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

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/

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)

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Note: This example is outdated (gifmaker is not an importable module, only a script).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)

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.

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.

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("<Key>", 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()

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!

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])

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')

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)

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)

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("snap"+str(i)+'.png')
    print("scanned the image identified with",i)  

starting and ending value+1 of the index that identifies different file names

imgs = glob.glob("*.png") #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.

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("<Key>", 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! :)

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)

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

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 ...")

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

Here's how you do it using only PIL (install with: pip install Pillow):

import glob
from PIL import Image

# filepaths
fp_in = "/path/to/image_*.png"
fp_out = "/path/to/image.gif"

# 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

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)

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

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)

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

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()