“Slitscan imaging techniques are used to create static images of time-based phenomena. In traditional film photography, slit scan images are created by exposing film as it slides past a slit-shaped aperture. In the digital realm, thin slices are extracted from a sequence of video frames, and concatenated into a new image.”

An Informal Catalogue of Slit-Scan Video Artworks and Research Compiled by Golan Levin.

This particular slitscan provides some slightly configurable scaffolding around ffmpeg (based on a blogpost from oioiiooixiii) and is intended for non-realtime rendering at various resolutions. it’s neither first, nor last. it’s not especially interesting, educational or efficient. just another cloudform in the endless space of possible implementation…

install (macOS)…

brew install ffmpeg drracket
git clone https://github.com/zzkt/slitscan.git

install (debian/ubuntu)…

sudo apt install ffmpeg racket
git clone https://github.com/zzkt/slitscan.git

simple transform…

racket slitscan.rkt -v input.mp4

transform at 1080p and delete working files, with minimal command line noise…

racket slitscan.rkt --width 1920 --height 1080 --loglevel quiet --cleanup input.mp4

options…

slitscan [ <option> ... ] <video-file>
 where <option> is one of
  -v, --verbose : various verbose messages
  -l <level>, --loglevel <level> : loglevel for ffmpeg e.g. quiet, error, warning, info, debug
  -c, --cleanup : Clean up temporary/working files
  -n, --noresize : do not resize the input file
  --horizontal : output a horizontal video only (default: both)
  --vertical : output a vertical video only (default: both)
  --width <pixels> : width of transform video
  --height <pixels> : height of tansform video
  -f <folder>, --in-folder <folder> : input folder
  -o <folder>, --out-folder <folder> : output folder
  --help, -h : Show this help

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