I've been using matplotlib's animation capability to produce mp4 files.
No problems when the mp4 is viewed in a video player. But viewing the
files in a browser is another story. With Ubuntu 15.10 and Firefox
45.0.2, for example, I get a message "Video can't be played because the
file is corrupt."
The problem is easily reproducible with several of the animation
examples on matplotlib; eg, see:
http://matplotlib.org/examples/animation/basic_example_writer.html. This
produces two mp4 files: lines.mp4 (created with FuncAnimation) and
im.mp4 (created with ArtistAnimation). Neither mp4 opens in Firefox for
me. I also get the same result when using an animation saved with
extra_args=['-vcodec', 'libx264'] that Jake Vanderplas recommends.
My wife gets the same result on her Mac when using Firefox and Safari,
but Chrome works fine.
From a web search, I'd say the problem is browser related. For more
details, see:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=987894
or
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1047078
So I'm not expecting the folks at matplotlib to have a solution for a
browser issue. But I'd really like to make a few animations available on
the web. That seems to imply the use of a web browser to view the files.
Certainly that would be the most natural action; just click on the link
to view the animation.
My question then comes to this: does anyone on the matplotlib forum have
experience with viewing mp4 files in a browser? If so, do you have any
suggestions for a work-around? I've literally spent months getting a few
matplotlib animations to the point where they may be useful to others.
It never occurred to me that I'd have problems at the very last link in
the chain.
Thanks very much for your thoughts. Sorry this is so long.
Gary