pydub Documentation

Pydub requires ffmpeg or libav to handle most audio formats. Use the following commands based on your operating system:

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install ffmpeg
# OR
brew install libav

Linux (aptitude):

apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-extra
# OR
apt-get install libav-tools libavcodec-extra

Windows:

1. Download and extract libav from Windows binaries.
2. Add the libav /bin folder to your PATH environment variable.

Install Pydub using pip. Note that for non-WAV formats (like MP3), you must also have ffmpeg or libav installed on your system.

pip install pydub

If you encounter issues with format conversion, you can enable a logger to see the exact ffmpeg or libav subprocess commands being executed by Pydub.

import logging
from pydub import AudioSegment

l = logging.getLogger("pydub.converter")
l.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
l.addHandler(logging.StreamHandler())

# This will now print the subprocess call to the console
AudioSegment.from_file("./test.mp3")

To play audio directly from your script, use pydub.playback.play. It is highly recommended to have simpleaudio installed for playback functionality.

from pydub import AudioSegment
from pydub.playback import play

sound = AudioSegment.from_file("mysound.wav", format="wav")
play(sound)

Use the .export() method to save audio files. You can specify the format, bitrate, metadata tags, and pass raw ffmpeg parameters.

• format: The output format (e.g., 'mp3', 'ogg').
• bitrate: A string like '192k'.
• tags: A dictionary of metadata (e.g., {'artist': 'Name'}).
• parameters: A list of ffmpeg switches and arguments (e.g., ['-q:a', '0']).

Use AudioSegment to load various audio formats. Pydub supports any format supported by your installed ffmpeg or libav installation.

Specific convenience methods include from_wav, from_mp3, and from_ogg. For other formats, use from_file(path, format).

AudioSegments are immutable. Operations return new AudioSegment instances.

• Slicing: Use millisecond offsets. song[:1000] gets the first second.
• Volume: Use + and - operators to adjust decibels (e.g., song + 6 boosts by 6dB).
• Concatenation: Use the + operator to append one segment to another.
• Crossfade: Use .append(other_segment, crossfade=ms) to join segments with a crossfade.
• Repeat: Use the * operator (e.g., segment * 2 repeats it twice).
• Fading: Use .fade_in(ms) and .fade_out(ms).
• Reversing: Use .reverse().