Add an introduction sequence to a Theora video

FilmTo produce new HD videos from the Embedded Linux Conference, we needed a new script to add an introduction sequence to the videos we processed.

To make all this automatic, and to suppress the need to go through interactive tools (such as kdenlive) to produce a title with a fade-in / fade-out effect, I created a new theora-intro script. The process got much more complex than I expected, but fortunately, I got a lot of valuable advise and help from the Theora mailing list, and could hide all this complexity inside the script. That’s what scripts are for!

A nice feature. compared to the interactive video editors, is that no extra video processing pass is needed. Thanks to this, even a big video file can be processed within a few minutes. Another useful feature is that the script preserves the Ogg metadata (artist, title, location, copyright…).

So, if you wish to add an introduction sequence to your own videos, whatever their initial format, first convert them to Theora using ffmpeg2theora. Then, create a title image for your video, and then run theora-intro on it.

You can find all useful details on our theora-intro page.

Author: Michael Opdenacker

Michael Opdenacker is the founder of Bootlin, and was its CEO until 2021. He is best known for all the free embedded Linux and kernel training materials that he created together with Thomas Petazzoni. He is always looking for ways to increase performance, reduce size and boot time, and to maximize Linux' world domination. More details...

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