up to 1080p and Studio adds up to 4K. Readable captions matter more than resolution. Q: Can I post directly from Mapflyover? A: You export the MP4 first, then send the saved video to Buffer from the editor, queued or scheduled for an exact time. Buffer is a Pro and Studio feature; the Free plan cannot use it. Q: How many shorts can I make each month? A: The free plan includes two exports a month, Pro includes 30 and Studio includes 300. Building and previewing are always free, so you can prepare a batch and export as your plan allows. Q: Which templates fit a vertical series? A: Three of the six templates are vertical: Top list 9:16, Travel guide 9:16 and Country profile 9:16. With global styles for map look, chip, cards and captions, they keep a series consistent. Q: Can I reuse the same video on all three platforms? A: Yes. One vertical 9:16 MP4 works for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok. Export once and upload or schedule the same file in each place, adjusting only each platform's caption text and hashtags. Q: Do I need my own music for shorts? A: If you want music, yes. There is no stock library. Add up to eight tracks from your own uploaded audio, ducked under narration by 12 dB by default. Many map shorts work with narration alone. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Business and local marketing URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/business-and-local-marketing-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover If your business works across a suburb, a city or several towns, you spend a lot of time explaining where you operate. A list of suburbs, a static map image or a block of addresses rarely makes the footprint clear. A map video does it in seconds. You fly from your home base to each branch, depot or service area in turn, outline each place on real satellite imagery, and add a short card for the fact that matters there. A viewer understands your coverage and your nearest location without pausing to study a map. Mapflyover builds that video from your script: one scene per place, current outlines found for you, narration and timed captions, and one consistent style across every scene. Use it on your website, in a social post, or in an update when you open somewhere new, extend a delivery area or add a team in another town. This guide follows the real workflow, from choosing the format first to exporting and scheduling. ### How do I make a map video for a local business? Add one scene per branch, depot or service area in geographic order, home base first, using current OpenStreetMap outlines for towns and suburbs and a circle or imported shape for an area with no official outline. Add free narration, word-highlighted captions, a location chip and one stat card per scene for a fact such as year opened or suburbs covered, setting styles globally so every location looks like the same business. Export as MP4 in landscape 16:9 for your website or vertical 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, and note that Buffer scheduling is Pro and Studio only. ### Why a map works for this - A footprint is hard to judge from a list. When the camera flies from one location to the next over real imagery, distance and coverage become obvious. A viewer can see that two branches serve different sides of a city, or that a delivery area ends at a river, without reading a paragraph of explanation first. - Each location gets its own moment. Instead of one crowded map with pins competing for attention, you give one place at a time a clear outline, a location chip and one fact. That suits openings and service changes, and a viewer who only cares about one town can wait for that scene and get a clear answer. - Consistency builds recognition. When every video uses the same global styles, caption look, chip position and map look, your updates read as a series rather than one-off posts. Set the style once, reuse your own logo and badge assets from your library, and keep the same opening shape for the next announcement. ### Steps 1. Choose format first: 9:16 or 16:9: Decide where the video will mainly be watched before you build anything. Choose landscape 16:9 for a website page or YouTube, and vertical 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok. Those are the only two formats; there is no 1:1 export. The format is set when the project is built, especially with Create with AI, so changing your mind later means rebuilding the layout. Cards, captions and the location chip are placed for the frame you choose, and vertical frames need shorter text and larger type. Pick one main format per video, build for it properly, and make a separate version later if you need the other shape. 2. Write the prompt or script: You can describe the video in a sentence or two with the built-in Create with AI, which uses the studio Gemini and returns an editable project, or paste a longer script of up to 20,000 characters for script-to-video. Keep one scene per place and keep the wording plain: name the business, say what it does, then cover each location or area in a sensible geographic order. Put any number you want on screen near the place it belongs to, such as year opened or suburbs covered. The exact script wording is kept into the captions, so fix names and suburb spellings now, before narration is made. 3. Add locations and service areas: Add one scene for each branch, office, depot or service area, up to 60 scenes in one project. For a town or suburb, use the ranked OpenStreetMap outline match, and switch the match in one tap if the first result is not the place you meant. For a service or delivery area with no official outline, draw a circle with a radius that honestly matches how you describe the area, or import your own GeoJSON shape if you have one. You can highlight up to 12 extra places in one scene, which helps for suburbs served from one base. Order matters: home base first, then outward. 4. Fix the Checks panel: Open Checks before you polish anything. It flags gaps, overlaps, missing outlines and circle-only places, and those warnings matter for business videos because a wrong outline can mean a wrong coverage claim. Merge repeated scenes unless you mean to fly away and return. For a circle-only place, try a more specific name with a state or country, choose another candidate match, or set the radius deliberately and label it as an area rather than an exact boundary. Outlines are current boundaries only. Do not present a drawn circle or imported shape as an official boundary, and do not claim a suburb is covered if the scene does not include it. 5. Add narration: Add narration so the video works with sound on and still explains itself with sound off. Use the built-in Google WaveNet voices: 48 voices across 13 language variants, free and with no key needed. Or upload your own recording as MP3 or WAV if you want your own voice. Read area names exactly as local customers say them, and check any voice that mispronounces a suburb before you export. Keep the voice track short and specific. A location video does not need a full sales pitch; it needs the place, what is offered there, and how someone takes the next step outside the video itself. 6. Set captions and business overlays: Captions are timed from the narration word by word. Pick one of the 7 presets, such as Karaoke, Pop box or Minimal, then set font, size, colour, position and words per page so suburb names stay readable in the chosen frame. You can export an SRT file and hand-edit every word timing if needed. For overlays, use stat cards for one timed fact per scene, and focus cards as a separate, distinct card type when you need a second kind of callout. Add the location chip with its flag, with position and size set project-wide. Upload your own logo or badge to your asset library and reuse it. 7. Set global style, map look and soundtrack: Set style globally so every location looks like the same business. Project-wide defaults control stat cards and the location chip, and global styles keep fills, animated titles and captions consistent across scenes. Choose one of the 10 map looks: Satellite is the default and shows real imagery, while Dark, Light, Streets or Topographic can be clearer for dense service areas. Only satellite exports need a free Mapbox public token added once; the other nine need none. For sound, add up to 8 tracks from your own uploaded audio only. There is no stock music library. Set fades, looping and volume, with ducking under narration at -12 dB by default. 8. Preview, export and schedule with Buffer: Preview the whole video start to finish with sound on. Check that each outline matches the spoken place, captions do not cover cards or chips, and no scene claims coverage you do not offer. Export is MP4, rendered in the browser. Building and previewing are always free; your plan limits apply at export. A saved export can be sent to Buffer, queued for the next free slot, set for an exact time, or sent to several channels at once, which suits a regular posting rhythm. Plan for this plainly: the Free plan cannot use Buffer. Pro and Studio can, and the paid trial counts as Pro. ### Example production: a cleaning business adds a second service area This is an example production, not a real customer story. Imagine a home cleaning business based in one suburb that adds a second team across the river. The video is vertical 9:16 for Reels and Shorts, landscape would suit a website version, and it runs to eight scenes: a globe intro, the home suburb, three suburbs served by the first team, a river crossing scene, then the two new suburbs, closing on a wide view of both areas. The script is written first, one scene per place, with the new area named last. Each scene uses the ranked outline for the suburb. The new service area has no single official outline covering both suburbs, so it is shown as two suburb outlines plus a circle only where a radius is genuinely how the business describes its reach. Checks flags one repeated suburb, which is merged, and one circle-only place, which is given a more specific name. Narration uses a built-in WaveNet voice, captions use the Pop box preset, and each scene carries one stat card, such as team number or year started, plus the project-wide location chip. Style is set once globally: Satellite look, the same card position in every scene, and the business logo uploaded once to the asset library and reused as a badge asset. The soundtrack is one track from the owner uploads, ducked under the voice. After a full preview, the video is exported as MP4 and sent to Buffer for an exact morning slot on two channels. That scheduling step needs Pro or Studio; on the Free plan the same video can still be exported within its limits and posted by hand. ### Video ideas - A franchise growing city by city - A delivery service and the suburbs it covers - A tour operator and its regions - A trades business and its service areas - A charity and the towns where it works - A year in review across your offices - A new branch opening against your existing footprint ### A simple scene outline 1. Opening: home base on a wide view, with what the business does 2. Middle: one scene per branch or area, each with one fact card 3. Newest: the latest location or area extension, labelled as new 4. Close: pull back to the whole footprint and say where details are ### Tips - Show the home location first and the newest last, so growth reads in order. - Use circles for areas with no official outline, and state the radius plainly. - Keep card text short: one number and a short label beat a full sentence. - Set styles globally once, then reuse your logo assets for every update. - Name suburbs exactly as customers search for them, and check each outline match. - Make separate vertical and landscape versions rather than cropping one export. ### Common mistakes - Claiming coverage you do not offer. If a scene outlines a suburb, viewers read it as served, so check every outline. - Using a circle as if it were an official boundary. Label a radius as an area, not a border. - Restyling each scene by hand. Mixed cards, fonts and chips make locations look like separate businesses. - Putting full addresses on cards. Cards are for one short fact; keep detail on your website. - Building in one format and cropping for the other. Landscape text will be cut or unreadable vertically. - Assuming scheduling is free. Buffer is Pro and Studio only, so plan posting before you promise it. ### Best format Landscape 16:9 for your website, listing pages and YouTube; vertical 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok. Choose before you build, because layout is set for that frame. There is no 1:1 export. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Can I show a delivery or service radius? A: Yes. Draw a circle around the base location and set the radius in kilometres. Label it as your service or delivery area, not an official boundary. Q: Can I show several locations in one video? A: Yes. Use one scene per location, up to 60 scenes in a project. Order them geographically, home base first, with one outline, chip and fact card each. Q: Can I use my own logo and branding? A: Yes. Upload your logo or badge to your asset library and reuse it across scenes. Keep styles consistent with global styles and project-wide card and chip defaults. Q: Can I schedule the video to my social channels? A: A saved export can be sent to Buffer, queued, set for an exact time, or sent to several channels at once. The Free plan cannot use Buffer; Pro and Studio can. Q: Does Mapflyover post ads or report leads and analytics? A: No. There is no ad-platform integration, lead tracking or analytics. You export an MP4, post it where you choose, and judge results in your own tools. Q: Which format should a local business choose? A: Landscape 16:9 for your website and YouTube, vertical 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok. Choose before you build. There is no 1:1 export. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none. ## Nature and landmark videos URL: https://mapflyover.com/use-cases/nature-and-landmark-map-videos Last updated: 2026-10-30 · By Ali Hassan, Founder of Mapflyover Natural places are hard to explain with photographs alone. A photo shows a viewpoint, not the size of a park, the length of a river or the height of a range above the plain around it. From above, those things become clear at once. A national park outlined over its forest, a lake held by its shoreline, a volcano standing in its field: the satellite imagery is real imagery, not a simulation or a drawing, so scale and shape carry the story. Mapflyover finds the outline of the park, lake, river or peak you name, frames the camera for it, and lets you tilt the camera and add terrain relief so hills and mountains rise in depth. Add one short fact per place, a steady narration and timed captions, and a list of places becomes a calm, clear tour. This guide follows the full workflow, from format and script to checks, overlays, soundtrack, export and scheduling, with nature-specific choices at each step. ### How do I make a nature or landmark map video? Name each park, lake, peak or landmark precisely and build one scene per place, checking the ranked outline match and using a circle to mark a waterfall, viewpoint or peak that has no outline. Use a camera tilted up to 85 degrees with orbit and optional terrain relief over real satellite imagery — a 3D flyover, not modelled 3D buildings — plus free narration, word-highlighted captions and one stat card per place for area, height, depth or length. Export as MP4 in vertical 9:16 for short lists or landscape 16:9 for longer, calmer YouTube pieces. ### Why a map works for this - Scale is the point of nature content, and a map shows scale directly. Flying from a whole region down to one lake or peak shows how large a park is, how a landmark sits in its landscape, and how far a river runs, in a way no single ground photograph or title card can match. - Outlines of parks, lakes and ranges are recognisable shapes that stick in memory. When the real boundary is drawn over real satellite imagery, a viewer can later recognise that shoreline, lake edge or park shape on any other map they see, which is what makes a series of nature videos feel connected rather than random. - Terrain explains nature stories. With an angled camera up to 85 degrees and terrain relief on, a range reads as high ground, a valley as low ground and a volcano as a cone. That is a 3D flyover over real imagery, with relief for the land, not modelled 3D buildings. ### Steps 1. Choose format first: 9:16 or 16:9: Pick the frame before you build. Choose vertical 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok lists, such as five parks in under a minute, and landscape 16:9 for longer, calmer YouTube pieces where the imagery needs room to breathe. Those are the only two formats; there is no 1:1 export. The format is set when the project is built, especially with Create with AI, and card, caption and chip placement are laid out for that frame. Vertical frames suit one place at a time with large captions. Landscape suits wide ranges, long rivers and side-by-side comparisons. Decide first, then write to fit that shape. 2. Write the prompt or script: Describe the video in a sentence or two with the built-in Create with AI, or paste a script of up to 20,000 characters for script-to-video, with one scene per place. Name each place precisely: park name, lake name, peak name, plus a state or country where a name is shared by several places. Write one main idea per scene, such as area, height, depth, length or year of protection, and keep the number near the sentence it belongs to so it can become a card later. The exact script wording is kept into the captions, so fix place-name spellings and any figures before narration is generated. 3. Add places: parks, rivers, peaks and landmarks: Add one scene per place, up to 60 scenes in a project. Parks, lakes and many ranges have ranked OpenStreetMap outlines; switch the match in one tap if the first candidate is the wrong place. Rivers and long features may read better as a line that draws itself on, or as a sequence of scenes along their course. Waterfalls, viewpoints, single peaks and small landmarks often have no outline at all: for those, draw a circle of a chosen radius to mark the spot honestly. You can highlight up to 12 extra places in one scene, useful for neighbouring peaks or lakes shown together for scale. 4. Fix the Checks panel: Open Checks before you style anything. It flags gaps, overlaps, missing outlines and circle-only places, which are common in nature projects because many natural features were never given a formal outline. A circle-only result is not an error to hide; it is a prompt to choose. Try a more specific name, switch to another candidate match, import your own GeoJSON shape if you have one, or keep the circle, set its radius deliberately and say in the narration that it marks the location. Merge repeated scenes unless you intend to leave a place and return. Fixing this now prevents a wrong park boundary or a misplaced peak reaching the export. 5. Add narration: Nature pieces usually suit a steady pace. Use the built-in Google WaveNet voices: 48 voices across 13 language variants, free and with no key needed, and pick a calmer voice rather than the most energetic one. Or upload your own recording as MP3 or WAV. If you record yourself, captions for that recording use Groq Whisper, free from the studio key up to 60 minutes per month per person, then your own free Groq key added in Settings. Leave room in the script for the imagery: a short pause after naming a place lets the camera land before the fact arrives. 6. Set captions and nature overlays: Captions are timed from the narration word by word. Choose one of the 7 presets; Minimal or Cinema often suit nature better than the busiest styles, but set size, colour, outline and position so text stays readable over bright water, snow or pale desert. You can export an SRT file and hand-edit every timing. For overlays, keep them restrained: one stat card per scene for area, height, depth or length, focus cards as a separate card type only when a second callout is truly needed, and the location chip set project-wide. Stickers and props exist for flags, landmarks, animals and weather, but use few in nature scenes. 7. Set camera, map look and soundtrack: This is where nature videos earn the 3D flyover description. Set pitch from straight down towards 85 degrees, use orbit, push-in, drift, tilt-up or sweep as the hold motion, and turn on terrain relief so mountains and hills rise in depth over the real imagery. It is not modelled 3D buildings, and it should not be described that way. Choose from the 10 map looks: Satellite shows the real land, Topographic and Shaded relief suit ranges, and National Geographic suits park pieces. Only satellite exports need a free Mapbox token added once. Add up to 8 soundtrack tracks from your own uploads only; there is no stock library. Duck music under narration, -12 dB by default. 8. Preview, export and schedule with Buffer: Preview the full video with sound on. Check that each outline is the place named, relief and tilt do not hide the feature, captions stay readable over changing imagery, and no card states a figure you have not checked. Export is MP4, rendered in the browser, in the format you chose at the start. Building and previewing are always free; plan limits apply at export. A saved export can be sent to Buffer, queued for the next free slot, set for an exact time, or sent to several channels at once. The Free plan cannot use Buffer. Pro and Studio can, and the paid trial counts as Pro. ### Example production: five volcanoes in one vertical video This is an example production, not a report about a real channel. The brief is five volcanoes in 50 seconds, vertical 9:16 for Shorts and Reels. The structure is one scene per volcano plus a wide opening and a closing pull-back, seven scenes in total. Each volcano gets one line of narration and one stat card for height, so the rhythm stays even and the ranking, tallest last, gives viewers a reason to watch to the end. Three of the volcanoes return clear outlines from the ranked matches. One returns a smaller crater-area outline, which is checked and kept because the narration names the crater. One has no usable outline, so a circle marks the location and the script says the circle marks the peak rather than a boundary. Checks flags that circle-only place and one repeated region scene, which is merged. Camera settings carry the piece: pitch is tilted well off straight down, each scene uses a slow orbit as its hold motion, and terrain relief is on so each cone rises from the land around it. The map look is Satellite throughout, narration is a built-in WaveNet voice, captions use the Minimal preset low in the frame so they stay clear of the cones, and the soundtrack is a single quiet track from the maker uploads, ducked under the voice. Style, chip position and card size are set globally so all five entries match. After a full preview the video is exported as MP4. For a weekly series, the same structure would be reused with five lakes or five parks next, changing the places and figures, not the format. ### Video ideas - Five huge national parks in one country - The highest peaks of a continent, in order - Lakes that look unreal from above - Volcanoes you can find on a map - A river from source to sea - Waterfalls worth the trip, heights compared - The same park in four seasons, as a series - Islands formed by volcanoes, one origin story each ### A simple scene outline 1. Opening: the whole region from high above, theme stated in one line 2. Places: one scene per park, peak, lake or river, with one fact 3. Comparison: two places at the same scale so size is clear 4. Close: pull back to the region and leave one next-place prompt ### Tips - Use relief and a tilted camera for ranges; use a flatter view for lakes and park boundaries. - Use a small circle for waterfalls and peaks with no outline, and say it marks the spot. - Alternate wide and close scenes so viewers keep a sense of scale. - Keep overlays light: one fact card per place is usually enough. - Reuse the same structure for seasonal or series pieces, changing places, not style. - Check every height, area and depth figure before you state it. ### Common mistakes - Calling the result modelled 3D. It is an angled camera over real imagery with terrain relief, not 3D buildings. - Trusting the first outline match. Several parks, lakes and peaks share names, so check the candidate. - Putting a boundary claim on a circle. A circle marks a spot; it does not show a true edge. - Covering good imagery with cards and stickers. Nature videos lose their point when the land is hidden. - Stating heights and areas from memory. Check figures first; errors are harder to fix after export. - Using fast cuts for a calm subject. Mismatched pacing makes accurate scenes feel rushed. ### Best format Vertical 9:16 for short lists on Shorts, Reels and TikTok; landscape 16:9 for calmer, longer YouTube pieces. Choose before you build, because layout is set for that frame. There is no 1:1 export. ### Frequently asked questions Q: Can it find a specific waterfall or peak? A: Often, yes. Many peaks and waterfalls are found as named places. If no outline exists, draw a circle of a chosen radius to mark the spot. Q: Is the imagery real or a simulation? A: It is real satellite and map imagery. The camera flies over it with tilt, orbit and optional terrain relief. It is not a simulation or a modelled reconstruction. Q: Does it include 3D terrain? A: Yes, as terrain relief. With an angled camera up to 85 degrees and relief on, hills and mountains rise in depth over real imagery. It is not modelled 3D buildings. Q: Can I show a river from source to sea? A: Yes. Use scenes along the course, or a line that traces the route on the map. Give the source, major bends and the mouth their own moments. Q: Which map look suits mountains and parks? A: Satellite is the default and shows real land. Topographic and Shaded relief suit ranges. Only satellite exports need a free Mapbox token; the other nine looks need none. Q: Can I make a series, such as one park each week? A: Yes. Keep the same format, global style and card layout, changing only places and facts. Buffer scheduling needs Pro or Studio; the Free plan cannot use Buffer. Q: How much does it cost? A: Building and previewing is free, and the free plan exports two short videos a month with a Mapflyover mark. Pro or Studio (or the USD 3 trial week) removes the limits. The satellite look is exported with a free Mapbox public token that you add once; the other map looks need none.