Cinematic camera

Direct the Camera on Your Own Route Video

Place camera keyframes along the timeline and TrailReplay glides between them — a shot you chose, not a camera that just trails the marker.

Real TrailReplay export

Four keys and a ball

Cinematic mode lives in Map & Camera. Every step below also works from the keyboard, so you can shoot a whole route without touching the mouse.

  1. 1

    Pause where you want a shot

    Press Space to pause the replay at the moment you want to frame. The marker stays put while you compose.

  2. 2

    Aim the camera

    Drag the orbit ball, or press A and D to swing around the marker, W and S to raise or lower the camera, R and F to move closer or further away.

  3. 3

    Save the shot

    Press Enter, or the Set camera keyframe button. Press Enter again at the same moment to update that shot rather than adding a second one.

  4. 4

    Move on and repeat

    Scrub to the next moment and frame it. Between two keyframes the camera glides smoothly from one to the other.

Why it looks calmer than a camera that follows

Try it with your route

Shots you chose

Between keyframes the pose comes from a spline through your own values, so it is smooth by construction rather than smoothed after the fact.

Steady through switchbacks

The camera reads the direction the route takes over several seconds, so hairpins and GPS wander do not turn into camera shake.

A subject-locked orbit

The ball only changes the angle, height and distance around your marker, so the subject cannot slide out of the shot while you frame it.

Keyboard-first

Space, A/D, W/S, R/F and Enter cover the whole loop — pause, aim, save, move on.

What a cinematic camera changes

A camera that follows a marker has to answer every move the marker makes. On a mountain route that means every switchback, and on a compressed replay a switchback lasts a fraction of a second — so the picture shakes even though the route is simply turning.

Placing keyframes inverts that. You decide where the camera sits at a handful of moments, and the motion in between is interpolated rather than reacted. The result is a shot that holds still when you want it to and moves when you asked it to.

Keyframes are saved inside your .replay project file and are anchored to a point on the route rather than to a timestamp, so changing the clip length or reordering journey segments keeps every shot on the piece of route you framed it for.

Common questions

Do I need to place a keyframe for the whole route?

No. With no keyframes the camera behaves like Follow Behind, and a single keyframe holds one locked-off shot for the entire replay. Add more only where you want the shot to change.

What happens between two keyframes?

The camera eases from one to the next. You can also set a keyframe to hold the previous shot until it is reached, or to move at a constant rate instead of easing.

Can the camera keep pointing the same way as the route?

Yes. Each keyframe is either locked to the compass or held relative to the route, so a shot can stay over-the-shoulder as the trail turns.

Does the exported video match the preview?

Yes. The exported frames use the same camera evaluation as the live preview, so what you framed is what gets recorded.

My camera still moves more than I want. What should I change?

Pull the Camera Stability slider toward Cinematic. It widens the window the camera smooths its path over. Pulling the camera further back also helps, because a wider shot can absorb more of the route wander.

Your route already has a story.

Turn it into a replay you can share.

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