MoviePy is a Python module for script-based movie editing, which enables basic operations (cuts, concatenations, title insertions) to be done in a few lines. It can also be used for advanced compositing.

See the full documentation online here .

A typical MoviePy script looks like that:

from moviepy import *

# Load myHolidays.mp4 and select the subclip 00:00:50 - 00:00:60
clip = MovieClip("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','center')).set_duration(10)

# Overlay the text clip above the first clip
video = CompositeVideoClip(clip.size, [clip, txt_clip])

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

You can download MoviePy on its Github repository.

Just unzip everything in one folder, open a terminal and type

sudo python setup.py install

This should install the python packages listed below, but NOT OpenCV, which you will have to download and install manually (see below).

MoviePy is a very small program but it relies on many existing Python packages:

• OpenCV 2.4.6 or more recent, to read and write movie files.
• PyGame for video and sound previews
• Scipy and Numpy, for image and sound manipulation
• Scikit Image for advanced image manipulation
• The Decorator module for better code readability

MoviePy also needs some external software that you will need to install:

• ffmpeg, for writing movies and many other useful operations.
• imageMagick for text generation, GIF support, and much more in the future.

All these are normally easy to install (on linux, they will certainly be in your repos).

That will depend on your system. It seems easy for Windows. On linux, here is what I found on the Internet:

• Remove any other version of OpenCV if you installed it through a package manager.

• Unzip the source code of OpenCV 2.4.6 in some folder. open a terminal in this folder.

• Make a new directory and go into this directory:

  mkdir release
  cd release
  

• Run cmake. Here is the line I used:

  cmake -D WITH_TBB=ON -D BUILD_NEW_PYTHON_SUPPORT=ON -D WITH_V4L=OFF -D INSTALL_C_EXAMPLES=ON -D INSTALL_PYTHON_EXAMPLES=ON -D BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON ..
  

• Run make. This may take a few minutes (15 minutes on my computer).

  make
  

• Finally, install.

  sudo make install
  

And voilà !

You can check if it worked by opeing a Python console and typing

import cv2
print cv2.__version__