PyAV

PyAV is a Pythonic binding for the FFmpeg libraries. We aim to provide all the power and control of the underlying library, but manage the gritty details as much as possible.

---

PyAV is for direct and precise access to your media via containers, streams, packets, codecs, and frames. It exposes a few transformations of that data, and helps you get your data to/from other packages (e.g. NumPy and Pillow).

This power does come with some responsibility as working with media is horrendously complicated and PyAV can't abstract it away or make all the best decisions for you. If the ffmpeg command does the job without you bending over backwards, PyAV is likely going to be more of a hindrance than a help.

But where you can't work without it, PyAV is a critical tool.

Installation

PyAV requires Python 3.12 or later. Binary wheels are provided on PyPI for Linux, macOS, and Windows with FFmpeg bundled. You can install these wheels by running:

pip install av

Another way of installing PyAV is via conda-forge:

conda install av -c conda-forge

See the Conda install docs to get started with Miniconda.

Alternative Installation Methods

Due to the complexity of the dependencies, PyAV is not always the easiest Python package to install from source. This release supports FFmpeg 9.x. To build the source distribution against an existing FFmpeg installation on Linux or macOS, run:

[!WARNING] FFmpeg's development files and pkg-config must be available on your system.

pip install av --no-binary av

Installing from source

On Linux or macOS, build PyAV from a Git checkout with:

git clone https://github.com/PyAV-Org/PyAV.git
cd PyAV
source scripts/activate.sh

# Build ffmpeg from source. You can skip this step if ffmpeg 8.x is already installed.
./scripts/build-deps

# Build PyAV
make

# Testing
make test

# Install globally
deactivate
pip install .

On Windows, use a Conda environment and the FFmpeg development files maintained by the PyAV project:

git clone https://github.com/PyAV-Org/PyAV.git
cd PyAV
conda create --name pyav-dev --channel conda-forge python=3.12 cython setuptools numpy pillow pytest
conda activate pyav-dev
$ffmpegDir = Join-Path $env:CONDA_PREFIX "Library"
python scripts\fetch-vendor.py --config-file scripts\ffmpeg-latest.json $ffmpegDir
python setup.py build_ext --inplace --ffmpeg-dir=$ffmpegDir
python -m pytest

---

Have fun, read the docs, come chat with us, and good luck!