Gource video of multiple repos

gource.md

Retro Video Process

Use gource, ffmpeg packages to do the primary work. They can be brew installed.

Basic process

You will take a repo and use gource to generate a log file of timestamps and commits.

Then you can feed that log into gource to render a video of the timeline.

Lots of configuration parameters

From the root of a gate cloned repo, create a log file.

gource \
  --hide dirnames,filenames \
  --seconds-per-day 0.1 \
  --auto-skip-seconds 1 \
  --logo Vector.png \
  --date-format "%x"
  --title "Gate"
  -1280x720 \
  -o gate.txt

If you are only creating a video for one repo, the log file and rendering can be done in the same step:

gource --hide dirnames,filenames --seconds-per-day 0.1 --auto-skip-seconds 1 -1280x720 -o - | ffmpeg -y -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 1 -threads 0 -bf 0 gource.mp4

Config parameters

The gource wiki describes the many config options. Some are:

--key

--disable-bloom

--date-format "%D"

--title "My Project"

--logo logo.png

--logo-offset XxY

Combined video of multiple repos

1. Run gource on each cloned repo and save the log file for each one: gate.txt, geas.txt...

2. Put all of the log files into the same folder.

3. To combine and sort all of the logs:

cat dx.txt gate.txt geas.txt gitops.txt helm-charts.txt papermill-origami.txt planar-ally.txt polymorph.txt summon-celestial.txt | sort -n > combined.txt

You could run a script to do this but I used brute force.

4. Create the video from the combined logs:

gource combined.txt --hide dirnames,filenames --seconds-per-day 0.15 --auto-skip-seconds 1 --date-format "%Y-%m-%d" --logo ../Vector.png --title "Noteable 2022 Retro" --hide-root -1280x720 -o - | ffmpeg -y -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 1 -threads 0 -bf 0 combined.mp4