Writing numpy arrays using cv2 VideoWriter

JustInTime picture JustInTime · Feb 14, 2012 · Viewed 15.8k times · Source

I have a problem with writing a toy example video using opencv2.3.1 VideoWriter, here is how I do it:

writer = cv2.VideoWriter('test1.avi',cv.CV_FOURCC('P','I','M','1'),25,(640,480))
for i in range(1000):
    x = np.random.randint(10,size=(480,640)).astype('uint8')
    writer.write(x)
#del writer (with or without tested)

I tried every possible combination resulting with a 0 bytes file if the extension was mpg, and 5.5kb if it was avi. I should say that some pointed out that I should build the ffmpeg library from source and not apt-get it. Well I did that on a fresh machine based on the help of this site http://vinayhacks.blogspot.com/2011/11/installing-opencv-231-with-ffmpeg-on-64.html. which also presented an error while compiling opencv(the error was related to ffmpeg). Now I am really out of ideas, How to generate a video using OPENCV?

Thanks in advance

Answer

user1569844 picture user1569844 · Jul 8, 2015

VideoWriter has last argument isColor with default value True. So if you change it to False then you can write your 2D arrays.

import cv2
import numpy as np

writer = cv2.VideoWriter('test1.avi', cv2.VideoWriter_fourcc(*'PIM1'), 25, (640, 480), False)
for i in range(100):
    x = np.random.randint(255, size=(480, 640)).astype('uint8')
    writer.write(x)