Exporting Video and Animations

AI-generated Key Takeaways

outlined_flag

• Use Export.video() in Earth Engine to create videos from image collections, where each image represents a frame in the video.

• Configure the video output by specifying frame rate, scale, and dimensions, resulting in an MP4 encoded video.

• Export videos to your Google Drive with Export.video.toDrive() or to Cloud Storage with Export.video.toCloudStorage(), customizing with parameters like description, dimensions, frames per second, and region.

• Ensure your image collection contains 3-band (RGB), 8-bit images for successful video export, using image.visualize() if necessary.

• Video exports in Earth Engine can be time-consuming, requiring patience for the task to complete.

To export ordered image collections as video, where frames are defined by images in the collection, use Export.video(). You can configure the way the ImageCollection is turned into video by setting frame rate, scale and dimensions. The video will be encoded as an MP4.

to Drive

Export video to your Drive account with Export.video.toDrive(). For example, the following export makes a video from 20 years of Landsat imagery:

// Load a Landsat 5 image collection.
var collection = ee.ImageCollection('LANDSAT/LT05/C02/T1_TOA')
  // San Francisco Bay.
  .filter(ee.Filter.eq('WRS_PATH', 44))
  .filter(ee.Filter.eq('WRS_ROW', 34))
  // Filter cloudy scenes.
  .filter(ee.Filter.lt('CLOUD_COVER', 30))
  // Get 20 years of imagery.
  .filterDate('1991-01-01','2011-12-30')
  // Make each image an 8-bit RGB image.
  .map(function(image) {
    return image.visualize({bands: ['B4', 'B3', 'B2'], min: 0.02, max: 0.35});
  });

// Define an area to export.
var polygon = ee.Geometry.Rectangle([-122.7286, 37.6325, -122.0241, 37.9592]);

// Export (change dimensions or scale for higher quality).
Export.video.toDrive({
  collection: collection,
  description: 'sfVideoExample',
  dimensions: 720,
  framesPerSecond: 12,
  region: polygon
});

Note that the frame rate and dimensions can be set from a dictionary of parameters passed to the export. Adjust these parameters to customize the video. Also note that the input ImageCollection is required to have 3-band (RGB), 8-bit images. In this example, the 8-bit, 3-band format is explicitly set. Alternatively, map a function which calls image.visualize() over the collection. See the section on Visualization images for details. Video exports can take a significant amount of time to complete, so it's not unusual to see the export task running for an extended period.

to Cloud Storage

To export a video to Cloud Storage, use Export.video.toCloudStorage(). For example, using the ImageCollection from the previous example:

// Export video to cloud storage.
Export.video.toCloudStorage({
  collection: collection,
  description: 'sfVideoExampleToCloud',
  bucket: 'your-bucket-name',
  dimensions: 720,
  framesPerSecond: 12,
  region: polygon
});