Video Editing Magic with ffmpeg

OK, I think I found something that sort of works. The code for the script is here:

http://dark-code.bulix.org/kdqxmw-67863 (with syntax highlighting and line numbers)
http://dark-code.bulix.org/kdqxmw-67863?raw (without syntax highlighting and line numbers)

Before you can run the script you need to patch your ffmpeg with the following:

http://dark-code.bulix.org/x6iy8f-67862?raw

which is an ever so slightly modified version of the patch on this page:

http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/ffmpeg-devel/2006-October/017666.html

After patching the ffmpeg source tree (make sure the resulting pip.c file ends up in the vhook directory), you will need to find the line in your Makefile that looks something like this:

BASEHOOKS = fish null watermark

and change it to:

BASEHOOKS = pip fish null watermark

Then, before the script will run, you need to take all the videos you want to concatenate together and turn them into .mpg files with the same dimensions and frame rate. Then, you need to open up any image editor and create an all black image with the same dimensions as your videos. The script will print out usage information if you execute it with no arguments. Here is an example of how to run the script:

$ ls
video1.mpg
video2.mpg
video3.mpg
all_black_320x240.png
fade.sh
$ OUTPUT_FILE="final_video.mpg" BLACK_PICTURE_FILE="all_black_320x240.png" FADE_FRAMES="25" ./fade.sh video1.mpg video2.mpg video3.mpg

And that's it. Please note that this script doesn't exactly "cross-fade" the videos... the transition is "fade to black," but it might work for some things. As far as I can tell a true cross fade is not possible. I know this is not pretty, please someone improve it :-)

I had thought that this was not possible (imlib2 only allows changing the opacity of text), although I think I might have found a solution for you. I'll try it out later today and let you know if it actually works :)

How many geek points do I need before I can trade them in for some new hardware?