Creating Digital Video From A Still Image

This section details the basic steps of creating a layered image, through saving as a flat raw still image and finally converting the result into a specific frame length of Digital Video.

Prerequisites

This author assumes the reader is familiar with using GNU Linux and Ubuntu applications and is capable of performing basic tasks without in-depth explanation.

Required Applications

• GIMP - Installed by default as part of an Ubuntu Desktop install.

• encodedv - Part of package libdv-bin.

Creating The Still Image In The GIMP

This is entirely up to you but for this session we will use: ubuntu_logo_text_strapline_pal.xcf

The example image is a simple two layer image, a background layer that is white and a foreground layer that is the Ubuntu logo. The image is saved in the GIMP XCF format.

Save As A Flat RAW Image In The GIMP

Once happy with an image it needs to be saved in a format ready for conversion. The authors preference is to save as a .ppm file and when prompted by the GIMP selecting the RAW format.

File: ubuntu_logo_text_strapline_pal.ppm

Other file types and formats may be equally suited to this task - Experimenting is learning!

Creating The Digital Video File

Open the Terminal and navigate to the location of ubuntu_logo_text_strapline_pal.ppm and enter the command below.

encodedv -e 100 ubuntu_logo_text_strapline_pal.ppm > ubuntu_logo_text_strapline_pal.dv

encodedv will take the input file and convert it to Digital Video for you. Your only real concern is the command switch -e which specifies the end frame. A film seen at the cinema is normally produced at 25 frames per second... So a project that uses 25 frames per second; in the example above using the switch and value -e 100 the author has created a 100 frames/4 seconds of Digital Video.

Screen casts are normally recorded at 15 frames per second.

What Now ???

Once the Digital Video file has been created it can be imported into video editors like Kino or LIVES and be used as part of a larger project and saved in any particular format the reader wishes or a particular video editor is capable of.

As an example the author has taken the end result Digital Video file and used ffmpeg2theora to create a playable theora encoded video file within Totem.

File: ubuntu_logo_text_strapline_pal.ogm