Programmatically generate video or animated GIF in Python

Question

I have a series of images that I want to create a video from   Ideally I could specify a frame duration for each frame but a fixed frame rate would be fine too   I m doing this in wxPython  so I can render to a wxDC or I can save the images to files  like PNG   Is there a Python library that will allow me to create either a video  AVI  MPG  etc  or an animated GIF from these frames   Edit  I ve already tried PIL and it doesn t seem to work   Can someone correct me with this conclusion or suggest another toolkit   This link seems to backup my conclusion regarding PIL  http   www somethinkodd com oddthinking 2005 12 06 python-imaging-library-pil-and-animated-gifs

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Here s how you do it using only PIL  install with  pip install Pillow   import glob from PIL import Image    filepaths fp in    quot  path to image   png quot  fp out    quot  path to image gif quot     https   pillow readthedocs io en stable handbook image-file-formats html gif img   imgs    Image open f  for f in sorted glob glob fp in    img save fp fp out  format  GIF   append images imgs           save all True  duration 200  loop 0    See docs  https   pillow readthedocs io en stable handbook image-file-formats html gif

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Well  now I m using ImageMagick   I save my frames as PNG files and then invoke ImageMagick s convert exe from Python to create an animated GIF   The nice thing about this approach is I can specify a frame duration for each frame individually   Unfortunately this depends on ImageMagick being installed on the machine   They have a Python wrapper but it looks pretty crappy and unsupported   Still open to other suggestions

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I came upon PIL s ImageSequence module  which offers for a better  and more standard  GIF aninmation  I also use Tk s after   method this time  which is better than time sleep     from Tkinter import    from PIL import Image  ImageTk  ImageSequence  def stop event     global play   play   False   exit     root   Tk   root bind   lt Key gt    stop    Press any key to stop GIFfile    path to your GIF file  im   Image open GIFfile   img   ImageTk PhotoImage im  delay   im info  duration     Delay used in the GIF file  lbl   Label image img   lbl pack     Create a label where to display images play   True  while play    for frame in ImageSequence Iterator im       if not play  break      root after delay       img   ImageTk PhotoImage frame      lbl config image img   root update     Show the new frame image  root mainloop

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As one member mentioned above  imageio is a great way to do this  imageio also allows you to set the frame rate  and I actually wrote a function in Python that allows you to set a hold on the final frame  I use this function for scientific animations where looping is useful but immediate restart isn t  Here is the link and the function   How to make a GIF using Python  import matplotlib pyplot as plt import os import imageio  def gif maker gif name png dir gif indx num gifs dpi 90         make png path if it doesn t exist already     if not os path exists png dir           os makedirs png dir         save each  png for GIF       lower dpi gives a smaller  grainier GIF  higher dpi gives larger  clearer GIF     plt savefig png dir  frame   str gif indx     png  dpi dpi      plt close  all     comment this out if you re just updating the x y data      if gif indx  num gifs-1            sort the  png files based on index used above         images image file names                 for file name in os listdir png dir               if file name endswith   png                    image file names append file name                 sorted files   sorted image file names  key lambda y  int y split      1               define some GIF parameters          frame length   0 5   seconds between frames         end pause   4   seconds to stay on last frame           loop through files  join them to image array  and write to GIF called  wind turbine dist gif          for ii in range 0 len sorted files                       file path   os path join png dir  sorted files ii               if ii  len sorted files -1                  for jj in range 0 int end pause frame length                        images append imageio imread file path               else                  images append imageio imread file path             the duration is the time spent on each image  1 duration is frame rate          imageio mimsave gif name  images  GIF  duration frame length

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With windows7  python2 7  opencv 3 0  the following works for me   import cv2 import os  vvw               cv2 VideoWriter  mymovie avi  cv2 VideoWriter fourcc  X   V   I   D   24  640 480   frameslist        os listdir     frames   howmanyframes     len frameslist  print  Frames count    str howmanyframes    just for debugging  for i in range 0 howmanyframes       print i      theframe   cv2 imread     frames    frameslist i       vvw write theframe

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I used images2gif py which was easy to use  It did seem to double the file size though    26 110kb PNG files  I expected 26 110kb   2860kb  but my gif GIF was 5 7mb  Also because the GIF was 8bit  the nice png s became a little fuzzy in the GIF  Here is the code I used     author      Robert  from images2gif import writeGif from PIL import Image import os  file names   sorted  fn for fn in os listdir      if fn endswith   png        animationframa png    animationframb png    animationframc png           images    Image open fn  for fn in file names   print writeGif   doc     writeGif filename  images  duration 0 1  loops 0  dither 1       Write an animated gif from the specified images       images should be a list of numpy arrays of PIL images       Numpy images of type float should have pixels between 0 and 1       Numpy images of other types are expected to have values between 0 and 255     images extend reversed images    infinit loop will go backwards and forwards   filename    my gif GIF  writeGif filename  images  duration 0 2   54 frames written    Process finished with exit code 0   Here are 3 of the 26 frames     shrinking the images reduced the size   size    150 150  for im in images      im thumbnail size  Image ANTIALIAS

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The task can be completed by running the two line python script from the same folder as the sequence of picture files  For png formatted files the script is -   from scitools std import movie movie    png  fps 1 output file  thisismygif gif

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I came across this post and none of the solutions worked  so here is my solution that does work  Problems with other solutions thus far  1  No explicit solution as to how the duration is modified 2  No solution for the out of order directory iteration  which is essential for GIFs 3  No explanation of how to install imageio for python 3  install imageio like this  python3 -m pip install imageio  Note  you ll want to make sure your frames have some sort of index in the filename so they can be sorted  otherwise you ll have no way of knowing where the GIF starts or ends  import imageio import os  path     Users myusername Desktop Pics     on Mac  right click on a folder  hold down option  and click  copy as pathname   image folder   os fsencode path   filenames       for file in os listdir image folder       filename   os fsdecode file      if filename endswith     jpeg     png     gif              filenames append filename   filenames sort     this iteration technique has no built in order  so sort the frames  images   list map lambda filename  imageio imread filename   filenames    imageio mimsave os path join  movie gif    images  duration   0 04    modify duration as needed

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A simple function that makes GIFs   import imageio import pathlib from datetime import datetime   def make gif image directory  pathlib Path  frames per second  float    kwargs               Makes a  gif which shows many images at a given frame rate      All images should be in order  don t know how this works  in the image directory      Only tested with  png images but may work with others        param image directory       type image directory  pathlib Path      param frames per second       type frames per second  float      param kwargs  image type  png  or other      return  nothing             assert isinstance image directory  pathlib Path    input must be a pathlib object      image type   kwargs get  type    png        timestampStr   datetime now   strftime   y m d  H M S       gif dir   image directory joinpath timestampStr     GIF gif        print  Started making GIF       print  Please wait            images          for file name in image directory glob        image type           images append imageio imread image directory joinpath file name        imageio mimsave gif dir as posix    images  fps frames per second       print  Finished making GIF        print  GIF can be found at      gif dir as posix      def main        fps   2     png dir   pathlib Path  C  temp my images       make gif png dir  fps   if   name         main         main

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Like Warren said last year  this is an old question  Since people still seem to be viewing the page  I d like to redirect them to a more modern solution  Like blakev said here  there is a Pillow example on github    import ImageSequence  import Image  import gifmaker  sequence        im   Image open           im is your original image  frames    frame copy   for frame in ImageSequence Iterator im       write GIF animation  fp   open  out gif    wb    gifmaker makedelta fp  frames   fp close     Note  This example is outdated  gifmaker is not an importable module  only a script   Pillow has a GifImagePlugin  whose source is on GitHub   but the doc on ImageSequence seems to indicate limited support  reading only

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It s really incredible     All are proposing some special package for playing an animated GIF  at the moment that it can be done with Tkinter and the classic PIL module    Here is my own GIF animation method  I created a while ago   Very simple   from Tkinter import    from PIL import Image  ImageTk from time import sleep  def stop event     global play   play   False   exit     root   Tk   root bind   lt Key gt    stop    Press any key to stop GIFfile    path to your GIF file      im   Image open GIFfile   img   ImageTk PhotoImage im  delay   float im info  duration    1000    Delay used in the GIF file  lbl   Label image img   lbl pack     Create a label where to display images play   True  frame   0 while play    sleep delay     frame    1   try      im seek frame   img   ImageTk PhotoImage im      lbl config image img   root update     Show the new frame image   except EOFError      frame   0   Restart  root mainloop     You can set your own means to stop the animation  Let me know if you like to get the full version with play pause quit buttons   Note  I am not sure if the consecutive frames are read from memory or from the file  disk   In the second case it would be more efficient if they all read at once and saved into an array  list    I m not so interested to find out

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It s not a python library  but mencoder can do that  Encoding from multiple input image files  You can execute mencoder from python like this   import os  os system  mencoder

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I d recommend not using images2gif from visvis because it has problems with PIL Pillow and is not actively maintained  I should know  because I am the author    Instead  please use imageio  which was developed to solve this problem and more  and is intended to stay   Quick and dirty solution   import imageio images      for filename in filenames      images append imageio imread filename   imageio mimsave   path to movie gif   images    For longer movies  use the streaming approach   import imageio with imageio get writer   path to movie gif   mode  I   as writer      for filename in filenames          image   imageio imread filename          writer append data image

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I just tried the following and was very useful   First Download the libraries Figtodat and images2gif to your local directory    Secondly Collect the figures in an array and convert them to an animated gif   import sys sys path insert 0   path to your local directory   import Figtodat from images2gif import writeGif import matplotlib pyplot as plt import numpy  figure   plt figure   plot     figure add subplot  111   plot hold False        draw a cardinal sine plot images    y   numpy random randn 100 5  for i in range y shape 1        plot plot  numpy sin y   i          plot set ylim -3 0 3      plot text 90 -2 5 str i       im   Figtodat fig2img figure      images append im   writeGif  images gif  images duration 0 3 dither 0

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The easiest thing that makes it work for me is calling a shell command in Python   If your images are stored such as dummy image 1 png  dummy image 2 png     dummy image N png  then you can use the function   import subprocess def grid2gif image str  output gif       str1    convert -delay 100 -loop 1     image str          output gif     subprocess call str1  shell True    Just execute    grid2gif  dummy image  png    my output gif     This will construct your gif file my output gif

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from PIL import Image import glob   use it if you want to read all of the certain file type in the directory imgs    for i in range 596 691        imgs append  quot snap quot  str i    png       print  quot scanned the image identified with quot  i     starting and ending value 1 of the index that identifies different file names imgs   glob glob  quot   png quot    do this if you want to read all files ending with  png  my files were  snap596 png  snap597 png        snap690 png frames      for i in imgs      new frame   Image open i      frames append new frame   Save into a GIF file that loops forever frames 0  save  fire3 PIL gif   format  GIF       append images frames 1        save all True      duration 300  loop 0   I found flickering issue with imageio and this method fixed it

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I understand you asked about converting images to a gif  however  if the original format is MP4  you could use FFmpeg   ffmpeg -i input mp4 output gif

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Installation pip install imageio-ffmpeg pip install imageio  Code import imageio images      for filename in filenames      images append imageio imread filename   imageio mimsave  movie mp4   images   Quality is raised and size is reduced from 8Mb to 80Kb when saving as mp4 than gif

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I was looking for a single line code and found the following to work for my application  Here is what I did   First Step  Install ImageMagick from the link below  https   www imagemagick org script download php    Second Step  Point the cmd line to the folder where the images  in my case  png format  are placed    Third Step  Type the following command   magick -quality 100   png outvideo mpeg     Thanks FogleBird for the idea

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Old question  lots of good answers  but there might still be interest in another alternative     The numpngw module that I recently put up on github  https   github com WarrenWeckesser numpngw  can write animated PNG files from numpy arrays   Update  numpngw is now on pypi  https   pypi python org pypi numpngw    For example  this script   import numpy as np import numpngw   img0   np zeros  64  64  3   dtype np uint8  img0  32   32       255 img1   np zeros  64  64  3   dtype np uint8  img1 32    32  0    255 img2   np zeros  64  64  3   dtype np uint8  img2 32   32   1    255 img3   np zeros  64  64  3   dtype np uint8  img3  32  32   2    255 seq    img0  img1  img2  img3  for img in seq      img 16 -16  16 -16    127     img 0       127     img -1       127     img    0    127     img    -1    127  numpngw write apng  foo png   seq  delay 250  use palette True    creates     You ll need a browser that supports animated PNG  either directly or with a plugin  to see the animation

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As of June 2009 the originally cited blog post has a method to create animated GIFs in the comments   Download the script images2gif py  formerly images2gif py  update courtesy of  geographika    Then  to reverse the frames in a gif  for instance      usr bin env python  from PIL import Image  ImageSequence import sys  os filename   sys argv 1  im   Image open filename  original duration   im info  duration   frames    frame copy   for frame in ImageSequence Iterator im       frames reverse    from images2gif import writeGif writeGif  reverse     os path basename filename   frames  duration original duration 1000 0  dither 0

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To create a video  you could use opencv    load your frames frames        create a video writer writer   cvCreateVideoWriter filename  -1  fps  frame size  is color 1   and write your frames in a loop if you want cvWriteFrame writer  frames i

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Have you tried PyMedia  I am not 100  sure but it looks like this tutorial example targets  your problem

[python] Programmatically generate video or animated GIF in Python?

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