Using FFmpeg and IPython

Question

I am relatively new to Python (I used MATLAB a lot more). I essentially want to be able to make and save animations. So I went and checked how it\'s done and found this : ht

Answer 1

I came across the exact same error as I started working with animations using the exact same example to start with. First of all,

I am using Windows 7, Python 2.7.6, matplotlib 1.3.1

Short answer: Try to set up the FFMpegWriter yourself by

mywriter = animation.FFMpegWriter()
anim.save('mymovie.mp4',writer=mywriter)

Long answer: I am quite sure that there is a bug in matplotblib.animation.save There is the following line

if is_string_like(writer):

to catch the case that the user defined writer is actually not a writer function but just its name. It then instanciates an instance of that writer if it's available

if writer in writers.avail:
     writer = writers[writer](fps, codec, bitrate,
                              extra_args=extra_args,
                              metadata=metadata

However, and here is the bug, if the user defined writer is not in writers.avail it just uses

writer = writers.list()[0]

which itself returns a string with the name of the writer to be used. However, this string is nowhere used to actually instanciate a writer object!