How to Start a Map Video from a Template

Step-by-step guide

1. 1

   Find the template tray

   Open the Studio with a new project and look at the bottom of the map. The top row of the dock, Or start from a template, shows five tiles: Flight, Road trip, Breaking news location, Our offices worldwide, and The Silk Road. Hover over a tile to enlarge it and watch a preview. The dock also holds the AI Director bar and two other ways in: Animate a GPX track and Start with an empty map. The dock is only there while the project has no slides.

2. 2

   Open the full gallery

   Click See all at the top right of the tray. The Templates window lists every template as a card with a short description. Starters show their length in seconds, and guided templates show Your places instead. Type in the search box (for example wedding, road trip, history, or store) to narrow the list, or click a category: All, Travel, News, Business, History, Sport, Education, or Events. Search looks at the name, description, category, and extra keywords, and every word you type has to match. Hover over a card to preview it, then click it or its Use this button. Later, with a map already open, the same window is under the sparkle icon in the top bar, in the Templates item of the Creative Studio menu.

3. 3

   Know the two kinds of template

   The gallery holds 32 ready-made starters and six guided templates. A starter is a finished project: slides, routes, pins, and text are all in place, and it opens as your own copy that you can edit like anything else. Starters cover trips such as Route 66 road trip and Honeymoon in Bali, news maps such as Hurricane track, business maps such as Supply chain, history such as D-Day landings, sport, education, and events. A guided template (Flight, Road trip, City spotlight, Store map, Country border, and Hub & spoke) is empty until you tell it where to go, then builds the animation from your answers. Country border and Hub & spoke need a Pro plan and show a PRO tag on a free account.

4. 4

   Make a starter yours

   Click a starter and a Make it yours panel opens with a looping preview. Under it is one row per place the video is built around, with a question about it. Each row shows the example place with a small example tag. Click Change on a row, search for a place or country, and pick it; the panel moves on to the next row. The arrow icon beside a changed row puts the example back. The camera moves, routes, and pins follow whatever you choose. When you are happy, click Create my video. If you changed nothing, the button reads Open this video, and Use the example as is does the same.

5. 5

   Let a guided template build it

   Clicking a guided template opens a short form with its own preview and question, for example Where are you going? for Flight and Road trip, Which place? for City spotlight, and Which country? for Country border. Fill in the places, add stops where the form allows, and click Create my video. The Travel Story Wizard guide goes through the Flight and Road trip form step by step. Everything the template builds is ordinary slides and elements, so you can reorder, restyle, and retime them afterwards.

6. 6

   Check what happens to your current map

   If the project already has slides, opening a starter asks you to confirm with Replace your current map with the template name? and a note that you can undo it. A guided template shows a warning above its Create button: This replaces the slides and elements on your current map. Either way, Undo in the top bar brings your earlier map back. To keep your current work, save it or start a new project before you pick a template.

7. 7

   Edit, preview, and export

   A template plays once as soon as it opens. Then it is your project: click a slide in the storyboard to change its framing, click a pin or text element to restyle it, and use Play Preview to watch the result. When it looks right, click Export Video. Export needs at least two slides, so check the storyboard count first if you removed any.