Linux command line tools to create videos from text

Question

Which Linux command line tool(s) can be used to create videos from text? ffmpeg can be used to make videos from images but can it be used to make videos only from text? I have used ffmpeg for cutting or cropping the videos, don't know much about it but this is the only tool I know. Is it versatile to make videos from text with some animation etc?

Answer 1

You can use ffmpeg to create "black" video, like this (source):

ffmpeg -t 60 -s qcif -f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24 -r 25 -i /dev/zero silence.mpeg

and then add text as subtitles (source)

ffmpeg -i infile.mp4 -i infile.srt -c copy -c:s mov_text outfile.mp4