PySceneDetect Releases

PySceneDetect 0.6

0.6 (May 29, 2022)

Release Notes

PySceneDetect v0.6 is a major breaking change including better performance, configuration file support, and a more ergonomic API. The new minimum Python version is now 3.6. See the Migration Guide for information on how to port existing applications to the new API. Most users will see performance improvements after updating, and changes to the command-line are not expected to break most workflows.

The main goals of v0.6 are reliability and performance. To achieve this required several breaking changes. The video input API was refactored, and many technical debt items were addressed. This should help the eventual transition to the first planned stable release (v1.0) where the goal is an improved scene detection API.

Both the Windows installer and portable distributions now include signed executables. Many thanks to SignPath, AppVeyor, and AdvancedInstaller for their support.

Changelog

Overview:

  • Major performance improvements on multicore systems
  • Configuration file support via command line option or user settings folder
  • Support for multiple video backends, PyAV is now supported in addition to OpenCV
  • Breaking API changes to VideoManager (replaced with VideoStream), StatsManager, and save_images()
    • See the Migration Guide for details on how to update from v0.5.x
    • A backwards compatibility layer has been added to prevent most applications from breaking, will be removed in a future release
  • Support for Python 2.7 has been dropped, minimum supported Python version is 3.6
  • Support for OpenCV 2.x has been dropped, minimum OpenCV version is 3.x
  • Windows binaries are now signed, thanks SignPath.io (certificate by SignPath Foundation)

Command-Line Changes:

  • Configuration files are now supported, see documentation for details
    • Can specify config file path with -c/--config, or create a scenedetect.cfg file in your user config folder
  • Frame numbers are now 1-based, aligning with most other tools (e.g. ffmpeg) and video editors (#265)
  • Start/end frame numbers of adjacent scenes no longer overlap (#264)
    • End/duration timecodes still include the frame's presentation time
  • Add --merge-last-scene option to merge last scene if shorter than --min-scene-len
  • Add -b/--backend option to use a specific video decoding backend
    • Supported backends are opencv and pyav
    • Run scenedetect help to see a list of backends available on the current system
    • Both backends are included with Windows builds
  • split-video command:
    • -c/--copy now uses ffmpeg instead of mkvmerge (#77, #236)
    • Add -m/--mkvmerge flag to use mkvmerge instead of ffmpeg (#77)
    • Long name for -a has been changed to --args (from --override-args)
  • detect-adaptive command:
    • --drop-short-scenes now works properly with detect-adaptive
  • detect-content command:
    • Default threshold -t/--threshold lowered to 27 to be more sensitive to shot changes (#246)
    • Add override for global -m/--min-scene-len option
  • detect-threshold command:
    • Remove -p/--min-percent and -b/--block-size options
    • Add override for global -m/--min-scene-len option
  • save-images command now works when -i/--input is an image sequences
  • Default backend (OpenCV) is more robust to video decoder failures
  • -i/--input may no longer be specified multiple times, if required use an external tool (e.g. ffmpeg, mkvmerge) to perform concatenation before processing
  • -s/--stats no longer loads existing statistics and will overwrite any existing files
  • -l/--logfile now respects -o/--output
  • -v/--verbosity now takes precedence over -q/--quiet

API Changes:

  • New detect() function performs scene detection on a video path, see example here
  • New open_video() function to handle video input, see example here
  • split_video_ffmpeg() and split_video_mkvmerge() now take a single path as input
  • save_images() no longer accepts downscale_factor
    • Use scale or height/width arguments to resize images
  • New VideoStream replaces VideoManager (#213)
    • Supports both OpenCV (VideoStreamCv2) and PyAV (VideoStreamAv)
    • Improves video seeking invariants, especially around defining what frames 0 and 1 mean for different time properties (frame_number is 1-based whereas position is 0-based to align with PTS)
    • See test_time_invariants in tests/test_video_stream.py as a reference of specific behaviours
  • Changes to SceneManager:
    • detect_scenes() now performs video decoding in a background thread, improving performance on most systems
    • SceneManager is now responsible for frame downscaling via the downscale/auto_downscale properties
    • detect_scenes() no longer shows a progress bar by default, set show_progress=True to restore the previous behaviour
    • clear() now clears detectors, as they may be stateful
    • get_scene_list() now returns an empty list if there are no detected cuts, specify start_in_scene=True for previous behavior (one scene spanning the entire input)
  • Changes to StatsManager:
    • save_to_csv() now accepts a path or an open file handle
    • base_timecode argument has been removed from save_to_csv()
    • load_from_csv() is now deprecated and will be removed in v1.0
  • Changes to FrameTimecode:
    • Use rounding instead of truncation when calculating frame numbers to fix incorrect round-trip conversions and improve accuracy (#268)
    • Fix previous_frame() generating negative frame numbers in some cases
    • FrameTimecode objects can now perform arithmetic with formatted strings, e.g. 'HH:MM:SS.nnn'
  • Merged constants MAX_FPS_DELTA and MINIMUM_FRAMES_PER_SECOND_DELTA_FLOAT in scenedetect.frame_timecode into new MAX_FPS_DELTA constant
  • video_manager parameter has been removed from the AdaptiveDetector constructor
  • split_video_ffmpeg and split_video_mkvmerge function arguments have been renamed and defaults updated:
    • suppress_output is now show_output, default is False
    • hide_progress is now show_progress, default is False
  • block_size argument has been removed from the ThresholdDetector constructor
  • calculate_frame_score method of ContentDetector has been renamed to _calculate_frame_score, use new module-level function of the same name instead
  • get_aspect_ratio has been removed from scenedetect.platform (use the aspect_ratio property of a VideoStream instead)
  • Backwards compatibility with v0.5 to avoid breaking most applications on release while still allowing performance improvements

Python Distribution Changes

  • v0.6.0.2 - Improve error messaging when OpenCV is not installed
  • v0.6.0.1 - Fix original v0.6 release requiring av to run the scenedetect command

Known Issues

  • URL inputs are not supported by the save-images or split-video commands
  • Variable framerate videos (VFR) are not fully supported, and will yield incorrect timestamps (#168)
  • The detect-threshold option -l/--add-last-scene cannot be disabled
  • Due to a switch from EXE to MSI for the Windows installer, you may have to uninstall older versions first before installing v0.6

PySceneDetect 0.5

0.5.6.1 (October 11, 2021)

  • Fix crash when using detect-content or detect-adaptive with latest version of OpenCV (thanks @bilde2910)

0.5.6 (August 15, 2021)

Release Notes

  • New detection algorithm: detect-adaptive which works similar to detect-content, but with reduced false negatives during fast camera movement (thanks @scarwire and @wjs018)
  • Images generated by save-images can now be resized via the command line
  • Statsfiles now work properly with detect-threshold
  • Removed the -p/--min-percent option from detect-threshold
  • Add new option -l/--luma-only to detect-content/detect-adaptive to only consider brightness channel (useful for greyscale videos)

Changelog

  • [feature] New adaptive content detector algorithm detect-adaptive (#153, thanks @scarwire and @wjs018)
  • [feature] Images generated with the save-images command (scene_manager.save_images() function in the Python API) can now be scaled or resized (#160 and PR #203, thanks @wjs018)
    • Images can be resized by a constant scaling factory using -s/--scale (e.g. --scale 0.5 shrinks the height/width by half)
    • Images can be resized to a specified height (-h/--height) and/or width (-w/--width), in pixels; if only one is specified, the aspect ratio of the original video is kept
  • [api] Calling seek() on a VideoManager will now respect the end time if set
  • [api] The split_video_ functions now return the exit code of invoking ffmpeg or mkvmerge (#209, thanks @AdrienLF)
  • [api] Removed the min_percent argument from ThresholdDetector as was not providing any performance benefit for the majority of use cases (#178)
  • [bugfix] The detect-threshold command now works properly with a statsfile (#211, thanks @jeremymeyers)
  • [bugfix] Fixed crash due to unhandled TypeError exception when using non-PyPI OpenCV packages from certain Linux distributions (#220)
  • [bugfix] A warning is now displayed for videos which may not be decoded correctly, esp. VP9 (#86, thanks @wjs018)
  • [api] A named logger is now used for both API and CLI logging instead of the root logger (#205)

Known Issues

  • Variable framerate videos (VFR) are not fully supported, and will yield incorrect timestamps (#168)
  • The -l/--add-last-scene option in detect-threshold cannot be disabled
  • Image sequences or URL inputs are not supported by the save-images or split-video commands (in v0.6 save-images works with image sequences)
  • Due to the use of truncation for frame number calculation, FrameTimecode objects may be off-by-one when constructed using a float value (#268, fixed in v0.6)

0.5.5 (January 17, 2021)

Release Notes

  • One of the last major updates before transitioning to the new v0.6.x API
  • The --min-scene-len/-m option is now global rather than per-detector
  • There is a new global option --drop-short-scenes to go along with -m
  • Removed first row from statsfiles so it is a valid CSV file
  • The progress bar now correctly resizes when the terminal is resized
  • Image sequences and URLs are now supported for input via the CLI/API
  • Images exported using the save-images command are now resized to match the display aspect ratio
  • A new flag -s/--skip-cuts has been added to the list-scenes command to allow standardized processing
  • The functionality of save-images is now accessible via the Python API through the save_images() function in scenedetect.scene_manager
  • Under the save-images command, renamed --image-frame-margin to --frame-margin, added short option -m, and increased the default value from 0 to 1 due to instances of the last frame of a video being occasionally missed (set -m 0 to restore original behaviour)

Changelog

  • [bugfix] Allow image sequences and URLs to be used as inputs (#152 and #188)
  • [bugfix] Pixel aspect ratio is now applied when using save-images (#195)
  • [cli] Renamed --image-frame-margin to --frame-margin in save-images command, added short option -m as alias
  • [bugfix] Fix save-images command not saving the last frame by modifying seeking, as well as increasing default of --frame-margin from 0 to 1
  • [cli] Make --min-scene-len a global option rather than per-detector (#131, thanks @tonycpsu)
  • [feature] Added --drop-short-scenes option to remove all scenes smaller than --min-scene-len, instead of merging them
  • [cli] Add -s/--skip-cuts option to list-scenes command to allow outputting a scene list CSV file as compliant with RFC 4180 (#136)
  • [enhancement] Removed first row from statsfile to comply with RFC 4180, includes backwards compatibility so existing statsfiles can still be loaded (#136)
  • [api] Add argument include_cut_list to write_scene_list method in SceneManager to support #136
  • [api] Removed unused argument base_timecode from StatsManager.load_from_csv() method
  • [api] Make the base_timecode argument optional on the SceneManager methods get_scene_list(), get_cut_list(), and get_event_list() (#173)
  • [api] Support for live video stream callbacks by adding new callback argument to the detect_scenes() method of SceneManager (#5, thanks @mhashim6)
  • [bugfix] Fix unhandled exception causing improper error message when a video fails to load on non-Windows platforms (#192)
  • [enhancement] Enabled dynamic resizing for progress bar (#193)
  • [enhancement] Always ouptut version number via logger to assist with debugging (#171)
  • [bugfix] Resolve RuntimeWarning when running as module (#181)
  • [api] Add save_images() function to scenedetect.scene_manager module which exposes the same functionality as the CLI save-images command (#88)
  • [api] Removed close_captures() and release_captures() functions from scenedetect.video_manager module

Known Issues

  • Certain non-PyPI OpenCV packages may cause a crash with the message TypeError: isinstance() arg 2 must be a type or tuple of types - as a workaround, install the Python OpenCV package by running pip install scenedetect[opencv] (#220)
  • Image sequences or URL inputs are not supported by the save-images or split-video commands
  • Variable framerate videos (VFR) are not fully supported, and will yield incorrect timestamps (#168)

0.5.4 (September 14, 2020)

Release Notes

  • Improved performance when using time and save-images commands
  • Improved performance of detect-threshold when using a small minimum percent
  • Fix crash when using detect-threshold with a statsfile
  • Fix crash when using save-images command under Python 2.7
  • Support for Python 3.3 and 3.4 has been deprecated (see below)

Changelog

  • [bugfix] fix detect-threshold crash when using statsfile (#122)
  • [bugfix] fix save-images command under Python 2.7 (#174, thanks @santiagodemierre)
  • [bugfix] gracefully exit and show link to FAQ when number of scenes is too large to split with mkvmerge on Windows (see #164
  • [enhancement] Improved seeking performance, greatly improves performance of the time and save-images commands (#98 and PR #163 - thanks @obroomhall)
  • [enhancement] improve detect-threshold performance when min-percent is less than 50%
  • [bugfix] Fixed issue where video loading would fail silently due to multiple audio tracks (#179)
  • [general] Made tqdm a regular requirement and not an extra (#180)
  • [general] Support for Python 3.3 and 3.4 has been deprecated. Newer builds may still work on these Python versions, but future releases are not tested against these versions. This decision was made as part of #180

Known Issues

  • Variable framerate videos are not supported properly currently (#168), a warning may be added in the next release to indicate when a VFR video is detected, until this can be properly resolved (#168)

0.5.3 (July 12, 2020)

Release Notes

  • Resolved long-standing bug where split-video command would duplicate certain frames at the beginning/end of the output (#93)
  • This was determined to be caused by copying (instead of re-encoding) the audio track, causing extra frames to be brought in when the audio samples did not line up on a frame boundary (thank you @joshcoales for your assistance)
  • Default behavior is to now re-encode audio tracks using the aac codec when using split-video (it can be overriden in both the command line and Python interface)
  • Improved timestamp accuracy when using split-video command to further reduce instances of duplicated or off-by-one frame issues
  • Fixed application crash when using the -l/--logfile argument

Changelog

  • [bugfix] Changed default audio codec from 'copy' to 'aac' when splitting scenes with ffmpeg to reduce frequency of frames from next scene showing up at the end of the current one when split using ffmpeg (see #93, #159, and PR #166 - thank you everyone for your assistance, especially joshcoales, amvscenes, jelias, and typoman). If this still occurs, please provide any information you can by filing a new issue on Github.
  • [enhancement] video_splitter module now has completed documentation
  • [bugfix] improve timestamp accuracy using the split-video command due to timecode formatting
  • [bugfix] fix crash when supplying -l/--logfile argument (see #169, thanks @typoman)

Known Issues

  • Seeking through long videos is inefficient, causing the time and save-images command to take a long time to run. This will be resolved in the next release (see #98)
  • The save-images command causes PySceneDetect to crash under Python 2.7 (see #174)
  • Using detect-threshold with a statsfile causes PySceneDetect to crash (see #122)
  • Variable framerate videos are not supported properly currently (#168), a warning may be added in the next release to indicate when a VFR video is detected, until this can be properly resolved (#168)
  • Videos with multiple audio tracks may not work correctly, see this comment on #179 for a workaround using ffmpeg or mkvmerge

0.5.2 (March 29, 2020)

  • [enhancement] --min-duration now accepts a timecode in addition to frame number (#128, thanks @tonycpsu)
  • [feature] Add --image-frame-margin option to save-images command to ignore a number of frames at the start/end of a scene (#129, thanks @tonycpsu)
  • [bugfix] --min-scene-len option was not respected by first scene (#105, thanks @charlesvestal)
  • [bugfix] Splitting videos with an analyzed duration only splits within analyzed area (#106, thanks @charlesvestal)
  • [bugfix] Improper start timecode applied to the split-video command when using ffmpeg (#93, thanks @typoman)
  • [bugfix] Added links and filename sanitation to html output (#139 and #140, thanks @wjs018)
  • [bugfix] UnboundLocalError in detect_scenes when frame_skip is larger than 0 (#126, thanks @twostarxx)

0.5.1.1 (August 3, 2019)

  • minor re-release of v0.5.1 which updates the setup.py file to return OpenCV as an optional dependency
  • to install from pip now with all dependencies: pip install scenedetect[opencv,progress_bar]
  • to install only PySceneDetect: pip install scenedetect (separate OpenCV installation required)
  • the release notes of v0.5.1 have been modified to include the prior command
  • no change to PySceneDetect program version
  • [feature] add get_duration method to VideoManager (#109, thanks @arianaa30)

0.5.1 (July 20, 2019)

  • [feature] Add new export-html command to the CLI (thanks @wjs018)
  • [bugfix] VideoManager read function failed on multiple videos (thanks @ivan23kor)
  • [bugfix] Fix crash when no scenes are detected (#79, thanks @raj6996)
  • [bugfix] Fixed OpenCV not getting installed due to missing dependency (#73)
  • [enhance] When no scenes are detected, the whole video is now returned instead of nothing (thanks @piercus)
  • Removed Windows installer due to binary packages now being available, and to streamline the release process (see #102 for more information). When you type pip install scenedetect[opencv,progress_bar], all dependencies will be installed.

0.5 (August 31, 2018)

  • major release, includes stable Python API with examples and updated documentation
  • numerous changes to command-line interface with addition of sub-commands (see the new manual for updated usage information)
  • [feature] videos are now split using ffmpeg by default, resulting in frame-perfect cuts (can still use mkvmerge by specifying the -c/--copy argument to the split-video command)
  • [enhance] image filename numbers are now consistent with those of split video scenes (PR #39, thanks @e271828-)
  • [enhance] 5-10% improvement in processing performance due to reduced memory copy operations (PR #40, thanks @elcombato)
  • [enhance] updated exception handling to raise proper standard exceptions (PR #37, thanks @talkain)
  • several fixes to the documentation, including improper dates and outdated CLI arguments (PR #26 and #, thanks @elcombato, and @colelawrence)
  • numerous other PRs and issues/bug reports that have been fixed - there are too many to list individually here, so I want to extend a big thank you to everyone who contributed to making this release better
  • [enhance] add Sphinx-generated API documentation (available at: http://manual.scenedetect.com)
  • [project] move from BSD 2-clause to 3-clause license

PySceneDetect 0.4

0.4 (January 14, 2017)

  • major release, includes integrated scene splitting via mkvmerge, changes meaning of -o / --output option
  • [feature] specifying -o OUTPUT_FILE.mkv will now automatically split the input video, generating a new video clip for each detected scene in sequence, starting with OUTPUT_FILE-001.mkv
  • [enhance] CSV file output is now specified with the -co / --csv-output option (note, used to be -o in versions of PySceneDetect < 0.4)

PySceneDetect 0.3-beta

0.3.6 (January 12, 2017)

  • [enhance] performance improvement when using --frameskip option (thanks @marcelluzs)
  • [internal] moved application state and shared objects to a consistent interface (the SceneManager object) to greatly reduce the number of required arguments for certain API functions
  • [enhance] added installer for Windows builds (64-bit only currently)

0.3.5 (August 2, 2016)

  • [enhance] initial release of portable build for Windows (64-bit only), including all dependencies
  • [bugfix] fix unrelated exception thrown when video could not be loaded (thanks @marcelluzs)
  • [internal] fix variable name typo in API documentation

0.3.4 (February 8, 2016)

  • [enhance] add scene length, in seconds, to output file (-o) for easier integration with ffmpeg/libav
  • [enhance] improved performance of content detection mode by caching intermediate HSV frames in memory (approx. 2x faster)
  • [enhance] show timecode values in terminal when using extended output (-l)
  • [feature] add fade bias option (-fb / --fade-bias) to command line (threshold mode only)

0.3.3 (January 27, 2016)

  • [bugfix] output scenes are now correctly written to specified output file when using -o flag (fixes #11)
  • [bugfix] fix indexing exception when using multiple scene detectors and outputting statistics
  • [internal] distribute package on PyPI, version move from beta to stable
  • [internal] add function to convert frame number to formatted timecode
  • [internal] move file and statistic output to Python csv module

0.3.2-beta (January 26, 2016)

  • [feature] added -si / --save-images flag to enable saving the first and last frames of each detected scene as an image, saved in the current working directory with the original video filename as the output prefix
  • [feature] added command line options for setting start and end times for processing (-st and -et)
  • [feature] added command line option to specify maximum duration to process (-dt, overrides -et)

0.3.1-beta (January 23, 2016)

  • [feature] added downscaling/subsampling option (-df / --downscale-factor) to improve performance on higher resolution videos
  • [feature] added frameskip option (-fs / --frame-skip) to improve performance on high framerate videos, at expense of frame accuracy and possible inaccurate scene cut prediction
  • [enhance] added setup.py to allow for one-line installation (just run python setup.py install after downloading and extracting PySceneDetect)
  • [internal] additional API functions to remove requirement on passing OpenCV video objects, and allow just a file path instead

0.3-beta (January 8, 2016)

  • major release, includes improved detection algorithms and complete internal code refactor
  • [feature] content-aware scene detection using HSV-colourspace based algorithm (use -d content)
  • [enhance] added CLI flags to allow user changes to more algorithm properties
  • [internal] re-implemented threshold-based scene detection algorithm under new interface
  • [internal] major code refactor including standard detection algorithm interface and API
  • [internal] remove statistics mode until update to new detection mode interface

PySceneDetect 0.2-alpha

0.2.4-alpha (December 22, 2015)

  • [bugfix] updated OpenCV compatibility with self-reported version on some Linux distributions

0.2.3-alpha (August 7, 2015)

  • [bugfix] updated PySceneDetect to work with latest OpenCV module (ver > 3.0)
  • [bugfix] added compatibility/legacy code for older versions of OpenCV
  • [feature] statsfile generation includes expanded frame metrics

0.2.2-alpha (November 25, 2014)

  • [feature] added statistics mode for generating frame-by-frame analysis (-s / --statsfile flag)
  • [bugfix] fixed improper timecode conversion

0.2.1-alpha (November 16, 2014)

  • [enhance] proper timecode format (HH:MM:SS.nnnnn)
  • [enhance] one-line of CSV timecodes added for easy splitting with external tool

0.2-alpha (June 9, 2014)

  • [enhance] now provides discrete scene list (in addition to fades)
  • [feature] ability to output to file (-o / --output flag)

PySceneDetect 0.1-alpha

0.1-alpha (June 8, 2014)

  • first public release
  • [feature] threshold-based fade in/out detection