How to Make an Animated Travel Map in Premiere Pro

To make an animated travel map in Premiere Pro, open Mapper from the Filmit Studio panel, add your stops, pick a map style and a motion preset, and click Render to Timeline. Mapper renders the finished animation and places it at your playhead as a clip that matches your sequence, so the map shot never needs a trip out to After Effects and back.

Mapper is our map tool for Premiere Pro and After Effects, one install for both. Everything it does is on the Mapper product page, and it installs through Filmit Studio, our free desktop app, with a 7-day trial. Below is the exact workflow from the demo: a drive from New York to Los Angeles, a pit stop, a new style, and a render. If you work in After Effects, our guide to animated travel maps in After Effects covers the editable comp version.

How do you open Mapper in Premiere Pro?

From the Filmit Studio panel. With Studio open inside Premiere Pro, click Mapper and it opens as its own panel, docked like any other Premiere panel. Widen it before you start; there is a lot in there.

Maps, place search, and street routes come from OpenStreetMap, so keep an internet connection while you work.

How do you add your stops?

Mapper works in three tabs, Route, Style, and Motion, with a live preview that plays the whole trip before you build. The demo starts fresh on the Route tab.

How do you add a pit stop?

Click the map. In the demo, clicking a point on the map adds it to the route as stop C, at the end of the trip. Move it up the list, above Los Angeles, and it becomes a pit stop along the way: the drive now goes New York, the new stop, then Los Angeles.

Taking it out is just as quick: remove the stop and the route redraws. You can also drag points to move them, reverse the route, or make it a round trip.

How do you change the look of the map?

On the Style tab. Mapper starts you from one of 14 map styles, and each one sets the line, markers, and overlays to match. The demo switches to Expedition, then changes a few things on top of it.

• Vehicle. Pick a plane, car, ship, arrow, dot, or any emoji to ride the line. The demo chooses a bus emoji. Auto picks per leg, a car for driving and a plane for flying.
• Route line. Expedition uses travel dashes. Switch to a solid line if you prefer, or dashed or dotted, with optional glow. You can change the colours too.
• Street names. Keep them on for a map that reads like a real road map, or switch them off for a cleaner frame.
• Units. Distances show in kilometres or miles. The demo picks miles for a US road trip.

Frame size is handled for you. Mapper matches your active sequence, so the frame size and frame rate are right before you render, or you can pick a size yourself, up to 4K. Tune a look you like and save it to My styles to reuse on every map.

How do you set the camera and duration?

On the Motion tab. Choose a camera (Cinematic, Follow, Zoom in, or Static) or start from a built-in motion preset such as Quick social, Road trip, Chase cam, or Epic reveal.

The demo uses Road trip, which stays close on the vehicle and follows it the whole way. Then set the duration by typing it in. The demo map was at 12 seconds and was changed to 20 for a longer drive. Holds at the start and end, a pause at every stop, and easing are here too, and you can save your camera and timing as your own motion preset.

What happens when you click Render to Timeline?

Mapper renders the finished animation and places it on your timeline, with a progress bar and a time-left estimate while it works.

How is the Premiere Pro version different from After Effects?

Building the map is the same in both: the same stops, styles, and motion settings. The output is what changes.

• Premiere Pro gives you a rendered clip. Render to Timeline puts the finished animation in your edit.
• After Effects gives you a comp you can pull apart. Build Comp lays out a native comp: the route is a shape layer, the markers, labels, and title are real layers, and every overlay sits on its own layer, with the line width and route colour live on a Mapper Controls layer.

If you want to swap an icon by hand or animate one label on its own, use the After Effects version. The After Effects demo shows that side.

Which map styles can you use?

Fourteen, from a clean street map for a real estate tour to a tactical HUD for a documentary or a haunted fog for October. Holiday, Haunted, and Arcade even bring their own vehicle: a sled, a ghost, and a space invader. Max is designing more styles for the team himself, so tell us on Discord which look you would use.

What are the honest limits?

• In Premiere Pro it is a rendered clip. You cannot edit individual layers on the timeline. To change a stop, the style, or the timing, adjust it in the panel and render again.
• Only some legs follow roads. Drive, Walk, and Cycle follow real streets. Fly, Ship, Straight, and Curve do not, and if no street route can be found for a leg, Mapper draws it as a straight line and tells you.
• It needs an internet connection to load the map, search for places, and plot street routes.
• There is a map credit. Mapper adds a small OpenStreetMap credit in the corner of the frame by default.

How do you get Mapper?

Mapper runs in Premiere Pro and After Effects from one install. Head to the Mapper page, install Filmit Studio (free), and start the 7-day trial. Mapper is included with the Filmit Studio subscription at $20/month alongside every other tool in the suite. Build a map for your next travel edit, and tell us on Discord what you want it to do next.

Key takeaways