matplotlib.animation.MovieWriter¶

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

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)[source]¶

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()[source]¶: 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()[source]¶: Clean-up and collect the process used to write the movie file.

grab_frame(**savefig_kwargs)[source]¶

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()[source]¶: Check to see if a MovieWriter subclass is actually available by running the commandline tool.

setup(fig, outfile, dpi=None)[source]¶

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.