Nowadays, with the rise of social media, one of the skills most in demand is the ability to create videos. There is a wide range of video editing software available, both free and paid. These programmes tend to have a high learning curve due to the large number of options they often come with, causing many creators to pay third parties to do this work.

I recently discovered an option that I found interesting. It is a Python library that allows you to do this job, adding the advantage of being able to automate this process for recurring videos. This library is called Moviepy and you can find all its documentation at the following website https://zulko.github.io/moviepy/.

Setup of Moviepy

In order to use Moviepy it is first necessary to install the library with the usual Python command: pip install moviepy.

There are other dependencies that may be important, depending on the intended use, such as ImageMagick, Scipy, Scikit Image or OpenCV.

Basic Concepts

As described in the documentation, the central objects of MoviePy are clips, which can be AudioClips or VideoClips. They can be modified (cut, slowed down, darkened,…) or put mixed with clips to form new clips, they can be previewed (using either PyGame or the IPython Notebook) and rendered to a file (as a MP4, a GIF, a MP3, etc.). VideoClips for instance can be created from a video file, an image, a text, or a custom animation. They can have an audio track (which is an AudioClip) and a mask (a special VideoClip indicating which parts of the clip to hide when the clip is mixed with other clips). A clip can be modified using one of moviepy’s numerous effects.

In its documentation you can find many code examples: https://zulko.github.io/moviepy/examples/examples.html.

Final Thoughts

Depending on your intended use, this tool may or may not be useful to you.

If you want to do simple video compositing, adding a few effects and having the possibility to automate this process with a few lines of code, I think it can be very useful for you. Of course, to be able to use Moviepy, programming skills are required.

If, on the other hand, you require advanced editing of your videos, without the need to automate the video creation process, then I would not recommend it.