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Visualize full motion video

The ability to view and analyze video in the context of a GIS offers a dynamic view of events or facilities that can provide essential decision support. There are use cases in the military, law enforcement, and emergency response, and with the rapid growth of low-cost drone aircraft, use cases are expanding into areas like wildlife management and linear asset monitoring (powerlines, pipelines, and so on). The variety of potential uses and the range of sources—including airborne drones, military systems, dashcams, and stationary surveillance cameras, and other devices that record infrared and visible video—influence both processing decisions and spatial accuracy.

The full motion video (FMV) capability of ArcGIS Pro allows you to view live or archived video that's linked to a map display showing the video footprint, sensor location, field of view, and flight path. You can also display metadata in real time, view GIS data overlaid on the video, collect features in the video to view on the map, and more. If your video does not have embedded metadata, you can use the Video Multiplexer tool to encode metadata at the proper video location.

The general workflow for FMV in ArcGIS Pro includes these three stages:

  1. Preprocessing videos with the Video Multiplexer (if your video doesn't have embedded metadata)
  2. Using the Video Metadata to Feature Classgeoprocessing tool to extract frame outlines, frame centers, and sensor position for data management
  3. Viewing videos to extract features or make decisions

Explore the following resources to learn more about visualizing FMV.

Note:
To work with geotagged video, you need the ArcGIS Image Analyst extension for ArcGIS Pro 2.2+. ArcGIS Pro Basic will support FMV functionality, but for any geoprocessing or data management tasks that create mosaic datasets, you need ArcGIS Pro Standard or ArcGIS Pro Advanced. FMV is also available as a mature add-in for ArcMap 10.2+; some functionality is only available with ArcGIS Pro.

Imagery workflow resources

Build your skills with tutorials and answers to frequently asked questions for working with and automating imagery and remote sensing workflows:

  1. Hands-on tutorials showing how to work with the FMV video player and how to add features to your video using a sample video
  2. Hands-on tutorial explaining how to use the Video Multiplexer geoprocessing tool using a sample video and metadata .
  3. A tutorial for FMV in ArcMap 10.3.1+.
  4. Frequently asked questions for FMV

ArcGIS help

Review the following reference materials for ArcGIS products:

FMV on the ArcGIS blog

Read the Video Multiplexer Tips and Tricks blog article.

Videos

Watch a demonstration of FMV functionality in ArcGIS Pro (3 minutes).

Training

Review the following guided lessons based on real-world problems and key ArcGIS skills:

Esri Community

See how the Imagery and Remote Sensing community is using FMV.