combine several GIF horizontally - python

Question

I have two GIF files, and I want to combine them horizontally to be shown beside each other, and they play together. They have equal frames. I tried a lot online for a solution, but didn't find something which is supporting GIF. I think the imageio package supports gif, but I can't find a way to use it to combine two together Simply, I want something like this example Any ideas of doing so ?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30227466/combine-several-images-horizontally-with-python — Carlo 1585, Jul 25 '18 at 11:42
Hello @Carlo1585 Yes exactly, I checked this and tried it. But it doesn't support GIF format, it gave me two JPG beside each other — Mostafa Hussein, Jul 25 '18 at 11:47
not sure about sorry, to be honest I never used imageio, but I'll try to investigate more. In any case I went to the imageio git project and I saw that there are still different issues with gif images so I advice you to have a look there. — Carlo 1585, Jul 25 '18 at 11:55
No problem, thanks a lot. But apart from imageio, is there another way to do this task ? — Mostafa Hussein, Jul 25 '18 at 11:56
Can't you use this? https://stackoverflow.com/a/30932152/2836621 — Mark Setchell, Jul 25 '18 at 12:04
@MarkSetchell Unfortunately, I don't have rights or authorization to install Magick. I know that this can be done easily by Magick, ffmpeg and so, but that's why I am trying to use a python script — Mostafa Hussein, Jul 25 '18 at 12:15

score 4 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 02 '22 at 10:10

I would code something like this :

import imageio
import numpy as np    

#Create reader object for the gif
gif1 = imageio.get_reader('file1.gif')
gif2 = imageio.get_reader('file2.gif')

#If they don't have the same number of frame take the shorter
number_of_frames = min(gif1.get_length(), gif2.get_length()) 

#Create writer object
new_gif = imageio.get_writer('output.gif')

for frame_number in range(number_of_frames):
    img1 = gif1.get_next_data()
    img2 = gif2.get_next_data()
    #here is the magic
    new_image = np.hstack((img1, img2))
    new_gif.append_data(new_image)

gif1.close()
gif2.close()    
new_gif.close()

So the magic trick is to use the hstack numpy function. It will basically stack them horizontally. This only work if the two gif are the same dimensions.

`imageio` cannot write transparency layers to GIFs, which is what bit me. Stay away if you need that! — xjcl, Jan 14 '20 at 06:11

combine several GIF horizontally - python

1 Answers1