pymseed Documentation

pymseed is a Python package for reading and writing miniSEED formatted data.

Both miniSEED version 2 (defined in the SEED standard) and miniSEED version 3 are supported.

The package uses the C-language libmseed library for most of the data format and manipulation work.

Key Features

• Read and write miniSEED version 2 and version 3 files

• Iterate over individual records with MS3Record

• Organize data into trace lists with MS3TraceList

• Convert between time formats and source identifiers

• Thread-safe operation with configurable logging

• Optional NumPy integration for data arrays

Installation

Install from PyPI:

pip install pymseed

Or from conda-forge:

conda install -c conda-forge pymseed

Quick Example

Read a miniSEED file and print trace information:

from pymseed import MS3TraceList

traces = MS3TraceList.from_file("data.mseed")

print(traces)

See the Introduction for more on installing and using pymseed.

Documentation

• Introduction
  • Installation
  • A simple reading example
  • Package design rationale
• Tutorial
  • Prerequisites
  • Reading miniSEED Data
  • Accessing Data Samples
  • Writing miniSEED Data
  • Working with Time
  • Working with Source IDs
  • Validating miniSEED Files
  • Error Handling
  • Thread Safety
  • Next Steps
• Examples
  • Reading Examples
  • Writing Examples
  • Streaming Examples
• API Reference
  • Classes
  • Enumerations
  • Functions
  • Exceptions
  • Module Constants
  • CFFI layer
• Changelog

License

pymseed is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Copyright (C) 2026 EarthScope Data Services

Indices and tables

• Index

• Module Index

• Search Page