Skip to main content

Human friendly video for linux

Project description

v4l2py

V4L2py Python Versions License

Video for linux 2 (V4L2) python library

A two purpose API:

  • high level Device API for humans to play with :-)
  • raw python binding for the v4l2 (video4linux2) userspace API, using ctypes (don't even bother wasting your time here. You probably won't use it)

Only works on python >= 3.7.

Installation

From within your favorite python environment:

$ pip install v4l2py

Usage

Without further ado:

>>> from v4l2py import Device
>>> with Device.from_id(0) as cam:
>>>     for i, frame in enumerate(cam):
...         print(f"frame #{i}: {len(frame)} bytes")
...         if i > 9:
...             break
...
frame #0: 54630 bytes
frame #1: 50184 bytes
frame #2: 44054 bytes
frame #3: 42822 bytes
frame #4: 42116 bytes
frame #5: 41868 bytes
frame #6: 41322 bytes
frame #7: 40896 bytes
frame #8: 40844 bytes
frame #9: 40714 bytes
frame #10: 40662 bytes

Getting information about the device:

>>> from v4l2py import Device

>>> cam = Device.from_id(0)
>>> cam.open()
>>> cam.info.card
'Integrated_Webcam_HD: Integrate'

>>> cam.info.capabilities
<Capability.STREAMING|EXT_PIX_FORMAT|VIDEO_CAPTURE: 69206017>

>>> cam.info.formats
[ImageFormat(type=<BufferType.VIDEO_CAPTURE: 1>, description=b'Motion-JPEG',
             flags=<ImageFormatFlag.COMPRESSED: 1>, pixelformat=<PixelFormat.MJPEG: 1196444237>),
 ImageFormat(type=<BufferType.VIDEO_CAPTURE: 1>, description=b'YUYV 4:2:2',
             flags=<ImageFormatFlag.0: 0>, pixelformat=<PixelFormat.YUYV: 1448695129>)]

>>> cam.video_capture.get_format()
Format(width=640, height=480, pixelformat=<PixelFormat.MJPEG: 1196444237>}

>>> for ctrl in cam.controls.values(): print(ctrl)
<Control name=Brightness, type=INTEGER, min=0, max=255, step=1>
<Control name=Contrast, type=INTEGER, min=0, max=255, step=1>
<Control name=Saturation, type=INTEGER, min=0, max=100, step=1>
<Control name=Hue, type=INTEGER, min=-180, max=180, step=1>
<Control name=Gamma, type=INTEGER, min=90, max=150, step=1>
<Control name=White Balance Temperature, type=INTEGER, min=2800, max=6500, step=1>
<Control name=Sharpness, type=INTEGER, min=0, max=7, step=1>
<Control name=Backlight Compensation, type=INTEGER, min=0, max=2, step=1>
<Control name=Exposure (Absolute), type=INTEGER, min=4, max=1250, step=1>

asyncio

v4l2py is asyncio friendly:

$ python -m asyncio

>>> from v4l2py import Device
>>> with Device.from_id(0) as camera:
...     async for frame in camera:
...         print(f"frame {len(frame)}")
frame 10224
frame 10304
frame 10224
frame 10136
...

Bonus track

You've been patient enough to read until here so, just for you, a 20 line gem: a flask web server displaying your device on the web:

$ pip install flask
# web.py

import flask
from v4l2py import Device

app = flask.Flask('basic-web-cam')

def gen_frames():
    with Device.from_id(0) as cam:
        for frame in cam:
            yield b"--frame\r\nContent-Type: image/jpeg\r\n\r\n" + frame + b"\r\n"

@app.route("/")
def index():
    return '<html><img src="/stream" /></html>'

@app.route("/stream")
def stream():
    return flask.Response(
        gen_frames(), mimetype='multipart/x-mixed-replace; boundary=frame')

run with:

$ FLASK_APP=web flask run -h 0.0.0.0

Point your browser to 127.0.0.1:5000 and you should see your camera rolling!

References

See the linux/videodev2.h header file for details.

  • Video for Linux Two Specification <http://linuxtv.org/downloads/v4l-dvb-apis/ch07s02.html>

Project details


Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

v4l2py-1.2.1.tar.gz (36.7 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

File details

Details for the file v4l2py-1.2.1.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: v4l2py-1.2.1.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 36.7 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? No
  • Uploaded via: twine/4.0.1 CPython/3.10.4

File hashes

Hashes for v4l2py-1.2.1.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 c21b2b8bc68c1059865f8d67945d7fd0b4cc662dfc9cc3527daf1809358e06de
MD5 db0eed52da3f59fe5a52539520216be2
BLAKE2b-256 096112e90650fc7fd42e87bc47f1be5fe4268035d38193f8f66a5e7006d528e7

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

Supported by

AWS AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Datadog Monitoring Fastly Fastly CDN Google Google Download Analytics Microsoft Microsoft PSF Sponsor Pingdom Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Sentry Error logging StatusPage StatusPage Status page