diff --git a/moviepy/video/io/bindings.py b/moviepy/video/io/bindings.py
index 74f1da5c9..6451c117f 100644
--- a/moviepy/video/io/bindings.py
+++ b/moviepy/video/io/bindings.py
@@ -16,10 +16,18 @@ def PIL_to_npimage(im):
 
 def mplfig_to_npimage(fig):
     """ Converts a matplotlib figure to a RGB frame after updating the canvas"""
-    fig.canvas.draw() # update/draw the elements
-    w,h = fig.canvas.get_width_height()
-    buf = fig.canvas.tostring_rgb()
-    image= +np.fromstring(buf,dtype=np.uint8)
+    #  only the Agg backend now supports the tostring_rgb function
+    from matplotlib.backends.backend_agg import FigureCanvasAgg
+    canvas = FigureCanvasAgg(fig)
+    canvas.draw() # update/draw the elements
+
+    # get the width and the height to resize the matrix
+    l,b,w,h = canvas.figure.bbox.bounds
+    w, h = int(w), int(h)
+
+    #  exports the canvas to a string buffer and then to a numpy nd.array
+    buf = canvas.tostring_rgb()
+    image= np.fromstring(buf,dtype=np.uint8)
     return image.reshape(h,w,3)
 
 
diff --git a/moviepy/video/io/html_tools.py b/moviepy/video/io/html_tools.py
index 00817a033..1c644c9d2 100644
--- a/moviepy/video/io/html_tools.py
+++ b/moviepy/video/io/html_tools.py
@@ -143,7 +143,7 @@ def html_embed(clip, filetype=None, maxduration=60, rd_kwargs=None,
                              "but note that embedding large videos may take all the memory away !")
             
     with open(filename, "rb") as f:
-        data= b64encode(f.read())
+        data= b64encode(f.read()).decode("utf-8")
 
     template = templates[filetype]