Case study
Weather Slideshow
Turns a folder of supplied images into a broadcast-ready video slideshow, driven from a configuration file so the sequence can change without touching the code.
Overview
Turns a folder of weather forecast images into a broadcast-ready video, with the timing, ordering and output settings coming from a configuration file rather than from the code.
The first piece of what became a two and a half year engagement with the same client across two platforms, and the start of a weather graphics system that kept growing.
Still in use. Of everything here this is the oldest piece of software I know to be running, and it has needed nothing from me since the day it was delivered.
The operator broadcasts as NRV Weather Center. I did not build that site and I do not run it. It is the client’s, and it is linked here only because it is where the output of this tool ends up.
Complexities tackled
Broadcast output has fixed requirements. Frame rate, resolution and encoding are not preferences when the result goes to air. Getting those right, and keeping them right as the source images changed size, is the difference between a file that plays and a file that is rejected.
The configuration file is why this became a system. Because the timings and ordering were external from the start, the client could change the output without a developer, and every later piece of the weather system inherited the same pattern. That decision on the first small job is the reason the eleven that followed were possible.
Stack
Python driving ffmpeg, configuration-driven.
Working on something similar?
Tell me what you are building and what is in the way. I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.