TextClip produces low quality text

I think that the usage of ImageMagick to render texts is a bad option, but maybe I’m wrong and someone could explain me how to achieve good quality texts using TextClip. To illustrate this, I’ve done a comparison between gizeh vs PIL vs TextClip:

import math

import gizeh as gz  # pip install gizeh
import numpy as np
from moviepy import *
from PIL import Image, ImageFont, ImageDraw


SIZE = (300, 200)
BG_COLOR = (255, 90, 0)
DURATION = 2
FPS = 1

TEXT = "Text"
TEXT_SIZE = (200, 100)
TEXT_POSITION = (0, 0)
TEXT_ROTATION = 45
FONT_SIZE = 50
TEXT_COLOR_RGB = (74, 74, 74)
TEXT_COLOR_HEX = "#4a4a4a"
FONT = "Amiri-Bold"


def create_gizeh_demo():
    def create_gizeh_surface():
        surface = gz.Surface(
            width=SIZE[0],
            height=SIZE[1],
            bg_color=(BG_COLOR[0] / 255, BG_COLOR[1] / 255, BG_COLOR[2] / 255),
        )
        text = gz.text(
            TEXT,
            xy=(
                TEXT_SIZE[0] / 2 + TEXT_POSITION[0],
                TEXT_SIZE[1] / 2 + TEXT_POSITION[1],
            ),
            fill=(
                TEXT_COLOR_RGB[0] / 255,
                TEXT_COLOR_RGB[1] / 255,
                TEXT_COLOR_RGB[2] / 255,
            ),
            fontfamily=FONT.split("-")[0],  # only family
            fontsize=FONT_SIZE,
        )
        text = text.rotate(
            -math.radians(TEXT_ROTATION),  # Gizeh accepts radians and inversed
            center=(
                (TEXT_POSITION[0] + SIZE[0]) / 2,
                (TEXT_POSITION[1] + SIZE[1]) / 2,
            ),
        )
        text.draw(surface)
        return surface.get_npimage()

    surface = create_gizeh_surface()

    text_clip = VideoClip(lambda t: surface, duration=DURATION).with_fps(FPS)
    text_clip.size = SIZE
    return CompositeVideoClip([text_clip], size=SIZE).with_duration(DURATION)


def create_PIL_demo():
    img = Image.new("RGB", size=SIZE, color=BG_COLOR)
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
    font = ImageFont.truetype(f"~/.local/share/fonts/{FONT}.ttf", size=FONT_SIZE)
    draw.text((50, 50), TEXT, font=font, fill=TEXT_COLOR_RGB)
    img = img.rotate(
        TEXT_ROTATION,
        expand=False,
        fillcolor=BG_COLOR,
    )

    img = np.array(img)

    return VideoClip(lambda t: img, duration=DURATION).with_fps(FPS)


def create_TextClip_demo():
    bg_clip = ColorClip(size=SIZE, color=BG_COLOR, duration=DURATION).with_position(
        TEXT_POSITION
    )
    text_clip = (
        TextClip(
            TEXT,
            color=TEXT_COLOR_HEX,
            size=TEXT_SIZE,
            font=FONT,
            font_size=FONT_SIZE,
            stroke_color=TEXT_COLOR_HEX,
        )
        .with_position(TEXT_POSITION)
        .with_duration(DURATION)
    )
    text_clip = text_clip.rotate(TEXT_ROTATION, unit="deg", expand=True)
    return CompositeVideoClip([bg_clip, text_clip]).with_duration(DURATION)


final = concatenate_videoclips(
    [create_gizeh_demo(), create_PIL_demo(), create_TextClip_demo()]
)
final.preview()

Rendered result (MP4)

The result is that Gizeh creates a text with good quality using Cairo (first scene), followed by PIL (second scene) and moviepy using ImageMagick creates a low quality text (third scene).

Specifications

• Python Version: 3.8.5
• Moviepy Version: master
• Platform Name: Ubuntu
• Platform Version: 20.04
• ImageMagick Version: 6.9.10-23
• PIL version: 8.1.0
• cairocffi version: 1.2.0
• gizeh version: 0.1.11

[Zulko]

If you manage that I would vote for it (@tburrows13 what do you think?). Note that this would require some work to update the scripts that use the current ImageMagick-based text API, but that’s allowed by the major version bump in v2.0.

[tburrows13]

I’m seeing now your implementation of TextClip using PIL @tburrows13. What do you think that is worth to make?

• Implementation for PIL.
• Implementation for Cairo.
• Remove support for ImageMagick or not?
• Support all 3 providers and create a provider argument to select between them?

Yep, as I noted, I’d like to completely remove ImageMagick (it is only used here and as one of 3 optional gif renderers - I don’t think it will be missed). This allows us to remove a lot of the complexity of installation.

Between PIL and Cairo/Gizeh, if PIL can get equivalent results, then it is preferable. If Gizeh is as easy to install as PIL is, then that would be fine as well.