Title Screens & Maps

This is where the output stops looking like "FFmpeg concat" and starts looking like something you'd actually want to show people.

Title screens are the structural connective tissue: animated intro cards, month dividers, trip maps, globe fly-overs, and ending sequences. They're what separates a clip dump from a memory video that feels produced. Same kind of polish as Relive, but running on your own hardware with your own data.

What gets generated

Depending on the memory type, title screens include some or all of:

• Intro card: content-backed background (blurred + darkened frame from your footage), white title text with entrance animation, optional subtitle (person name, date range). 3.5 seconds.
• Month dividers: for yearly memories, each month section gets a divider card. Keeps the viewer oriented in a 10-minute video.
• Trip map animation: satellite fly-over from home to destination using Van Wijk zoom. Replaces the generic intro for trip memories.
• Globe rendering: for long-distance trips, a rotating 3D globe with departure and arrival points. Built in Taichi, runs on GPU when available.
• Location cards: city name + map thumbnail between trip segments.
• Ending sequence: fade-to-white with year or closing text.

Three rendering backends

The system picks the best renderer available on your hardware:

Backend	When it's used	What it does well
Taichi GPU	Apple Silicon or CUDA GPU detected	Particle systems, animated gradients, globe rendering, SDF text. Full cinematic quality.
PIL	No GPU, or --no-animated-background	Static gradients, clean text rendering. Still looks good, just no animation.
FFmpeg	Fallback for minimal environments	Text overlay via drawtext filter. Basic but functional.

The renderer selection is automatic. You don't need to configure anything: if you have a GPU, you get particles and animations. If you don't, you get clean static cards. Both look intentional.

Content-backed backgrounds

By default, title screens use a frame from your actual footage as the background. The system extracts a frame at the 1/3 mark of the first clip, applies a heavy blur (40px) and darkens it (45%), then renders white text on top. This means every title screen looks like it belongs to the video it introduces, rather than using a generic gradient.

An optional slow-motion background effect uses Catmull-Rom interpolation with cubic ease-in timing to animate the blurred background during the title card. Falls back to a static blurred frame when disabled.

Visual styles

All styles use dark cinematic palettes with white text. No pastel or bright backgrounds. Five named styles are available:

Style	Palette	Character
modern_warm	Warm charcoal/stone	Bold, semibold Montserrat. Amber accents.
elegant_minimal	Deep navy/black	Clean, medium weight. Cyan accents.
vintage_charm	Warm charcoal	Nostalgic feel. Amber/gold accents.
playful_bright	Midnight slate	Energetic, semibold. Purple accents.
soft_romantic	Warm stone/zinc	Gentle fades. Warm amber accents.

Mood-based selection (default)

By default (style_mode: auto), the system picks the style based on the video's detected mood. Each mood maps to a color palette, font family, animation preset, and font weight:

Mood	Palette	Font	Animation
happy	warm_dark	Quicksand	fade_up
calm	deep_teal	Raleway	slow_fade
energetic	midnight	Outfit	smooth_slide
nostalgic	warm_dark	Josefin Sans	slow_fade
romantic	warm_dark	Josefin Sans	gentle_scale
playful	midnight	Quicksand	fade_up
peaceful	deep_teal	Raleway	slow_fade
exciting	cinematic_dark	Outfit	smooth_slide

Four color palettes are available: cinematic_dark (deep navy), warm_dark (warm stone/charcoal), deep_teal (ocean blue/teal), midnight (slate). All use white or near-white text.

Set style_mode: random to pick a named style at random instead of using mood detection. Or pass --style elegant_minimal to the titles CLI to force a specific style.

Map Animation

Trip memories start with an animated satellite fly-over from your home location to the destination. It's a Google Earth-style zoom that gives context before the clips start.

What it does

The animation starts at city-level zoom on your home location, flies out and across to the destination(s), then settles at a zoom level that shows all the destination pins. Duration is configurable (default 5 seconds).

Each endpoint gets a pin (red circle with white outline) and a city label. The title text fades in over the satellite imagery, sitting in the lower third so it doesn't block the map.

Zoom vs. pan selection

Two animation modes get picked automatically based on how far apart departure and destination are:

• Van Wijk zoom: for long distances. Zooms out to show the route, then zooms back in. The math is the d3 interpolateZoom algorithm: it picks the smoothest path through zoom-space rather than just linearly interpolating.
• Linear pan: for short hops. When the destination is close enough that the mid-transit zoom would stay above zoom level 10 (roughly city-block level), it just pans at fixed zoom instead of zooming out unnecessarily.

Tile source

Satellite imagery comes from ArcGIS World Imagery tiles: no API key required. Tiles are cached in-memory during rendering to avoid redundant fetches across adjacent frames.

Map styles

The static map renderer supports three styles, used for pin-and-label map frames (not the fly-over animation):

Key	Source	Notes
satellite	ArcGIS World Imagery	Default. Used for the fly-over.
osm	OpenStreetMap	Clean street map, good for city-level
topo	OpenTopoMap	Topographic, useful for hiking trips

Configure with map_style: osm under title_screens if you want a different style for location cards.

Trip Classification

The LLM looks at which locations repeat across days:

Pattern	Classification	Map mode	Real example
Same spot every night, excursions during the day	base_camp	excursions	Val d'Aoste: Ville Sur Sarre as base, hikes to Cogne and La Thuile
2-3 spots, each for multiple consecutive days	multi_base	overnight_stops	Cyprus: 5 nights in Nicosia, 5 nights in Geroskipou
Different town each day, big distances	road_trip	overnight_stops	Italy 2022: 14 days from Umbria through Marche to Alsace
Daily moves but short distances, progressive	hiking_trail	overnight_stops	Saxon Switzerland: Hohnstein to Bad Schandau to Konigstein

Configuration

Title screen settings live under title_screens in your config:

title_screens:
  style_mode: auto              # auto (mood-based) or random
  animated_background: true     # GPU-accelerated backgrounds (auto-detected)
  title_duration: 3.5           # seconds per title card
  locale: auto                  # auto, en, or fr
  show_decorative_lines: false  # subtle line accents
  show_month_dividers: true     # month dividers in yearly memories
  use_first_name_only: true     # "Emma" instead of "Emma Dumont"

Map coordinates for trip memories come from the trips config section:

trips:
  homebase_latitude: 48.8566    # Your home coordinates
  homebase_longitude: 2.3522

Previewing before a full render

The titles test CLI command generates standalone title cards so you can dial in the look without running a full pipeline:

# Quick preview
immich-memories titles test --year 2025 --style elegant_minimal

# Birthday card
immich-memories titles test --birthday-age 3 --person "Emma" --year 2025

# French, portrait orientation
immich-memories titles test --year 2025 --locale fr --orientation portrait

See CLI: titles for the full flag reference.