This manual explains how to use the new "MRA Animate" feature. The "Animate" function is available for routes and for tracks. With MRA Animate you can create an animation of your route or track, and add text and photos in desired places. You can download the animation and convert it to an .mp4 file.


This manual covers the functionality for animations in routes.


Start a new animation in a route

If you want to create a new animation from a route or track, click on "Animation" in the menu bar on the left.


Then you will see the menu of "Animate", where you can adjust various things.


The relationship between "speed" and the "zoom" function

If you set the speed too high, and zoom far out on the route, the animation will go very fast. This is at the expense of the quality of the animation of the route. If you set the speed too low and zoom in too far, this can also be at the expense of the quality of the animation. The relationship between the speed of the animation and the extent to which the roadmap is zoomed in is therefore important.



Different features in the animation 

Feature - Add text


If you click on a waypoint, you can add a note. When you have done that, and click on "start animation", the text you entered as a note will appear when the red dot of the animation has arrived at that waypoint. That will look like this:



You can determine for yourself how long the text at that route point is displayed by clicking on the menu bar under "Text".



Feature - Intro and outro

You can set an intro and an outro, which will be played at the beginning and end of the animation respectively. You can also determine how long the intro and outro are on the screen.



The intro and outro are always the same and look like this when you play the animation:



Feature - Add a song

You can add a song to the animation, which will play as soon as you start the animation.


Note: The song plays only once and starts at the start of the animation. If your animation is longer than the song, the song will not replay. If your animation is shorter than the song, the song ends when the animation ends.


You can choose a number from the list, or add a number yourself. If you choose your own number, it will not be stored in your MRA account due to copyright rules. So if you share your animation, you can only choose a song from the list.



Feature - Share page

You can share the page of the animation by clicking "Social page". You will then be redirected to a new tab where the animation with your settings can be seen. You can share the link of this tab with friends and family. When they click the link, they will land on the page with your animation. That looks like this.



Look out! If the settings are not set to "Public", the page cannot be shared. So you must first change the settings to "Public" before the option to share the page appears.



Feature - Choose map layer

You can choose the map layer in which the animation is shown. You can only choose the map layers shown in the animation menu. If you choose a map layer via the toolkit functions, the map layer is automatically changed to the default map layer when you start the animation.



Feature - Record animation

You can record the animation by pressing the "Record" button.


Look out! To record the animation, your screen must be at least 1100x800 pixels. Open the browser in full screen to be able to record.



If you pressed "Record", you will see the following:



Look out! The higher you set the video quality and frame rate and resolution, the longer it will take to convert the animation to an .mp4 file. Also, the animation cannot be more than 2GB to convert to an .mp4 file. Finally, only the latest version of Google Chrome is currently supported to record the animation.


If you clicked on "Record", you will be presented with a screen asking the browser which part of the browser should be recorded. You click on "Chrome Tab".



You can then click which tab you want to share before recording. You click on the open tab of the MRA website.



Note: If you have added a song or audio to the animation, you need to click "Share Audio".


The animation is then recorded live. Once the animation has been recorded, you will see a number of new options in the menu bar. You can download the animation. This will then be downloaded in a .webm format.



You can also convert the animation to an .mp4 format. You can only convert the animation after downloading it. When you have downloaded the animation, click on "convert recording". A new tab will then open where you can upload the video and convert it to .mp4 format. Here you press "upload video".


Then upload the video in .webm format, and press "convert video".


When the conversion is complete, you can download the recording in .mp4 format.