Turn Your Git History into a Stunning Video with Gource and Avconv

Talk is cheap, show me the code. Inspired by the popularity of alibaba/x-render , this tutorial demonstrates how to create a celebratory video of a Git repository using gource for log visualization and avconv for video processing.

Step 1: Install Gource and Avconv

Install the required tools via Homebrew (use a Chinese mirror if the default source is slow):

brew install gource
brew install libav   # avconv is similar to ffmpeg

Enable Chinese font support for Gource by replacing the default font:

rm /usr/local/var/homebrew/linked/gource/share/gource/fonts/FreeSans.ttf
ln -s /System/Library/Fonts/Hiragino\ Sans\ GB.ttc /usr/local/var/homebrew/linked/gource/share/gource/fonts/FreeSans.ttf

Step 2: Generate the Visualization Video

Navigate to the root of any Git‑managed project and run the following command. It configures titles, colors, fonts, speeds, and streams the frames directly to avconv to produce an MP4 video.

gource \
  --title "Your Title" \
  --seconds-per-day 0.15 \
  -1920x1080 \
  --multi-sampling \
  --background-colour 000000 \
  --dir-colour 62C454 \
  --file-font-size 12 \
  --font-size 24 \
  --dir-font-size 14 \
  --user-font-size 18 \
  --auto-skip-seconds 0.2 \
  --stop-at-end \
  --hide mouse \
  --highlight-users \
  --highlight-dirs \
  --file-extension-fallback \
  --file-idle-time 0 \
  --max-user-speed 200 \
  --filename-time 2 \
  --highlight-colour F5BE4F \
  --date-format "%Y-%m-%d" \
  --output-framerate 60 \
  --output-ppm-stream - \
| avconv -y -r 60 -f image2pipe -vcodec ppm -i - -b 65536K movie.mp4

Step 3: Add Background Music

Place an audio file (e.g., sound.mp3) in the project root and merge it with the video:

avconv -i movie.mp4 -i sound.mp3 -map 0 -map 1:a -c:v copy -shortest output.mp4

Step 4: Apply to Any Git Project

The same process works for any Git log, whether it’s an open‑source repository or your own work code.