[Py] Python+OpenCV+pygame for capturing webcam frames on Ubuntu (10.04)

Several weeks ago, I tried to find some sample code which can get the frames of the webcam on Ubuntu. Some examples were written in C/C++, some were in Python, and them are all based on OpenCV. I tested them and got some failed. Unfortunately, I have neither enough experience nor enough time to figure out where the problems are, so I started to search some more examples again.

The first light came from Joseph Perla's blog. He gave an example which worked fine on my Ubuntu 10.04. I post the example with minor modifications (using ImageOps.mirror to flip the image horizontally) as the follows.

import pygame
import Image
import ImageOps
from pygame.locals import *
import sys 

import opencv
from opencv import highgui

camera = highgui.cvCreateCameraCapture(0)
def get_image():
        im = highgui.cvQueryFrame(camera)
        return ImageOps.mirror(opencv.adaptors.Ipl2PIL(im))

pygame.init()
window = pygame.display.set_mode((640,480))
pygame.display.set_caption("WebCam Demo")
screen = pygame.display.get_surface()

while True:
        events = pygame.event.get()
        for event in events:
                if event.type == QUIT or event.type == KEYDOWN:
                        highgui.cvReleaseCapture(camera) # I add this, but don't know whether it is necessary
                        sys.exit(0)
        im = get_image()
        pg_img = pygame.image.frombuffer(im.tostring(), im.size, im.mode)

        screen.blit(pg_img, (0,0))
        pygame.display.flip()

The example remind me about pygame, which I found but had not given further attention to. I don't know the role of pygame in webcam applications so far, but I do know it works with OpenCV on my system. I would keep on studying more about it.

In addition to Joseph's example code, I also found pycam, again. This time it is found on the pygame webpage. I've tested pycam's examples roughly in my previous post when I didn't notice that it utilizes pygame modules.

My summary is: to capture and to show the webcam's image in real-time on Ubuntu, use Python, OpenCV, and pygame.

For me, the next step will be learning how to apply OpenCV functions to do some image processing on the webcam's image.