MoviePy (full documentation here) is a Python module for script-based movie editing.

It can read and write to many formats, including animated GIFs, and enables basic operations (cuts, concatenations, title insertions) to be done in a few lines. It can also be used for advanced compositing.

A typical MoviePy script looks like that:

from moviepy.editor import *

# Load myHolidays.mp4 and select the subclip 00:00:50 - 00:00:60
clip = VideoFileClip("myHolidays.mp4").subclip(50,60)

# Generate a text clip (many options available ! )
txt_clip = TextClip("My Holidays 2013",fontsize=70,color='white')
txt_clip = txt_clip.set_pos('center').set_duration(10)

# Overlay the text clip above the first clip
final_clip = CompositeVideoClip([clip, txt_clip])

# write the result to a file in any format
final_clip.to_videofile("myHolidays_edited.avi",fps=25, codec='mpeg4')

MoviePy is an open-source software originally written by Zulko and released under the MIT licence. The project is hosted on Github , where everyone is welcome to contribute and give feedback.

MoviePy requires the Python modules Numpy, Decorator, and tqdm_. All of these will all be automatically installed during MoviePy's installation.

You will also need a recent version of the software ffmpeg , preferably downloaded directly from the ffmpeg website.

If you intend to use advanced features you must install a few other dependencies like ImageMagick , Pygame etc. (see the docs).

First installation method : if you have pip installed, just type this in a terminal (sudo is optional on some systems)

(sudo) pip install moviepy

Second method : by hand. Download the sources, either on PyPI or (if you want the development version) on Github, unzip everything in one folder, open a terminal and type

(sudo) python setup.py install

If you put have a ffmpeg binary in you executable folder (on Linux it will be /usr/bin) it will be detected automatically by MoviePy. Else make sure that MoviePy can locate ffmpeg on your computer by running the script moviepy/conf.py that is in the sources. It it fails, then you must enter the path to the FFMPEG executable in the first line of this file

FFMPEG_BINARY = path/to/your/ffmpeg