Multimedia applications are used in a broad spectrum of fields. Writing applications that work with images, videos, and other sensory effects is great. Not every application gets to make full use of audio/visual effects, but a certain amount of multimedia makes any application very appealing.
This book is all about multimedia processing using Python. This step by step guide gives you a hands-on experience with developing exciting multimedia applications. You will build applications for processing images, creating 2D animations and processing audio and video.
There are numerous multimedia libraries for which Python bindings are available. These libraries enable working with different kinds of media, such as images, audio, video, games, and so on. This book introduces the reader to some of these (open source) libraries through several implausibly exciting projects. Popular multimedia frameworks and libraries, such as GStreamer, Pyglet, QT Phonon, and Python Imaging library are used to develop various multimedia applications.
Chapter 1, Python and Multimedia teaches you a few things about popular multimedia frameworks for multimedia processing using Python and shows you how to develop a simple interactive application using PyGame.
Chapter 2, Working with Images explains basic image conversion and manipulation techniques using the Python Imaging Library. With the help of several examples and code snippets, we will perform some basic manipulations on the image, such as pasting an image on to another, resizing, rotating/flipping, cropping, and so on. We will write tools to capture a screenshot and convert image files between different formats. The chapter ends with an exciting project where we develop an image processing application with a graphical user interface.
Chapter 3, Enhancing Images describes how to add special effects to an image using Python Imaging Library. You will learn techniques to enhance digital images using image filters, for example, reducing 'noise' from a picture, smoothing and sharpening images, embossing, and so on. The chapter will cover topics such as selectively changing the colors within an image. We will develop some exiting utilities for blending images together, adding transparency effects, and creating watermarks.
Chapter 4, Fun with Animations introduces you to the fundamentals of developing animations using Python and Pyglet multimedia application development frameworks. We will work on some exciting projects such as animating a fun car out for a ride in a thunderstorm, a 'bowling animation' with keyboard controls, and so on.
Chapter 5, Working with Audios teaches you how to get to grips with the primer on GStreamer multimedia framework and use this API for audio and video processing. In this chapter, we will develop some simple audio processing tools for 'everyday use'. We will develop tools such as a command-line audio player, a file format converter, an MP3 cutter and audio recorder.
Chapter 6, Audio Controls and Effects describes how to develop tools for adding audio effects, mixing audio tracks, creating custom music tracks, visualizing an audio track, and so on.
Chapter 7, Working with Videos explains the fundamentals of video processing. This chapter will cover topics such as converting video between different video formats, mixing or separating audio and video tracks, saving one or more video frames as still images, performing basic video manipulations such as cropping, resizing, adjusting brightness, and so on.
Chapter 8, GUI-based Media Players using QT Phonon takes you through the fundamental components of the QT Phonon framework. We will use QT Phonon to develop audio and video players using a graphical user interface.
Python developers who want to dip their toes into working with images, animations, and audio and video processing using Python.
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.
To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
Action 1
Action 2
Action 3
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:
This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
These are short multiple choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.
These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "The dictionary self.addedEffects keeps track of all the audio."
A block of code is set as follows:
1 def __init__(self): 2 self.constructPipeline() 3 self.is_playing = False 4 self.connectSignals()
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
1 def constructPipeline(self): 2 self.pipeline = gst.Pipeline() 3 self.filesrc = gst.element_factory_make( 4 "gnlfilesource")
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
>>>import pygstNew terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "You will need to tweak the Effects menu UI and make some other changes in the code to keep track of the added effects."
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