animation save gets error writing to file with ffmpeg and ogv (or ogg) #2764

moorepants · 2014-01-24T17:05:49Z

Using: http://matplotlib.org/1.2.1/examples/animation/double_pendulum_animated.html

With these added lines at the top:

from matplotlib import __version__
print("matplotlib version: {}".format(__version__))
import os
os.system('ffmpeg')

And no clear_temp kwarg in the save method call. I get this for trying to make a double_pendulum.ogv file.

Python 2.7.5+ (default, Sep 19 2013, 13:48:49) 
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 1.1.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?         -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help      -> Python's own help system.
object?   -> Details about 'object', use 'object??' for extra details.

In [1]: run double_pendulum_animated.py
matplotlib version: 1.2.1
ffmpeg version 0.8.9-6:0.8.9-0ubuntu0.13.10.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the Libav developers
  built on Nov  9 2013 19:09:46 with gcc 4.8.1
*** THIS PROGRAM IS DEPRECATED ***
This program is only provided for compatibility and will be removed in a future release. Please use avconv instead.
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
usage: ffmpeg [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}...

Use -h to get full help or, even better, run 'man ffmpeg'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
RuntimeError                              Traceback (most recent call last)
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/IPython/utils/py3compat.pyc in execfile(fname, *where)
    202             else:
    203                 filename = fname
--> 204             __builtin__.execfile(filename, *where)

/home/moorepants/Desktop/double_pendulum_animated.py in <module>()
     90     interval=25, blit=True, init_func=init)
     91 
---> 92 ani.save('double_pendulum.ogv', fps=15)
     93 plt.show()

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib/animation.pyc in save(self, filename, writer, fps, dpi, codec, bitrate, extra_args, metadata, extra_anim)
    613                     #TODO: Need to see if turning off blit is really necessary
    614                     anim._draw_next_frame(d, blit=False)
--> 615                 writer.grab_frame()
    616 
    617         # Reconnect signal for first draw if necessary

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib/animation.pyc in grab_frame(self)
    197             # frame format and dpi.
    198             self.fig.savefig(self._frame_sink(), format=self.frame_format,
--> 199                 dpi=self.dpi)
    200         except RuntimeError:
    201             out, err = self._proc.communicate()

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib/figure.pyc in savefig(self, *args, **kwargs)
   1368             kwargs.setdefault('edgecolor', rcParams['savefig.edgecolor'])
   1369 
-> 1370         self.canvas.print_figure(*args, **kwargs)
   1371 
   1372         if transparent:

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib/backend_bases.pyc in print_figure(self, filename, dpi, facecolor, edgecolor, orientation, format, **kwargs)
   2094                 orientation=orientation,
   2095                 bbox_inches_restore=_bbox_inches_restore,
-> 2096                 **kwargs)
   2097         finally:
   2098             if bbox_inches and restore_bbox:

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib/backends/backend_agg.pyc in print_raw(self, filename_or_obj, *args, **kwargs)
    482             close = False
    483         try:
--> 484             renderer._renderer.write_rgba(filename_or_obj)
    485         finally:
    486             if close:

RuntimeError: Error writing to file

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

moorepants · 2014-01-24T17:08:38Z

Same error happens with .ogv or .ogg as an extension.

moorepants · 2014-01-24T17:12:47Z

If I explicitly set the save writer to be FFmpegFileWriter() as suggest here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/16721486/467314 then it computes for a while, and I get this error for .ogg:

Python 2.7.5+ (default, Sep 19 2013, 13:48:49) 
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 1.1.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?         -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help      -> Python's own help system.
object?   -> Details about 'object', use 'object??' for extra details.

In [1]: run double_pendulum_animated.py
matplotlib version: 1.2.1
ffmpeg version 0.8.9-6:0.8.9-0ubuntu0.13.10.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the Libav developers
  built on Nov  9 2013 19:09:46 with gcc 4.8.1
*** THIS PROGRAM IS DEPRECATED ***
This program is only provided for compatibility and will be removed in a future release. Please use avconv instead.
Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
usage: ffmpeg [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options] outfile}...

Use -h to get full help or, even better, run 'man ffmpeg'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
RuntimeError                              Traceback (most recent call last)
/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/IPython/utils/py3compat.pyc in execfile(fname, *where)
    202             else:
    203                 filename = fname
--> 204             __builtin__.execfile(filename, *where)

/home/moorepants/Desktop/double_pendulum_animated.py in <module>()
     91     interval=25, blit=True, init_func=init)
     92 
---> 93 ani.save('double_pendulum.ogg', writer=animation.FFMpegFileWriter(), fps=15)
     94 plt.show()

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib/animation.pyc in save(self, filename, writer, fps, dpi, codec, bitrate, extra_args, metadata, extra_anim)
    613                     #TODO: Need to see if turning off blit is really necessary
    614                     anim._draw_next_frame(d, blit=False)
--> 615                 writer.grab_frame()
    616 
    617         # Reconnect signal for first draw if necessary

/usr/lib/python2.7/contextlib.pyc in __exit__(self, type, value, traceback)
     22         if type is None:
     23             try:
---> 24                 self.gen.next()
     25             except StopIteration:
     26                 return

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib/animation.pyc in saving(self, *args)
    166         self.setup(*args)
    167         yield
--> 168         self.finish()
    169 
    170     def _run(self):

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/matplotlib/animation.pyc in finish(self)
    324             raise RuntimeError('Error creating movie, return code: '
    325                     + str(self._proc.returncode)
--> 326                     + ' Try running with --verbose-debug')
    327 
    328     def cleanup(self):

RuntimeError: Error creating movie, return code: 1 Try running with --verbose-debug

moorepants · 2014-01-24T17:15:19Z

BTW, .mp4 works. Is this just because I don't have the correct codec set?

moorepants · 2014-01-24T17:23:36Z

I've also tried to pass the --verbose-debug arg to ffmpeg, as suggest but this doesn't seem to work:

ani.save('double_pendulum.ogv', writer=animation.FFMpegFileWriter(), fps=15, extra_args=['--verbose-debug'])

moorepants · 2014-01-24T17:26:34Z

This doesn't seem to work either:

ani.save('double_pendulum.ogv', writer=animation.FFMpegFileWriter(extra_args=['--verbose-debug']), fps=15)

moorepants · 2014-01-24T17:33:35Z

This fails:

ani.save('double_pendulum.ogv', writer=animation.FFMpegFileWriter(), codec='libtheora', fps=15)

ffmpeg -codecs says I have encoding of libtheora support.

moorepants · 2014-01-24T17:34:54Z

So, this used to work, at least in Matplollib 1.1.1 and whatever standard install of ffmpeg I had in that version of Ubuntu, see this notebook:

http://www.moorepants.info/blog/npendulum.html

tacaswell · 2014-01-26T14:56:23Z

Have you tried this on master? There was some work on the argument order to ffmeg recently.

dawehner · 2014-06-26T06:21:06Z

I had a similar problem myself and figured out that it depends on the used DPI when you save. This is the list of working DPIs (checked range(50, 501, 1))

tacaswell · 2014-11-26T18:10:34Z

@danielballan does pyav also do writing?

danielballan · 2014-11-29T22:07:38Z

Yes, see for example how this is implemented in PIMS.

amunizp · 2014-12-11T19:59:38Z

Does not work on windows 7 using VERSION 1.3.1 of matplotlib.

Sample code

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""
Created on Thu Dec 11 11:52:11 2014

@author: amp
http://matplotlib.org/examples/index.html#examples-index

"""
# This example uses a MovieWriter directly to grab individual frames and
# write them to a file. This avoids any event loop integration, but has
# the advantage of working with even the Agg backend. This is not recommended
# for use in an interactive setting.
# -*- noplot -*-

import numpy as np
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use("Agg")
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as manimation

FFMpegWriter = manimation.writers['ffmpeg']
metadata = dict(title='Movie Test', artist='Matplotlib',
        comment='Movie support!')
writer = FFMpegWriter(fps=15, metadata=metadata)

fig = plt.figure()
l, = plt.plot([], [], 'k-o')

plt.xlim(-5, 5)
plt.ylim(-5, 5)

x0,y0 = 0, 0

with writer.saving(fig, "writer_test2.ogv", 100):
    for i in range(100):
        x0 += 0.1 * np.random.randn()
        y0 += 0.1 * np.random.randn()
        l.set_data(x0, y0)
        writer.grab_frame()

tacaswell · 2014-12-11T20:02:01Z

Can you please provide a traceback?

Does it work in 1.4.2? We do not support the 1.3.x series anymore and
there will be no 1.3.2.
On Thu Dec 11 2014 at 2:59:39 PM amunizp notifications@github.com wrote:

Does not work on windows 7 using VERSION 1.3.1 of matplotlib.

Sample code

-- coding: utf-8 --"""Created on Thu Dec 11 11:52:11 2014@author: amphttp://matplotlib.org/examples/index.html#examples-index"""# This example uses a MovieWriter directly to grab individual frames and# write them to a file. This avoids any event loop integration, but has# the advantage of working with even the Agg backend. This is not recommended# for use in an interactive setting.# -- noplot --

import numpy as npimport matplotlib
matplotlib.use("Agg")import matplotlib.pyplot as pltimport matplotlib.animation as manimation

FFMpegWriter = manimation.writers['ffmpeg']
metadata = dict(title='Movie Test', artist='Matplotlib',
comment='Movie support!')
writer = FFMpegWriter(fps=15, metadata=metadata)

fig = plt.figure()
l, = plt.plot([], [], 'k-o')

plt.xlim(-5, 5)
plt.ylim(-5, 5)

x0,y0 = 0, 0
with writer.saving(fig, "writer_test2.ogv", 100):
for i in range(100):
x0 += 0.1 * np.random.randn()
y0 += 0.1 * np.random.randn()
l.set_data(x0, y0)
writer.grab_frame()

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#2764 (comment)
.

amunizp · 2014-12-11T20:03:48Z

I do not know what traceback is.
Maybe this? The same thing happens with ubuntu 14.10

/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/matplotlib/__init__.py:1173: UserWarning:  This call to matplotlib.use() has no effect
because the backend has already been chosen;
matplotlib.use() must be called *before* pylab, matplotlib.pyplot,
or matplotlib.backends is imported for the first time.

  warnings.warn(_use_error_msg)


Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "<ipython-input-1-526883dfa5ab>", line 1, in <module>
    runfile('/home/kamehouse/ownCloud/compartiendo/matplotlibanimation.py', wdir='/home/kamehouse/ownCloud/compartiendo')

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/spyderlib/widgets/externalshell/sitecustomize.py", line 586, in runfile
    execfile(filename, namespace)

  File "/home/kamehouse/ownCloud/compartiendo/matplotlibanimation.py", line 39, in <module>
    writer.grab_frame()

  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/matplotlib/animation.py", line 204, in grab_frame
    dpi=self.dpi, **savefig_kwargs)

  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/matplotlib/figure.py", line 1421, in savefig
    self.canvas.print_figure(*args, **kwargs)

  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/matplotlib/backend_bases.py", line 2220, in print_figure
    **kwargs)

  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/matplotlib/backends/backend_agg.py", line 497, in print_raw
    renderer._renderer.write_rgba(filename_or_obj)

RuntimeError: Error writing to file

amunizp · 2014-12-11T20:05:56Z

I am using python 2.7 that is installed in spyder in both systems. Same version of matplotlib 1.3.1

OK, I will have to find out how to update matplotlib in both ubuntu and windows. Is there any chance that anything will break?

benrbray · 2014-12-23T18:41:00Z

The posted code from amunzip also fails for matplotlib 1.4.2, Python 3.3, Windows 7, 64-bit. Error trace:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "testplot.py", line 39, in <module>
    writer.grab_frame()
  File "c:\Python33\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\animation.py", line 210, in gra
b_frame
    dpi=self.dpi, **savefig_kwargs)
  File "c:\Python33\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\figure.py", line 1470, in savef
ig
    self.canvas.print_figure(*args, **kwargs)
  File "c:\Python33\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\backend_bases.py", line 2194, i
n print_figure
    **kwargs)
  File "c:\Python33\lib\site-packages\matplotlib\backends\backend_agg.py", line
513, in print_raw
    renderer._renderer.write_rgba(filename_or_obj)
RuntimeError: Error writing to file

mattjj · 2015-01-08T03:36:59Z

I got the same error as amunizp (also on mpl 1.4.2, Python 2.7.9, OS X, using miniconda with everything updated).

tacaswell · 2015-01-08T03:49:43Z

@dopplershift Do any of these tracebacks make sense to you?

Something is clearly getting messed up with the pipe.

Other things that look troubling is that setup discards *args unused...

mattjj · 2015-01-08T04:30:34Z

This might not be helpful, but I put an ipdb session right before the call to write_rgba and it looks like the file object is fine:

ipdb> print filename_or_obj
<open file '<fdopen>', mode 'wb' at 0x10cdc0300>
ipdb> renderer._renderer.write_rgba(filename_or_obj)
*** RuntimeError: Error writing to file

Actually, it looks like my ffmpeg might be broken... I'll reinstall it.

mattjj · 2015-01-08T04:42:01Z

Reinstalling ffmpeg (using MacPorts) totally fixed it for me. I noticed it was busted because I tried ffmpeg -v in the shell, which I probably should have done earlier. I just upgraded to Yosemite, so maybe I had an old version or something.

Sorry about that!

dopplershift · 2015-01-09T18:29:41Z

Glad you got it working. Please re-open if you have more problems.

cancan101 · 2015-04-03T22:10:01Z

I am still seeing this issue (on Linux). As pointed out in #2764 (comment), I think the issue has to do with some DPIs not working (although the acceptable values I get are different).

I am using v1.3.1 and I also see the issue in 1.4.3.

dopplershift · 2015-04-20T18:03:08Z

Does it work if you change the writer creation line to:

writer = FFMpegWriter(fps=15, metadata=metadata, codec='libtheora')

?

ylockerman · 2015-05-08T00:37:37Z

I have had the same error reported. From what I can tell matplotlib starts a ffmpeg process and then writes to it's stdin through a file interface. What it seems like is happening is that ffmpeg sees a frame that is invalid according to the parameters given when it was called. At that time ffmpeg quits. However, the python code dose not seem to know until it tries to write to ffmpeg on the next frame. Thus the crash. This can happen for a large number of reasons, and I would recommend matplotlib include some way to figure out why it happened (if possible).

It seems like it was caused (for me) by setting the bitrate too high. If you want to get some more debugging information ffmpeg adding

matplotlib.rcParams['animation.ffmpeg_args'] = '-report'

which will cause ffmpeg to create a log file each time it is run. I found the maximum bitrate of my source images and setting the param:

matplotlib.rcParams['animation.bitrate'] = 2000

I hope this helps. (I am using '1.4.3' on windows with WinPython)

Fixes issue pydy#216. - Removed the "bloggy" style text. - Specified the dependencies. - Included specific dependencies at the end of the notebook. - Removed the ogv output, as Firefox now supports mp4 and matplotlib seems to fail on ogg: matplotlib/matplotlib#2764 - avconv is required as the writer. - Changed to the linearizer introduced in SymPy 0.7.6.

moorepants mentioned this issue Jan 24, 2014

N Pendlum example can't make the ogv movies anymore pydy/pydy_examples#17

Closed

tacaswell added this to the v1.4.x milestone Jul 12, 2014

tacaswell added the topic: animation label Nov 26, 2014

dopplershift closed this as completed Jan 9, 2015

moorepants mentioned this issue Jun 11, 2015

npendulum issues pydy/pydy#216

Closed

moorepants mentioned this issue Jun 11, 2015

Update to the npendulum example pydy/pydy#220

Merged

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animation save gets error writing to file with ffmpeg and ogv (or ogg) #2764

animation save gets error writing to file with ffmpeg and ogv (or ogg) #2764

moorepants commented Jan 24, 2014

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tacaswell commented Jan 26, 2014

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tacaswell commented Nov 26, 2014

danielballan commented Nov 29, 2014

amunizp commented Dec 11, 2014

tacaswell commented Dec 11, 2014

amunizp commented Dec 11, 2014

amunizp commented Dec 11, 2014

benrbray commented Dec 23, 2014

mattjj commented Jan 8, 2015

tacaswell commented Jan 8, 2015

mattjj commented Jan 8, 2015

mattjj commented Jan 8, 2015

dopplershift commented Jan 9, 2015

cancan101 commented Apr 3, 2015

dopplershift commented Apr 20, 2015

ylockerman commented May 8, 2015

animation save gets error writing to file with ffmpeg and ogv (or ogg) #2764

animation save gets error writing to file with ffmpeg and ogv (or ogg) #2764

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moorepants commented Jan 24, 2014

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tacaswell commented Jan 26, 2014

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danielballan commented Nov 29, 2014

amunizp commented Dec 11, 2014

tacaswell commented Dec 11, 2014

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mattjj commented Jan 8, 2015

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ylockerman commented May 8, 2015