mpl.animation.MovieWriter

class mpl.animation.MovieWriter(fps=5, codec=None, bitrate=None, extra_args=None, metadata=None)[source]

Base class for writing movies. Fundamentally, what a MovieWriter does is provide is a way to grab frames by calling grab_frame(). setup() is called to start the process and finish() is called afterwards. This class is set up to provide for writing movie frame data to a pipe. saving() is provided as a context manager to facilitate this process as:

with moviewriter.saving('myfile.mp4'):
    # Iterate over frames
    moviewriter.grab_frame()

The use of the context manager ensures that setup and cleanup are performed as necessary.

frame_format: string
The format used in writing frame data, defaults to ‘rgba’
__init__(fps=5, codec=None, bitrate=None, extra_args=None, metadata=None)[source]

Construct a new MovieWriter object.

fps: int
Framerate for movie.
codec: string or None, optional
The codec to use. If None (the default) the setting in the rcParam animation.codec is used.
bitrate: int or None, optional
The bitrate for the saved movie file, which is one way to control the output file size and quality. The default value is None, which uses the value stored in the rcParam animation.bitrate. A value of -1 implies that the bitrate should be determined automatically by the underlying utility.
extra_args: list of strings or None
A list of extra string arguments to be passed to the underlying movie utiltiy. The default is None, which passes the additional argurments in the ‘animation.extra_args’ rcParam.
metadata: dict of string:string or None
A dictionary of keys and values for metadata to include in the output file. Some keys that may be of use include: title, artist, genre, subject, copyright, srcform, comment.

Methods

__init__([fps, codec, bitrate, extra_args, ...]) Construct a new MovieWriter object.
bin_path() Returns the binary path to the commandline tool used by a specific subclass.
cleanup() Clean-up and collect the process used to write the movie file.
finish() Finish any processing for writing the movie.
grab_frame(**savefig_kwargs) Grab the image information from the figure and save as a movie frame.
isAvailable() Check to see if a MovieWriter subclass is actually available by running the commandline tool.
saving(*args, **kwds) Context manager to facilitate writing the movie file.
setup(fig, outfile, dpi, *args) Perform setup for writing the movie file.

Attributes

frame_size A tuple (width,height) in pixels of a movie frame.