Moviepy: Moviepy is unable to find ffmpeg libx264 codec

[prasadpamidi]

Hi,

I am trying to write mp4 video files using moviepy on Ubuntu 17.10 and running into below mentioned codec issue.

BrokenPipeError                           Traceback (most recent call last)
~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/moviepy/video/io/ffmpeg_writer.py in write_frame(self, img_array)
    133             if PY3:
--> 134                self.proc.stdin.write(img_array.tobytes())
    135             else:

BrokenPipeError: [Errno 32] Broken pipe

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

OSError                                   Traceback (most recent call last)
<timed eval> in <module>()

<decorator-gen-205> in write_videofile(self, filename, fps, codec, bitrate, audio, audio_fps, preset, audio_nbytes, audio_codec, audio_bitrate, audio_bufsize, temp_audiofile, rewrite_audio, remove_temp, write_logfile, verbose, threads, ffmpeg_params, progress_bar)

~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/moviepy/decorators.py in requires_duration(f, clip, *a, **k)
     52         raise ValueError("Attribute 'duration' not set")
     53     else:
---> 54         return f(clip, *a, **k)
     55 
     56 

<decorator-gen-204> in write_videofile(self, filename, fps, codec, bitrate, audio, audio_fps, preset, audio_nbytes, audio_codec, audio_bitrate, audio_bufsize, temp_audiofile, rewrite_audio, remove_temp, write_logfile, verbose, threads, ffmpeg_params, progress_bar)

~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/moviepy/decorators.py in use_clip_fps_by_default(f, clip, *a, **k)
    135              for (k,v) in k.items()}
    136 
--> 137     return f(clip, *new_a, **new_kw)

<decorator-gen-203> in write_videofile(self, filename, fps, codec, bitrate, audio, audio_fps, preset, audio_nbytes, audio_codec, audio_bitrate, audio_bufsize, temp_audiofile, rewrite_audio, remove_temp, write_logfile, verbose, threads, ffmpeg_params, progress_bar)

~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/moviepy/decorators.py in convert_masks_to_RGB(f, clip, *a, **k)
     20     if clip.ismask:
     21         clip = clip.to_RGB()
---> 22     return f(clip, *a, **k)
     23 
     24 @decorator.decorator

~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/moviepy/video/VideoClip.py in write_videofile(self, filename, fps, codec, bitrate, audio, audio_fps, preset, audio_nbytes, audio_codec, audio_bitrate, audio_bufsize, temp_audiofile, rewrite_audio, remove_temp, write_logfile, verbose, threads, ffmpeg_params, progress_bar)
    347                            verbose=verbose, threads=threads,
    348                            ffmpeg_params=ffmpeg_params,
--> 349                            progress_bar=progress_bar)
    350 
    351         if remove_temp and make_audio:

~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/moviepy/video/io/ffmpeg_writer.py in ffmpeg_write_video(clip, filename, fps, codec, bitrate, preset, withmask, write_logfile, audiofile, verbose, threads, ffmpeg_params, progress_bar)
    214             frame = np.dstack([frame,mask])
    215 
--> 216         writer.write_frame(frame)
    217 
    218     writer.close()

~/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/moviepy/video/io/ffmpeg_writer.py in write_frame(self, img_array)
    176 
    177 
--> 178             raise IOError(error)
    179 
    180     def close(self):

OSError: [Errno 32] Broken pipe

MoviePy error: FFMPEG encountered the following error while writing file test_videos_output/solidYellowLeft.mp4:

 b"Unknown encoder 'libx264'\n"

The video export failed because FFMPEG didn't find the specified codec for video encoding (libx264). Please install this codec or change the codec when calling write_videofile. For instance:
  >>> clip.write_videofile('myvid.webm', codec='libvpx')

I am not noticing any codec related issues when I used ffmpeg directly from terminal to write an mp4 video file.

Versions:
MoviePy -> v0.2.3.2
ffmpeg -> v3.4
imageio -> v2.1.2
Ubuntu -> 17.10
Python -> v3.6

I also made sure ffmpeg has libx264 enabled.

Apologies if i missed anything, i am fairly new to python.

[prasadpamidi]

This is the ffmpeg command output

(****) ****@****ubuntu:~/$ ffmpeg
ffmpeg version 3.4 Copyright (c) 2000-2017 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 7.2.0 (crosstool-NG 8a21ab48)
  configuration: --prefix=/home/np/anaconda3/envs/py36 --disable-doc --enable-shared --extra-cflags='-fPIC -I/home/np/anaconda3/envs/py36/include' --extra-cxxflags='=-fPIC' --extra-libs='-L/home/np/anaconda3/envs/py36/lib -lz' --enable-pic --disable-static --disable-gpl --disable-nonfree --disable-openssl --enable-libvpx --cc=/home/np/anaconda3/envs/py36/bin/x86_64-conda_cos6-linux-gnu-cc --cxx=/home/np/anaconda3/envs/py36/bin/x86_64-conda_cos6-linux-gnu-c++ --enable-libopus
  libavutil      55. 78.100 / 55. 78.100
  libavcodec     57.107.100 / 57.107.100
  libavformat    57. 83.100 / 57. 83.100
  libavdevice    57. 10.100 / 57. 10.100
  libavfilter     6.107.100 /  6.107.100
  libswscale      4.  8.100 /  4.  8.100
  libswresample   2.  9.100 /  2.  9.100
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
usage: ffmpeg [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}...

[dmyersturnbull]

Can't thumbs-up. But I'm running into the same issue in Fedora. It complains about the codec libx264 even if I pass codec='libx265'.

[prasadpamidi]

Fixed by installing ffmpeg with this : conda install -c conda-forge ffmpeg

[Zulko]

I am reponening this as moviepy is supposed to work "out of the box". And a solution based on conda is not universal.

[FadyMorris]

Fixed the problem by removing anaconda version of ffmpeg and installing it from the package manager :

conda remove ffmpeg    
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

[nii4u]

This problem kept me up all night, but finally, the trick below worked

Fixed the problem by removing anaconda version of ffmpeg and installing it from the package manager :

conda remove ffmpeg    
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

[shafrashakitaak]

If you had already installed ffmpeg, close and open your python IDE

[BKaurHarpreet]

If a particular audio format is not mandatory for you and you are flexible to experiment with different file format then try changing the format to clip the audio from the video. In my case the moviepy did not work with mp4 but worked with mp3 file format.