How do I access my webcam in Python?

Question

I would like to access my webcam from Python.

I tried using the VideoCapture extension (tutorial), but that didn\'t work very well for me, I had to work around some

Answer 1

gstreamer can handle webcam input. If I remeber well, there are python bindings for it!

Answer 2

OpenCV has support for getting data from a webcam, and it comes with Python wrappers by default, you also need to install numpy for the OpenCV Python extension (called cv2) to work. As of 2019, you can install both of these libraries with pip: pip install numpy pip install opencv-python

More information on using OpenCV with Python.

An example copied from Displaying webcam feed using opencv and python:

import cv2

cv2.namedWindow("preview")
vc = cv2.VideoCapture(0)

if vc.isOpened(): # try to get the first frame
    rval, frame = vc.read()
else:
    rval = False

while rval:
    cv2.imshow("preview", frame)
    rval, frame = vc.read()
    key = cv2.waitKey(20)
    if key == 27: # exit on ESC
        break
cv2.destroyWindow("preview")

Answer 3

import cv2 as cv

capture = cv.VideoCapture(0)

while True:
    isTrue,frame = capture.read()
    cv.imshow('Video',frame)
    if cv.waitKey(20) & 0xFF==ord('d'):
        break

capture.release()
cv.destroyAllWindows()

0 <-- refers to the camera , replace it with file path to read a video file

cv.waitKey(20) & 0xFF==ord('d') <-- to destroy window when key is pressed

Answer 4

John Montgomery's, answer is great, but at least on Windows, it is missing the line

vc.release()

before

cv2.destroyWindow("preview")

Without it, the camera resource is locked, and can not be captured again before the python console is killed.