[Py] Use ``import cv'' in Ubuntu

At the beginning of my OpenCV learning with Python, I noticed one thing which confused me but I didn't give it further attentions. Some examples import the OpenCV modules by using ``import cv'' and some use ``import opencv.'' The first one has never worked to me, so I've adopted ``import opencv'' until today.

The problems were not only about the import approach. Although I found I can import opencv.cv module, which looked similar to the so-called cv module, there had been other problems about the function names. I noticed that many functions given by the opencv.cv module have the ``cv'' prefix, while the same functions given directly by the cv module don't. For example, opencv.cv offers open.cv.cvSomeFunction() while in cv it is cv.SomeFunction(). Based on the observation, I suspected that my installation of OpenCV an/or Python bindings are not totally right.



So another solution searching journey begun, and I think I've got the right answers.

First, according to [1], I went to one of the OpenCV document pages, and it read:

You can not use the python-opencv package because he provide old python support. On Ubuntu, python bindings won't work.

Gosh, I had used the python-opencv package for weeks without knowing such a fundamental problem!

After reading the document page carefully, I install the OpenCV2.2 with the guidance given by Montabone. Make sure to have python-dev so that you can compile and have the most import thing -- cv.so.

Note that the cv.so will be in the site-packages directory which is not in the Python's searching path. You need to cp the cv.so to the dist-packages directory, that is:

$ sudo cp /usr/local/lib/python2.6/site-packages/cv.so /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/cv.so

So far, I can use ``import cv'' in Python. That's great, but I've started to worry about my previous trials about the image processing with webcam... Orz


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Ref:
[1] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1500834