This year, I want to see if I can use green-screen videos like this reversed-spin sparkle or this other sparkle video. I'm going to take a series of images, with each image adding one more gift. Then I'm going to make a mask in Krita with white covering the gift and a transparent background for the rest of the image. Then I'll use chroma-key to drop out the green screen of the sparkle video and mask it in so that the sparkles only happen within the boundaries of the gift that was added. I also want to fade one image into the other, and I want the sparkles to fade out as the gift appears.

ffmpeg -y -loop 1 -i test.jpg -loop 1 -i test2.jpg -filter_complex "[1:v]fade=t=in:d=4:alpha=1[fadein];[0:v][fadein]overlay[out]" -map "[out]" -r 1 -t 4 -shortest test.webm

ffmpeg -y -loop 1 -i test.jpg -loop 1 -i test2.jpg -filter_complex "[1:v][0:v]blend=all_expr='A*(if(gte(T,4),1,T/4))+B*(1-(if(gte(T,4),1,T/4)))" -t 4 -r 1 test.webm

ffmpeg -y -i test.webm -i balloons.mp4 -filter_complex "[1:v]chromakey=0x00ff00:0.1:0.2[ckout];[0:v][ckout]overlay[out]" -map "[out]" -shortest -r 1 overlaid.webm

ffmpeg -y -i test.jpg -i test2.jpg -i mask.png -filter_complex "[1:v][2:v]alphamerge[a];[0:v][a]overlay[out]" -map "[out]" masked.jpg

ffmpeg -y -loop 1 -i mask.png  -r 1 -t 4  mask.webm

ffmpeg -loglevel 32 -y -i test.webm -i balloons.mp4 -i mask.webm -filter_complex "[1:v][2:v]alphamerge[masked];[0:v][masked]overlay[out]" -map "[out]" -r 1 -t 4 alphamerged.webm

ffmpeg -loglevel 32 -y -i test.webm -i balloons.mp4 -i mask.webm -filter_complex "[1:v]chromakey=0x00ff00:0.1:0.2[ckout];[ckout][2:v]alphamerge[masked];[0:v][masked]overlay[out]" -map "[out]" -r 1 -t 4 masked.webm

ffmpeg -loglevel 32 -y -i test.webm -i balloons.mp4 -i mask.webm -filter_complex "[1:v]chromakey=0x00ff00:0.1:0.2,format=rgba,alphaextract[out]" -map "[out]" -r 1 -t 4
chroma-alpha.webm

ffmpeg -loglevel 32 -y -i test.webm -i balloons.mp4 -i mask.webm -filter_complex "[1:v]chromakey=0x00ff00:0.1:0.2,format=rgba,alphaextract[ckalpha];[ckalpha][2:v]blend=all_mode=and[out]" -map "[out]" -r 1 -t 4 masked-alpha.webm

ffmpeg -loglevel 32 -y -i test.webm -i balloons.mp4 -i masked-alpha.webm -filter_complex "[2:v]format=rgba[mask];[1:v][mask]alphamerge[masked];[0:v][masked]overlay[out]" -map "[out]" -r 1 -t 4 alphamerged.webm

ffmpeg -loglevel 32 -y -loop 1 -i test.jpg -t 4 -loop 1 -i test2.jpg -t 4 -i balloons.mp4 -loop 1 -i mask.png -t 4 -filter_complex "[1:v][0:v]blend=all_expr='A*(if(gte(T,4),1,T/4))+B*(1-(if(gte(T,4),1,T/4)))'[fade];[2:v]chromakey=0x00ff00:0.1:0.2,format=rgba,alphaextract[ckalpha];[ckalpha][3:v]blend=all_mode=and,format=rgba[maskedalpha];[2:v][maskedalpha]alphamerge[masked];[fade][masked]overlay[out]" -map "[out]" -r 5 -t 4 alphamerged.webm

ffmpeg -loglevel 32 -y -loop 1 -i test.jpg -t 4 -loop 1 -i test2.jpg -t 4 -i balloons.mp4 -loop 1 -i mask.png -t 4 -filter_complex "[1:v][0:v]blend=all_expr='A*(if(gte(T,4),1,T/4))+B*(1-(if(gte(T,4),1,T/4)))'[fade];[2:v]chromakey=0x00ff00:0.1:0.2,format=rgba,alphaextract[ckalpha];[ckalpha][3:v]blend=all_mode=and,format=rgba[maskedalpha];[2:v][maskedalpha]alphamerge[masked];[masked]fade=type=out:st=2:d=1:alpha=1[maskedfade];[fade][maskedfade]overlay[out]" -map "[out]" -r 10 -t 4 alphamerged.webm

for FILE in *.JPG; do convert $FILE -crop 1558x876+473+842 -resize 1280x720 cropped/$FILE; done

files=(*.JPG)
i=0
j=1
len="${#files[@]}"
while [ "$j" -lt $len ]; do
  compare -fuzz 15% cropped/${files[$i]} cropped/${files[$j]} -compose Src -highlight-color White -lowlight-color Black masks/${files[$j]}
  convert -morphology Open Disk -morphology Close Disk -blur 20x5 masks/${files[$j]} processed-masks/${files[$j]}
  i=$((i+1))
  j=$((j+1))
done

import ffmpeg
import glob
files = glob.glob("images/cropped/*.JPG")
files.sort()
fps = 15
crf = 32
out = ffmpeg.input(files[0], loop=1, r=fps)
duration = 3
for i in range(1, len(files)):
    out = ffmpeg.filter([out, ffmpeg.input(files[i], loop=1, r=fps).filter('fade', t='in', d=duration, st=i*duration, alpha=1)], 'overlay')
args = out.output('images.webm', t=len(files) * duration, r=fps, y=None, crf=crf).compile()
print(' '.join(f'"{item}"' for item in args))

import ffmpeg
import glob
files = glob.glob("images/processed-masks/*.JPG")
files.sort()
files = files[:-2]  # Omit the last two, where I'm just turning off the lights
fps = 15
crf = 32
out = ffmpeg.input('color=black:s=1280x720', f='lavfi', r=fps)
duration = 3
for i in range(0, len(files)):
    out = ffmpeg.filter([out, ffmpeg.input(files[i], loop=1, r=fps).filter('fade', t='in', d=1, st=(i + 1)*duration, alpha=1).filter('fade', t='out', st=(i + 2)*duration - 1)], 'overlay')
args = out.output('processed-masks.webm', t=len(files) * duration, r=fps, y=None, crf=crf).compile()
print(' '.join(f'"{item}"' for item in args))

ffmpeg -loglevel 32 -y -f lavfi -i color=black:s=1280x720 -i sparkles4.webm -ss 13 -filter_complex "[1:v]scale=700:392[sparkles];[0:v][sparkles]overlay=x=582:y=194,setpts=(PTS-STARTPTS)*1.05[out]" -map "[out]" -r 15 -t 53 -shortest sparkles-trimmed.webm
ffmpeg -y -stream_loop 2 -i sparkles-trimmed.webm -t 57 sparkles-looped.webm              

ffmpeg -loglevel 32 -y -i images.webm -i sparkles-looped.webm -i processed-masks.webm -filter_complex "[1:v]chromakey=0x0a9d06:0.1:0.2,format=rgba,alphaextract[ckalpha];[ckalpha][2:v]blend=all_mode=and,format=rgba[maskedalpha];[1:v][maskedalpha]alphamerge[masked];[masked]fade=t=out:st=57:d=1:alpha=1[maskedfaded];[0:v][maskedfaded]overlay[combined];[combined]tpad=start_mode=clone:start_duration=4:stop_mode=clone:stop_duration=4[out]" -map "[out]" -r 15 -crf 32 output.webm

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

First, I updated the compression script, compress-video-low.sh:

Q=$1
WIDTH=1280
HEIGHT=720
AUDIO_RATE=48000
VIDEO_FILTER="scale=w=${WIDTH}:h=${HEIGHT}:force_original_aspect_ratio=1,pad=${WIDTH}:${HEIGHT}:(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2,fps=25,colorspace=all=bt709:iall=bt601-6-625:fast=1"
FILE=$2
SUFFIX=$Q
shift
shift
ffmpeg -y -i "$FILE"  -pixel_format yuv420p -vf $VIDEO_FILTER -colorspace 1 -color_primaries 1 -color_trc 1 -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v 0 -crf $Q -aq-mode 2 -tile-columns 0 -tile-rows 0 -frame-parallel 0 -cpu-used 8 -auto-alt-ref 1 -lag-in-frames 25 -g 240 -pass 1 -f webm -an -threads 8 /dev/null &&
if [[ $FILE =~ "webm" ]]; then
    ffmpeg -y -i "$FILE" $*  -pixel_format yuv420p -vf $VIDEO_FILTER -colorspace 1 -color_primaries 1 -color_trc 1 -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v 0 -crf $Q -tile-columns 2 -tile-rows 2 -frame-parallel 0 -cpu-used -5 -auto-alt-ref 1 -lag-in-frames 25 -pass 2 -g 240 -ac 2 -threads 8 -c:a copy "${FILE%.*}--compressed$SUFFIX.webm"
else
    ffmpeg -y -i "$FILE" $*  -pixel_format yuv420p -vf $VIDEO_FILTER -colorspace 1 -color_primaries 1 -color_trc 1 -c:v libvpx-vp9 -b:v 0 -crf $Q -tile-columns 2 -tile-rows 2 -frame-parallel 0 -cpu-used -5 -auto-alt-ref 1 -lag-in-frames 25 -pass 2 -g 240 -ac 2 -threads 8 -c:a libvorbis "${FILE%.*}--compressed$SUFFIX.webm"
fi

I made an originals.txt file with all the original filenames. It looked like this:

emacsconf-2020-frownies--the-true-frownies-are-the-friends-we-made-along-the-way-an-anecdote-of-emacs-s-malleability--case-duckworth.mkv
emacsconf-2021-montessori--emacs-and-montessori-philosophy--grant-shangreaux.webm
emacsconf-2021-pattern--emacs-as-design-pattern-learning--greta-goetz.mp4
...

I set up a ~/.parallel/emacsconf profile with something like this so that I could use three computers and my laptop, sending one job each and displaying progress:

--sshlogin computer1 --sshlogin computer2 --sshlogin computer3 --sshlogin : -j 1 --progress --verbose --joblog parallel.log

I already had SSH key-based authentication set up so that I could connect to the three remote computers.

Then I spread the jobs over four computers with the following command:

cat originals.txt | parallel -J emacsconf \
                             --transferfile {} \
                             --return '{=$_ =~ s/\..*?$/--compressed32.webm/=}' \
                             --cleanup \
                             --basefile compress-video-low.sh \
                             bash compress-video-low.sh 32 {}

It copied each file over to the computer it was assigned to, processed the file, and then copied the file back.

It was also helpful to occasionally do echo 'killall -9 ffmpeg' | parallel -J emacsconf -j 1 --onall if I cancelled a run.

It still took a long time, but less than it would have if any one computer had to crunch through everything on its own.

This was much better than my previous way of doing things, which involved copying the files over, running ffmpeg commands, copying the files back, and getting somewhat confused about which directory I was in and which file I assigned where and what to do about incompletely-encoded files.

I sometimes ran into problems with incompletely-encoded files because I'd cancelled the FFmpeg process. Even though ffprobe said the files were long, they were missing a large chunk of video at the end. I added a compile-media-verify-video-frames function to compile-media.el so that I could get the last few seconds of frames, compare them against the duration, and report an error if there was a big gap.

Then I changed emacsconf-publish.el to use the new filenames, and I regenerated all the pages. For EmacsConf 2020, I used some Emacs Lisp to update the files. I'm not particularly fond of wrangling video files (lots of waiting, high chance of error), but I'm glad I got the computers to work together.

You can view 2 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

A-‘s been going to virtual kindergarten. So far, her teachers and classmates have been cool with the name changes. They met her in her Stephanie phase, and they shifted over to Elizabeth without batting an eye. A-‘s been experimenting with a new name, though, so I thought I'd try to figure out a way to make the teachers' lives a little easier. We use Google Meet to connect to class. A- likes to log in as me because then we're alphabetically sorted close to one of her friends in class, the high-tech equivalent of wanting to sit with your friends. So the name that's automatically displayed when she's speaking is no help either.

It turns out that OBS (Open Broadcast Studio) has a virtual webcam feature in version 26.1, and it works for MacOS X and Linux. I followed the instructions for installing OBS 26.1 on Ubuntu. To enable the virtual webcam device on Linux, I installed v4l2loopback-dkms. I was initially mystified when I got the error could not insert 'v4l2loopback': Operation not permitted. That was because I have Secure Boot on my laptop, so I just needed to reboot, choose Enroll MOK from the boot menu, and put in the password that I specified during the setup process. After I did that, clicking on the Start Virtual Camera button in OBS worked. I tested it in Google Meet and the image was properly displayed. I don't know if we'll need it, but it's handy to have in my back pocket in case A- decides to change her name again.

Yay Linux and free software!

You can view 1 comment or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

AutoTrace had been written against ImageMagick 5, but this was no longer easily available. ImageMagick 7 greatly changed the API. Fortunately, GraphicsMagick kept the ImageMagick 5 API. I eventually figured out enough about autoconf and C (neither of which I had really worked with much before) to switch the library paths out while attempting to preserve backward compatibility. I think I got it, but I can't really tell aside from the fact that compiling it with GraphicsMagick makes the included tests run. Yay!

At first I tried AC_DEFINE-ing twice in the same package check, but it turns out only the last one sticks, so I moved the other AC_DEFINE to a different condition.

Anyway, here's the pull request. Whee! I'm coding!

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

I definitely felt the gaps between the quick-and-dirty coding I did and the best practices I saw elsewhere. I felt a little anxious about not having development environments and production deployment processes for my personal projects. Whenever I messed up my blog or my web-based tracker, I stayed up extra late to fix things, coding while tired and sleepy and occasionally interrupted by A- needing extra snuggling. I updated whenever I felt it was necessary for security, but the risk discouraged me from trying to make things better.

Lately, though, I feel like I’ve been able to actually have some more focused time to learn new things. A- is a little more used to a bedtime routine, and I no longer have to reserve as much energy and patience for dealing with tantrums. She still sleeps really late, but it’s manageable. And besides, I’d tracked the time I spent playing a game on my phone, so I knew I had a little discretionary time I could use more effectively.

Docker is one of the tools on my to-learn list. I think it will help a lot to have environments that I can experiment with and recreate whenever I want. I tried Vagrant before, but Docker feels a lot lighter-weight.

I started by moving my sketch viewer into a Docker container. It’s a basic Node server with read-only access to my sketches, so that was mostly a matter of changing it to be configured via environment variables and mounting the sketches as a volume. I added dockerfile-mode to my Emacs, made a Dockerfile and a .dockerignore file following the tutorial for Dockerizing a Node.js web app, tried it out on my laptop, and pushed the image to my private Docker hub so that I could pull the image on my server. It turned out that Linode’s kernel had overlay built in instead of compiled as a module, so I followed this tip to fix it.

cat << EOF > /etc/systemd/system/containerd.service.d/override.conf
[Service]
ExecStartPre=
EOF

I also needed to uninstall my old docker.io and docker-compose, add the Docker PPA, and install docker-ce in order to get docker login to work properly on my server.

The next step was to move my web interface for tracking – not Quantified Awesome, but the button-filled webpage I’ve been using on my phone. I used lots of environment variables for passwords and tokens, so I switched to using --env-file file instead.

In order to move Quantified Awesome or my blog into Docker, I needed a MySQL container that could load my backups. docker-compose.yml Loading the SQL was just a matter of mounting the backup files in /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d, and mounting a directory as /var/lib/mysql should help with data persistence. If I added a script that created a user and granted access from '%', I could access the MySQL inside the Docker container from my laptop. I didn’t want my MySQL container to be publicly exposed on my server, though. It turned out that Docker bypassed ufw by setting iptables rules directly, so I followed the other instructions in this Stackoverflow answer and added these to the end of my /etc/ufw/after.rules:

# BEGIN UFW AND DOCKER
*filter
:ufw-user-forward - [0:0]
:DOCKER-USER - [0:0]
-A DOCKER-USER -j RETURN -s 10.0.0.0/8
-A DOCKER-USER -j RETURN -s 172.16.0.0/12
-A DOCKER-USER -j RETURN -s 192.168.0.0/16

-A DOCKER-USER -j ufw-user-forward

-A DOCKER-USER -j DROP -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags FIN,SYN,RST,ACK SYN -d 192.168.0.0/16
-A DOCKER-USER -j DROP -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags FIN,SYN,RST,ACK SYN -d 10.0.0.0/8
-A DOCKER-USER -j DROP -p tcp -m tcp --tcp-flags FIN,SYN,RST,ACK SYN -d 172.16.0.0/12
-A DOCKER-USER -j DROP -p udp -m udp --dport 0:32767 -d 192.168.0.0/16
-A DOCKER-USER -j DROP -p udp -m udp --dport 0:32767 -d 10.0.0.0/8
-A DOCKER-USER -j DROP -p udp -m udp --dport 0:32767 -d 172.16.0.0/12

-A DOCKER-USER -j RETURN
COMMIT
# END UFW AND DOCKER

There’s more discussion on docker and ufw, but I don’t quite have the brainspace right now to fully understand it.

Anyway. Progress. sketches.sachachua.com is in a Docker container, and so is my button-based time tracker. I have a Docker container that I can use to load SQL backups, and I can connect to it for testing. The next step would probably be to try moving Quantified Awesome into a Docker container that talks to my MySQL container. If I can get that working, then I can try moving my blog into a container too.

Yesterday was for sleeping. Today I wanted to clean up my notes and post them, since I’ll forget too much if I keep going. More coding will have to wait for tomorrow–or maybe the day after, if I use some time for consulting instead. But slow progress is still progress, and it’s nice to feel like more of a geek again.

You can view 2 comments or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

(Name still elided in the sample until I figure out what we want to do with names and stuff. I'll use NAME_REPLACEMENTS to put her name into the printed ones, though, since kids tend to learn how to read their names first.)

I haven't printed these out yet to see how legible they are, but a quick on-screen check looks promising.

prepare-for-printing:

#!/bin/bash

# Add label from ImageDescription EXIF tag to bottom of photo

destination=~/cloud/print
description_field=ImageDescription
font=Alegreya-Regular
SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")
border=50
output_width_inches=6
output_height_inches=4

# NAME_REPLACEMENTS is an environment variable that's a sed expression
# for any name replacements, like s/A-/Actual name goes here/g

for file in $*; do
  description=$(exiftool -s -s -s -$description_field "$file" \
     | sed "s/\"/\\\"/g;s/'/\\\'/g;$NAME_REPLACEMENTS")
  date=$(exiftool -s -s -s -DateTimeOriginal "$file" \
     | cut -c 1-10 | sed s/:/-/g)
  width=$(identify -format "%w" "$file")
  height=$(identify -format "%h" "$file")
  largest=$(( $width > $height ? $width : $height ))
  pointsize=12
  density=$(( $largest / $output_width_inches ))
  correct_height=$(( $output_height_inches * $density ))
  captionwidth=$(( $width - $border * 2 ))
  convert "$file" -density $density -units PixelsPerInch \
    -gravity North -extent ${width}x${correct_height} \
    -strip \( -undercolor white -background white \
    -fill black -font "$font" -bordercolor White \
    -gravity SouthWest -border $border -pointsize $pointsize \
    -size ${captionwidth}x  caption:"$date $description" \) \
    -composite "$destination/$file"
done
IFS=$SAVEIFS
gwenview $destination

Here's my current rename-based-on-exif, too. I modified it to use the ImageDescription or the UserComment field, and I switched to using Unicode stars and labels instead of # to minimize problems with exporting to HTML.

#!/bin/bash

date="\${DateTimeOriginal;s/[ :]/-/g}"
rating="\${Rating;s/([1-5])/'★' x \$1/e}"
tags="\${Subject;s/^/🏷/;s/, / 🏷/g}"
field=FileName  # TestName for testing
exiftool -m -"$field<$date $rating \${ImageDescription} $tags.%e" \
         -"$field<$date $rating \${UserComment} $tags.%e" "$@"

In order to upload my fancy-shmancy Unicode-filenamed files, I also had to convert my WordPress database from utf8 to utf8mb4. This upgrade plugin was very helpful.

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

I tried dpkg --add-architecture amd64, which let me install the docker-ce package from the Docker repository. Unfortunately, I didn't review it carefully enough (the perils of SSHing from my cellphone), and installing that removed a bunch of other i386 packages like sudo, ssh, and screen. Ooops!

Even though we've been working on weaning lately, I decided that letting A- nurse a long time in her sleep might give me a little time to try to fix things. I used Linode's web-based console to try to log in. I forgot the root password, so I used their tool for resetting the root password. After I got that sorted out, though, I found that I couldn't resolve network resources. I'd broken the system badly enough that I needed to use another rescue tool to mount my drives, chroot to them, and install stuff from there. I was still getting stuck. I needed more focused time.

Fortunately, I'd broken my server during the weekend, so W- was around to take care of A- while I tried to figure things out. I had enough free space to create another root partition and install Ubuntu 16, which was a straightforward process with Linode's Deploy Image tool.

I spent a few hours trying to figure out if I could set everything up in Docker containers from the start. I got the databases working, but I kept getting stymied by annoying WordPress redirection issues even after setting home and siteurl in the database and defining them in my config file. I tried adding Nginx reverse proxying to the mix, and it got even more tangled.

Eventually, I gave up and went back to running the services directly on my server. Because I did the new install in a separate volume, it was easy to mount the old volume and copy or symlink my configuration files.

Just in case I need to do this again, here are the packages that apt says I installed:

• General:
  • screen
  • apt-transport-https
  • ca-certificates
  • curl
  • dirmngr
  • gnupg
  • software-properties-common
  • borgbackup
• For the blog:
  • mysql-server
  • php-fpm
  • php-mysql
  • php-xml
• For Quantified Awesome:
  • ruby-bundler
  • ruby-dev
• For experimenting:
  • docker-compose
• For compiling Emacs:
  • make
  • gcc
  • g++
  • zlib1g-dev
  • libmysqlclient-dev
  • autoconf
  • texinfo
  • gnutls-dev
  • ncurses-dev
• From external repositories:
  • docker-ce
  • nginx-extras passenger
  • nodejs
  • syncthing

I got the list by running:

zgrep 'Commandline: apt' /var/log/apt/history.log /var/log/apt/history.log.*.gz

I saved my selections with dpkg --get-selections so that I can load them with dpkg --set-selections << ...; apt-get dselect-upgrade if I need to do this again.

Symbolic links to old volume:

• /var/www
• /usr/local
• /home/sacha
• /var/lib/mysql (after installing)

Copied after installing – I'll probably want to tidy this up:

• /etc/nginx/sites-available
• /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

Lessons learned:

• Actually check the list of packages to remove.
• Consider fresh installs for major upgrades.

When things settle down, I should probably look into organizing one of the volumes as a proper data volume so that I can cleanly reinstall the root partition whenever I want to.

I also want to explore Docker again – maybe once I've wrapped my mind around how Docker, Nginx, WordPress, Passenger, virtual hosts, and subdirectories all fit together. Still, I'm glad I got my site up and running again!

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.