How to properly enable ffmpeg for matplotlib.animation?

To enable ffmpeg for matplotlib.animation, we can take the following steps −

• Set the figure size and adjust the padding between and around the subplots.

• Set the ffmpeg directory.

• Create a new figure or activate an existing figure, using figure() method.

• Add an 'ax1' to the figure as part of a subplot arrangement.

• Plot the divider based on the pre-existing axes.

• Create random data to be plotted, to display the data as an image, i.e., on a 2D regular raster.

• Create a colorbar for a ScalarMappable instance, cb.

• Set the title as the current frame.

• Make a list of colormaps.

• Make an animation by repeatedly calling a function, animate. The function creates new random data, then use imshow() method to display the data as an image.

• Get an instance of Pipe-based ffmpeg writer.

• Save the current animated figure.

Example

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as animation
from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1 import make_axes_locatable

plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = [7.50, 3.50]
plt.rcParams["figure.autolayout"] = True
plt.rcParams['animation.ffmpeg_path'] = 'ffmpeg'

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
div = make_axes_locatable(ax)
cax = div.append_axes('right', '5%', '5%')
data = np.random.rand(5, 5)
im = ax.imshow(data)
cb = fig.colorbar(im, cax=cax)
tx = ax.set_title('Frame 0')

cmap = ["copper", 'RdBu_r', 'Oranges', 'cividis', 'hot', 'plasma']

def animate(i):
   cax.cla()
   data = np.random.rand(5, 5)
   im = ax.imshow(data, cmap=cmap[i%len(cmap)])
   fig.colorbar(im, cax=cax)
   tx.set_text('Frame {0}'.format(i))

ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, frames=10)
FFwriter = animation.FFMpegWriter()
ani.save('plot.mp4', writer=FFwriter)

Output

When we execute the code, it will create an mp4 file with the name 'plot.mp4' and save it in the Project Directory.