Filming Tips

Your video becomes a playable street. Here is what makes one work.

Every uploaded video is scored on your phone before it is sent — traffic density, whether the cars actually move, and how steady the camera is. Maps below the quality bar can still be played, but they earn no upload reward. These tips are simply what the scorer rewards.

The short version

DO THIS

Stand on a footbridge or at a window on the 2nd–4th floor. Rest your phone on the railing. Point it down at a busy road. Film for 30 seconds without moving. Done.

1. Hold still

This is the single biggest reason maps fail. The game lines your cat up against a fixed grid, so a camera that pans, walks or shakes makes the street slide under the cat and the run becomes unplayable.

Brace the phone on a railing, ledge or window frame
No walking, no panning, no zooming mid-shot
Drone footage only works if the drone holds a fixed hover

2. Film from above, but not too high

Cars need to be big enough to recognise and small enough to dodge. A rooftop-height, slightly angled view is ideal — roughly a 2nd to 4th floor window, or a pedestrian overpass.

Too low (street level): cars fill the screen and overlap each other
Too high (high drone, tall building): cars become specks and detection drops

A car that takes up more than about a tenth of the screen is ignored, because at that size it is no longer something the cat can dodge around.

3. Traffic has to move

Parked cars are scenery, not obstacles. The scorer compares frames and penalises vehicles that sit in the same place the whole time.

Aim for a steady flow — around four cars visible at a time scores full marks
Avoid car parks, driveways and empty side streets
Red lights are fine in small doses; a whole clip of stopped traffic is not

4. Length and format

Length	10–60 seconds. Around 30 is plenty.
Orientation	Portrait or landscape — both work.
File size	Don't worry about it. The app re-encodes before upload.
Sound	Removed automatically. Film wherever you like.

5. Privacy and safety

THESE GET REJECTED

Faces or licence plates that can be read
Filming from inside a moving vehicle
Private property, building interiors, anything behind a fence
Footage you did not shoot yourself
Anything filmed somewhere you should not have been standing

Shoot from public places only, and never step into a road to get a shot. No map is worth that.

What happens after you upload

Your phone scores the clip and uploads it
A human reviews it — usually within a day
Approved: +100 coins (up to 3 rewarded maps per day) and your street goes live worldwide
Rejected: you get a notification explaining why, and you can try again
Maps that reach download milestones earn bonus coins on top

Ideas that tend to work

A crossing outside your window at rush hour
A footbridge over a main road
A market street with scooters weaving through
A roundabout from a cafe balcony
Somewhere nobody else would think to film — that is the whole point of the map market

Questions?

See the Support & FAQ page, or email bernard@fattaillabs.com.