Sending OpenCV output to VLC stream

Question

This has been keeping me busy for a good part of the afternoon and I haven\'t been able to get it to work but I feel like I\'m really close.

I\'ve got openCV set up

Answer 1

The following works for me under Python 3

import numpy as np
import sys
import cv2

cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)

while(cap.isOpened()):
    ret, frame = cap.read()
    if ret==True:        
        sys.stdout.buffer.write(frame.tobytes())
    else:
        break

cap.release()

And the command line (my webcam has a different resolution, and I only display the result, but you did not have problems with that)

python opencv.py | vlc --demux=rawvideo --rawvid-fps=25 --rawvid-width=640 --rawvid-height=480 --rawvid-chroma=RV24 - --sout "#display" 

Of course this requires a conversion from BGR to RGB as the former is default in OpenCV.

Answer 2

This worked for me, though I am sending to RTSP stream and not using imutils library:

import numpy as np
import sys
import cv2

input_rtsp = "rtsp://10.10.10.9:8080"
cap = cv2.VideoCapture(input_rtsp)

while(cap.isOpened()):
    ret, frame = cap.read()
    if ret==True:        
        sys.stdout.write(frame.tostring())
    else:
        break

cap.release()

Then in command line:

python opencv.py | cvlc --demux=rawvideo --rawvid-fps=25 --rawvid-width=1280 --rawvid-height=720  --rawvid-chroma=RV24 - --sout "#transcode{vcodec=h264,vb=200,fps=25,width=1280,height=720}:rtp{dst=10.10.10.10,port=8081,sdp=rtsp://10.10.10.10:8081/test.sdp}"

Note that you do not need to convert opencv BGR to RGB.