Horizon in the Milky Way

On twitter Filippo Menconi shared an incredible flash applet realized with Stéphane Guisard's photos. The applet is intercative: for example you can change point of view simply moving the mouse up and down, rigth and left. After some experiment, I try to realize a little video using the applet. I produce two videos, without changing in point of view. In particular I propose you the video with Clouds over us⁽¹⁾ by Seeking for a name like soundtrack:

I hope that you can like this little experiment. In every case, if you are curious, in the following part of the post, you can read the procedure that I use:
I realize the video capturing the area of the applet with XVidCap Screen Capture (software for Ubuntu) and I add the soundtrack using mencoder.
To install it, I run the following line⁽²⁾ in the console:

sudo apt-get install mencoder

And now I run this line⁽²⁾ in order to add Clouds over us to the video generated by XVidCap:

mencoder test.mpeg -o video01.avi -ovc copy -oac mp3lame -audiofile music.mp3

I also realize a video without sound (see on YouTube). In this case first of all I install mplayer⁽³⁾

apt-get install scrot mplayer

and after I start the screen capture procedure⁽³⁾:

while [ 1 ]; do scrot -q 100 $(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S).jpg; sleep 1; done

In this case I capture the entire screen, so before the realization of the video, I must extract from about 100 images the portion of the sky. In order to complete this operation without mistakes I install the David's Batch Processor⁽⁴⁾, a GIMP's plugin. After the resize, I list all files in a txt⁽³⁾

ls -1tr *.jpg > files.txt

and produce the video⁽³⁾

mencoder -ovc x264 -mf w=900:h=600:fps=8:type=bmp 'mf://@files.txt' -o video02.avi

Remember: all lines must run in the fold of the images. In alternative you must write the complete path of files.

---

(1) The song is included in Darkshine, the first album of Seeking for a name, a metalcore/deathcore spanish band. You can download Darkshine, released in creative commons, from Musica or Jamendo
(2) How to put music to a video in Linux
(3) HOWTO: Time-lapse capture your Linux desktop
(4) Batch Resize Images with Gimp