Visual effect of the different tblend functions in FFmpeg
FFmpeg is a fantastic resource for doing all sorts of video manipulations from the terminal. However, it has a lot of features, and it is not always easy to understand what they all mean.
I was interested in understanding more about how the tblend function works. This is a function that blends successive frames in 30 different ways. To get a visual understanding of how the different operations work, I decided to try them all out on the same video file. I started from this dance video:
Then I ran this script:
This created 30 video files, each showing the effect of the tblend operator in question. Here is a playlist with all the different resultant videos:
Instead of watching each of them independently, I also wanted to make a grid of all 30 videos. This can be done manually in a video editor, but I wanted to check how it can be done with FFmpeg. I came across this nice blog post with an example that almost matched my needs. With a little bit of tweaking, I came up with this script:
The final result is a 30-video grid with all the different tblend operators placed next to each other (in alphabetical order from top left, I think). Consult the playlist to see the individual videos.