[FFmpeg-user] Please release me from despair: multiple overlay images with fade in + out

[Dog Film]

Hi Stefano,

regarding timestamps - are you suggesting things that can be done with
the setpts filter? The example I posted works very well with static
images, no timestamp manipulation needed here, but I can not find a
way to add fades to all the images - how do come timestamps into play
here?

Thanks for the suggestion, one single file with all the overlays
fading in/out was in deed my next step, but before this I wanted to
validate if there are any known limitations regarding the fade filter,
as the image-sequence-only file still will have lots of them.

Would you or anybody else please like to point me to an example that
shows how to overlay at least three images on a source with working
fade-in and fade-out on all of this images? That would be very, very
niiiice :) BTW the repositioning of the overlays in my example is not
important, I did this just for testing (to better see if some image
overlay is hidden behind another one).

I did not work on this in a scientific way, but the hundreds of
mutations I tried to to this without success lead me to the idea that
it might actually be a limitation of the ffmpeg tool.
I was able to build some surprisingly complex filter graphs - but
bringing fade-in and fade-out into the elements of such a graph never
worked. Instead posting dozens of not working examples and asking what
was wrong with them, I believe it would be a better approach if
anybody could send just one working example, so we can learn from it.
BTW, this would be a great addition for the ffmpeg wiki!

>From my pov fade-in and fade-out on elements is such a basic
requirement for many video production workflows, it will be of great
value for many people to explain how this can be done efficiently with
ffmpeg.

However, this thread will be helpful at least for me, if anybody can
confirm that atm it is *not* possible to do this with ffmpeg, so I can
stop trying to search for non existing things...

Thanks for your attention,
have a nice day,
John