Pyinstaller import

[JacobBumgarner]

Hello,
I've built an application using pyinstaller that relies on imageio-ffmpeg for movie creation.

When freezing the application in a non-windowed manner, I was having no issue with writing movies. However, when building a -windowed application on macOS, I was getting an import error telling me that the writer couldn't establish a link to the file path.

I found that this issue could be simply solved by adding the following argument to a build command:

--hidden-import=imagio-ffmpeg

I wasn't sure where else to report this, but I figured I would share it here for any help.

I'm using pyinstaller==4.3 and imagio-ffmpeg==0.4.3

[almarklein]

Putting import imagio_ffmpeg somewhere in your application (but not in an if) would probably also solve the issue.

Are you using imageio as the API (i.e. not imageio-ffmpeg directly)?

[JacobBumgarner]

Ohhh interesting. I just added the import imageio_ffmepg line.

The issue was fixed with the hidden-import argument, so honestly I'm probably not going to test it without it at the moment. In the future when I have more free time I'll give it a test.

And correct, I'm using from imageio import get_writer

Thanks for the information! I'm not really sure how to deal with this post, as it's not an issue, but I thought it was worth sharing for someone who might experience a similar problem in the future. Thoughts?

[almarklein]

And correct, I'm using from imageio import get_writer

Right, so because imageio does not explicitly import imageio_ffmpeg, pyinstaller is not sure whether it will actually be used and then acts in a conservative way by not including it. The --hidden-import or doing an explicit import should fix this.

It's indeed not technically a bug, but a good question nonetheless. I'm going to close it, and maybe Google will find it when someone with a similar question comes along :)

[JacobBumgarner]

Commenting to note that indeed, adding the import imageio_ffmpeg worked without the --hidden-import=imagio-ffmpeg arg. Thanks again @almarklein.