Pictures on Instagram are squares so it’s not adapted for a panorama.
Here is a solution I already see but I it’s clearly not the right solution :

So my idea was to make a video that goes from the left to the right within the panorama picture.
I wrote the following script using FFmpeg :

ffmpeg -loop 1 \
-i 640.png \
-i panorama_picture.jpg \
-filter_complex "[1:v]scale=-1:640[scaled];[0:v][scaled]overlay=x='-((w-640)*t/15)':y=0[out]" -map '[out]' \
-shortest -t 15 -y \
panorama_video.mp4

I used a 640x640px transparent PNG to set the video format and apply the filter. The panorama image is scaled at 640px height and animated during a 15 second loop.

Here is the result :

FFmpeg

The idea is to create a video by combining an audio file with an image and it looks like the easiest way to do it is to use FFmpeg.
I quickly found a topic on Stack Overflow with the solution.

FFmpeg was already installed on my server but the version was too old to make it work. I even tried to update it…
The good thing is FFmpeg provides static builds, so I used this solution instead and it works fine.

Optimization

When I looked at the file generation log I noticed the frame rate was around 25 fps which is not logical, since we are using one image for the whole video.
With the option -r you can set the frame rate to get one frame for the whole video. e.g. -r 0.033 for a 30s video (1/30).
In my case my file went from 1093kB to 655kB.  It saves 40% !

Here is my final command line :

ffmpeg \
-loop 1 -i INPUT_IMAGE_FILE.jpg \
-i INPUT_AUDIO_FILE.mp3 \
-strict experimental -c:a aac -b:a 128k \
-c:v libx264 -tune stillimage -pix_fmt yuv420p -r 0.033 \
-shortest -t 30 -y \
OUTPUT_VIDEO_FILE.mp4

Deezer API

Now that I knew how to generate the video, I just had to do it with the Deezer API. All I had to do was get the album image cover and the mp3 preview for the desired track, which is all stored in the Deezer track object.

So I wrote a script to create the video simply by giving the Deezer track ID.
It’s available on my GitHub where I explain how it works.

→ See JSON response | video file
→ Get it on GitHub.

Limitations

I now have an API like script that creates a video based on the Deezer track ID.

But this is where I stopped.  I could not find a way to share the generated video.
The Instagram API doesn’t provide a method to publish media. It’s only possible through the app.

To share my video on Instagram I had to generate it from my desktop, download the file, send it by email to myself, and save it on my phone from the mail app. Now it’s ready to be shared from my phone’s camera roll… Sigh.

Next step

For me, the next step would be to create an iOS or Android app to make this script useful. I’m not going to do it, but if someone is interested let me know…

But the thing is, these websites get your user token through the Instagram authentication, and with this same token, we can get access to the media of the users you follow.

So to get to my wife’s pictures, I wrote a script !  It’s available on my lab, and with it, you will be able to download your own pictures as well as those of your friends.

→ Try the script.

All generated zip files are deleted hourly.

So I added an Instagram extension to my PHP OAuth classes and wrote a script which gives me the order of which filters I’m using the most.
You can try it – you just have to connect to your Instagram account and accept permissions.

→ Try the script.

Which is why I am starting this blog !