Save Tour of Burned Neighborhood

Hello,

I spent the first 20 years of my life in a small rural community in Northern California. In September 2015, the small neighborhood I grew up in was literally completely destroyed by the Valley Fire.

My home that was a lush, green forest is now nothing but burnt twigs.



I was hoping that the images of my old neighborhood could be turned into a 'tour' that can be saved and passed on for posterity and for those who long to see what once was.

I am not very computer literate and I would even be willing to pay to have it accomplished.

Thanks for your time

Joslyn Neft (please google my name with Valley Fire)

Hi Joslyn,



First of all, let me express the sympathy that most of us who read your post feel for your having lost your home. I'm sure that your life will never be the same, and you will never forget what a wonderful place your home in the woods was, before it was lost.



As I reply to your post, I too, am recalling a loss, a member of the old Google Earth Community whose user name was Marko Polo. He was a fireman in Bakersfield, and he knew a great deal about fires, and could always be expected to say something intelligent about fires anywhere in the world, and about a great many other things as well. His voice disappeared not too long before Google decided to give GEC the old heave-ho, and so he never posted anything on this forum, which is a remnant of the old forum started by folks who just couldn't bear to see the old one go.

Since nobody else has replied to you post, I'll take a shot. It's difficult to guess just exactly what you want to do, but as I look at the Historical Imagery (clock with an arrow around it), the default imagery as well as most of the historical imagery are before the fire. Only the black and white imagery shown in HI appears to be post disaster. The really good news, for your trip down memory lane, is that all of the Street View imagery seems to be from 2012.  You enter Street View in GE by dragging and dropping the SV tool in the upper right of the view pane (most of us here call him Pegman) over any road overlaid by a blue line (or sometimes a blue or orange dot).



I think I found a reasonably good map of the fire, and I hope the overlay I made is pretty close. You could trace the complex shape with the GE Shape Tool (the parallelogram) but that would be a tiresome job. If you did it with the measure tool in GEPro (the ruler), you'd could see a calculation of the area of the fire.



Google never announces when it will update the imagery, so I'd encourage you to capture whatever memories from Street View you want to save. The easiest thing to do is a screen shot. I usually use the Windows Snipping Tool. Doing a SEARCH for "create video from google street view," I found lots of programs that can do that for you. I've never used any of them myself. Perhaps others can advise you.

Attachments:

Valley Fire California 2015.kmz (781 B)

Hello, thank you so much for replying.
I love what you did! I am interested in a street view video of a roughly 3mile loop called Anderson Springs.
Ideally, I want to know if it could be a file of just this neighborhood on Google Earth street view which can be accessed offline and the user can interact with it just the same, with the same photos even after the official Google Earth photos are phased out and updated. Taking screenshots of the area or a video fly through wont give a 360view and different people will want to relive the different details of their old houses. 
Thank you, 
Joslyn

Hi Joslyn,



When I replied to your post, I hadn't realized that your father was one of the fatalities. That, I'm sure, was an even greater personal loss for you, and for that, too, we offer our sympathy and condolences.



My advice for you would be, as quickly as possible, to DOWNLOAD and install Google Earth Pro, and create a video of a trip around Anderson Road loop. As I said, you never can know when that street view imagery will be replaced. (Street View has been through my neighborhood at least 3 times.) This may be your only shot (except for capturing still images) before the fire. I've never really tried to do this before, so I made a little test video. Looking at it, I think my pans were too fast, and I didn't stay on a view long enough. I suggest you try a similar test to get a feel for the desired pacing.






Another way to record a video is like I did in the first sample I made for you. Put placemarks on the views you want to record, and fly to them while you are recording by clicking on the icon in My Places.



As far as being able to do anything offline is concerned, I doubt that will ever be possible. Until recently, I think, historical imagery in Street View has not been possible. I recently read a reference of somebody discovering that it was now possible in some cases in Google Maps. I don't know anything about this, but I found a reference HERE. I wouldn't count on it being available ever in your area of interest.



The link to the Google Search I sent you before listed mostly programs for capturing video from Google Maps using an Android OS smart phone. I'm too poor to own a smart phone, but there are some pretty tech-savey folks who read this forum, so I'd drop back here from time to time to see if somebody has found a better solution to suggest to you.



Good Luck!

washi

Thank you very much! This is wonderful. Thank you so much for putting me on the right track.

EDIT
Knowing my computer abilities are very limited, I still downloaded it and this is all just beyond me! I am hoping to find someone to do this for me. I am willing to pay for the time it takes!

Remember, Google Earth (and even more so Google Earth Pro) are very sophisticated programs. I wouldn't expect a new user to be anything but overwhelmed the first time they downloaded and ran either one. But both are very user friendly, and while it might take a long time to discover all of the powerful features, the kind of thing you want to do should be doable by anybody. I think you probably need to capture the images yourself, because only you know what exactly you want. If you have somebody else do it, it would be best if you could at least be present, directing the "camera". But I suspect you can do it yourself.



Can you find your old home? Can you enter Street View? Have you learned to use your mouse to move around within a photosphere and to move from one to another? And (this is a rather important one) are your computer and internet connection fast enough to keep your images in focus as the "camera" moves around within them?



Please answer these questions. I'm willing to help you out with this project if you can't find someone closer to home.