Embedded playing of numpy arrays in an Ipython notebook

playNPArray.py

from IPython.display import HTML
import subprocess
import tempfile
from PIL import Image

def playNPArray(array, frameRate = 6):
    # ffmpeg is fussy- images must be in the right format to encode right
    uint8_array = np.uint8(array.astype('float').copy() / float(array.max()) * 2**8-1)
    
    fileName = 'temp'
    temp_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp()
    
    # save the jpeg frames
    for i in range(uint8_array.shape[2]):
        im = Image.fromarray(uint8_array[:,:,i])
        im.save(os.path.join(temp_dir, '%s_%06d.jpg' % (fileName, i)), format='jpeg')

    # encode the video
    command = 'ffmpeg -y -r %s -i %s' % (frameRate, fileName) + '_%06d.jpg ' + '%s.webm' % fileName
    handle = subprocess.Popen(command, shell=True, cwd=temp_dir)
    handle.wait()

    # build the appropriate html from the video file
    video = open(os.path.join(temp_dir, 'temp.webm'), 'rb').read()
    video_encoded = video.encode('base64')
    video_tag = '<video controls alt="test" src="data:video/webm;base64,{0}">'.format(video_encoded)
    
    # kill the temp files
    subprocess.Popen('rm -rf ' + temp_dir, shell=True)

    return HTML(data=video_tag)

playNPArray(np.random.random((100,100,10)))