Titles and Transitions

Create a title screen

As all Linux users expect, there's more than one way to do it.  This is my way.

Use glav (glav -p S example.avi) to identify a single frame suitable for use as your title-page background.  Saving the .eli will give you the frame number.

lavtrans -o example.jpg -f i -i 7388 newexample.avi         where 7388 is the chosen frame

Open in Gimp2 and overlay a title

Create 125 frames for a 5-second display:

jpeg2yuv -f 25:1 -L 1 -I t -l 125 -j example.jpg | yuv2lav -o Title.avi

There's one snag here.  There is a bugt in jpeg2yuv which means that ti doesn't stop at 125 frames.  You'll have to keep an eagle eye on the bottom left of your screen to get approximately the right number of frames.  It's not critical.  It can't be used without a soundtrack, so we create a silent one to exactly match then length of our Title.avi, then add the sound to the video:

lav2wav -R Title.avi > title.wav
lavaddwav Title.avi title.wav title.avi

At this point you may wish to get rid of Title.avi and title.wav.

Create a transition - preparation


Home movies often end abruptly, and for that matter, so do their scenes.  I create an whiteOut.avi and a blackOut avi which can be used in creating fade to white or black.

In gimp, create a .jpg 576 x 768 and fill with black or white.  Create an avi from that (remember the bug - watch the frame count):

jpeg2yuv -f 25:1 -L 1 -I t -l 125 -j whiteOut.jpg | yuv2lav -o WhiteOut.avi
lav2wav -R WhiteOut.avi > whiteOut.wav
lavaddwav WhiteOut.avi whiteOut.wav whiteOut.avi

Do the same for blackOut, then delete the intermediate files.  You won't need them again.  It's a good idea to back up whiteOut.avi and blackOut.avi as you will use them frequently.

Fade to white

You need to take the last n number of frame from example.avi and the same number from the beginning of your whiteOut.avi, then blend them, swapping opacity.

ypipe -v 2 "lav2yuv -v 2 -o -25 example.avi" "lav2yuv -v 2 -f 25 whiteOut.avi" | transist.flt -o 0 -O 255 -d 25 | yuv2lav -v 0 -f a -q 80 -o Examplefade.avi
lav2wav -R Examplefade.avi > examplefade.wav
lavaddwav Examplefade.avi examplefade.wav examplefade.avi

You can fade between scenes in exactly the same way substituting the file-names 'scene1.avi' and 'scene2.avi'.

The new, better, mpg file

Stitch them together with

lav2yuv title.avi scene1.avi fade1.avi | yuvscaler -O DVD | yuvdenoise | mpeg2enc -f 8 -I 1 -q 7 -o scene1.m2v
lav2wav  title.avi scene1.avi fade1.avi | mp2enc -v 2 -o scene1.mp2
mplex -f 8 scene1.m2v scene1.mp2 -o scene1.mpg

When you have all your scenes ready, it's time to author the disk.



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