How to add text to a video with ffmpeg and python

Question

I've been trying to add text to an avi with ffmpeg and I can't seem to get it right.

Please help:

import subprocess

ffmpeg = "C:\\ffmpeg_10_6_11.exe"
inVid = "C:\\test_in.avi"
outVid = "C:\\test_out.avi"

proc = subprocess.Popen(ffmpeg + " -i " + inVid + " -vf drawtext=fontfile='arial.ttf'|text='test' -y " + outVid , shell=True, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
proc.wait()
print proc.stderr.read()

Answer 1

A colon ":" and a backslash "\" have special meaning when specifying the parameters for drawtext. So what you can do is to escape them by converting ":" to "\:" and "\" to "\\". Also you can enclose the path to your font file in single quotes incase the path contains spaces.

So you will have

ffmpeg -i C:\Test\rec\vid_1321909320.avi -vf drawtext=fontfile='C\:\\Windows\\Fonts\\arial.ttf':text=test vid_1321909320.flv