matplotlib.animation.MovieWriter

class matplotlib.animation.MovieWriter(fps=5, codec=None, bitrate=None, extra_args=None, metadata=None)

Base class for writing movies.

This class is set up to provide for writing movie frame data to a pipe. See examples for how to use these classes.

Attributes

frame_format	(str) The format used in writing frame data, defaults to ‘rgba’
fig	(Figure) The figure to capture data from. This must be provided by the sub-classes.

Parameters:

fps: int

Framerate for movie.

codec: string or None, optional

The codec to use. If None (the default) the animation.codec rcParam 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 animation.bitrate rcParam. A value of -1 implies that the bitrate should be determined automatically by the underlying utility.

extra_args: list of strings or None, optional

A list of extra string arguments to be passed to the underlying movie utility. The default is None, which passes the additional arguments in the animation.extra_args rcParam.

metadata: Dict[str, str] 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.

__init__(fps=5, codec=None, bitrate=None, extra_args=None, metadata=None)

MovieWriter

Parameters:

fps: int

Framerate for movie.

codec: string or None, optional

The codec to use. If None (the default) the animation.codec rcParam 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 animation.bitrate rcParam. A value of -1 implies that the bitrate should be determined automatically by the underlying utility.

extra_args: list of strings or None, optional

A list of extra string arguments to be passed to the underlying movie utility. The default is None, which passes the additional arguments in the animation.extra_args rcParam.

metadata: Dict[str, str] 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, …])	MovieWriter
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(fig, outfile, dpi, *args, **kwargs)	Context manager to facilitate writing the movie file.
setup(fig, outfile[, dpi])	Perform setup for writing the movie file.

Attributes

frame_size

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

classmethod bin_path()

Returns the binary path to the commandline tool used by a specific subclass. This is a class method so that the tool can be looked for before making a particular MovieWriter subclass available.

cleanup()

Clean-up and collect the process used to write the movie file.

finish()

Finish any processing for writing the movie.

frame_size

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

grab_frame(**savefig_kwargs)

Grab the image information from the figure and save as a movie frame.

All keyword arguments in savefig_kwargs are passed on to the savefig command that saves the figure.

classmethod isAvailable()

Check to see if a MovieWriter subclass is actually available by running the commandline tool.

setup(fig, outfile, dpi=None)

Perform setup for writing the movie file.

Parameters:

fig : matplotlib.figure.Figure

The figure object that contains the information for frames

outfile : string

The filename of the resulting movie file

dpi : int, optional

The DPI (or resolution) for the file. This controls the size in pixels of the resulting movie file. Default is fig.dpi.