How to Combine a Static Image with Audio in Python

Abdeladim Fadheli · 3 min read · Updated sep 2021 · Python for Multimedia

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There are many cases where you want to convert your audio file into a video, such as uploading audio to YouTube or something similar. In this tutorial, you will learn how to add a static image to an audio file to form a video file with Python using the MoviePy library.

Before we get started with the code, let's install MoviePy:

$ pip install moviepy

Open up a new Python file and write the following:

from moviepy.editor import AudioFileClip, ImageClip


def add_static_image_to_audio(image_path, audio_path, output_path):
    """Create and save a video file to `output_path` after 
    combining a static image that is located in `image_path` 
    with an audio file in `audio_path`"""
    # create the audio clip object
    audio_clip = AudioFileClip(audio_path)
    # create the image clip object
    image_clip = ImageClip(image_path)
    # use set_audio method from image clip to combine the audio with the image
    video_clip = image_clip.set_audio(audio_clip)
    # specify the duration of the new clip to be the duration of the audio clip
    video_clip.duration = audio_clip.duration
    # set the FPS to 1
    video_clip.fps = 1
    # write the resuling video clip
    video_clip.write_videofile(output_path)

The add_static_image_to_audio() function does everything, it expects the image path, audio path, and the output video path, and then:

It creates the AudioFileClip() instance from the audio_path.
It also created the ImageClip() instance from the image_path.
We add the audio to the ImageClip instance using the set_audio() method which returns a new clip.
We set the duration of this new video clip to the duration of the audio clip (you can change it to any length you want, in seconds).
We also set the FPS, setting to 1 means there is one frame per second. It's required for any video clip by the way.
Finally, we use the write_videofile() method to save the resulting video file.

Now let's use the argparse module to parse command-line arguments:

if __name__ == "__main__":
    import argparse
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Simple Python script to add a static image to an audio to make a video")
    parser.add_argument("image", help="The image path")
    parser.add_argument("audio", help="The audio path")
    parser.add_argument("output", help="The output video file path")
    args = parser.parse_args()
    add_static_image_to_audio(args.image, args.audio, args.output)

Awesome, let's test it:

$ python add_photo_to_audio.py --help

Output:

usage: add_photo_to_audio.py [-h] image audio output

Simple Python script to add a static image to an audio to make a video

positional arguments:
  image       The image path
  audio       The audio path
  output      The output video file path

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

Great, let's try it out with this image and this audio file:

$ python add_photo_to_audio.py directed-by-robert-image.jpg "Directed-by-Robert-B.-Weide-theme.mp3" output.mp4

The output.mp4 file will appear in the current directory:

Resulting video

Alright, that's it for the tutorial! Check the full code here.

Learn also: How to Extract Audio from Video in Python.

Happy coding ♥

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