Screencast | Convert Between Google Earth and National Geographic Topo and GPS
I have created a screencast here to show how you can convert between Google Earth and almost any mapping format. Basically we are using an open source program called GPSbabel+. This is a great program no matter what you use. It is designed to be used in conjunction with your GPS unit, however, I am using it to convert between software formats.
I have included two versions of the screencast you can download; GoogleEarth2Topo-iPhone (66) and GoogleEarth2Topo-Desktop (73). You can also watch the flash version below. I hope this helps someone out there. I was getting real frustrated with all the proprietary formats until I found this program. If you use the program, please donate a little something for the hard work.
Please feel free to comment if this was helpful or what screencasts you would like to see on the Outdoors Page.
UPDATE: I have since tried the windows version of NG Topo! on my windows beater laptop, as mentioned above, I have found that it sucks. The windows version is like the first video games that came out on the Atari. The graphics are horrible, however, compared to Maptech, I guess they are the same. Its just… I don’t know… Now don’t flame me for this… It’s just that everything is better on a Mac. I will, however, be sticking to my PC junker laptop with Maptech for car travel navigation and recording. Maptech has a way better TRACKING feature than NG Topo. NG Topo turns all your imported tracks into flippin’ waypoints instead of the track… that is cheezie.
Thanks for sharing. I thought I had figured out how to do this before watching the video. But I couldn’t get it to work. I watched the video and I was pretty much doing it right, except that I didn’t start by creating the .kml file in Google Earth. I had created the KML file using http://www.mapmyride.com. The problem was that I was trying to translate the whole .kml file to .gpx. I went into Google Earth and found just the “Route” portion of the .kml file from mapmyride, and saved that as a new .kml file. That one translated to .gpx flawlessly, allowing me to import it to into TOPO! Your video was helpful in showing me that indeed to procedure that I assumed would work, would indeed work once I started with the simpler .kml file.
I do use the windows version of TOPO!, and I find it to work just fine. Although just from your video I can see that the shaded relief is much richer and deeper in the Mac version. I’m not sure what you are doing where you have the tracks imported as waypoints only. Perhaps I’ve never tried what you are doing. I have tethered my laptop to my GPS and used TOPO! to track where I was going. I don’t do it regularly, but it definitely showed me a track, not a series of waypoints. TOPO! does default to waypoints when importing tracks, but so far, I’ve always been able to find a checkbox to have it show a “freehand route” instead.
Interesting coincidence: Out of all the possible places in the world (or even in the US), The track I was trying to convert is less than 14 miles (at it’s closest point) from the track you created in the video.