Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

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protoboar..

Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

in Share your Work • 1 year ago

For the last couple of weeks I've been looking for a way to record video and sound from a webcam using Processing. There's no way to record audio using the video library. There might be a way of recording both audio and video using that library along with minim but I just don't know how that could be done.

With the GSVideo library It's possible to use gstreamer pipelines, so using this library it's pretty easy to record a live feed from a webcam.

Here's the code that makes this possible:

import codeanticode.gsvideo.*;
GSPipeline pipeline;
void setup() {
size(640, 480);
pipeline = new GSPipeline(this, "v4l2src ! tee name=videoout ! queue ! videorate ! video/x-raw-yuv,width=640,height=480 ! queue ! xvidenc ! queue ! muxout. pulsesrc ! audio/x-raw-int,rate=22000,channels=1,width=16 ! queue ! muxout. avimux name=muxout ! filesink location=video.avi videoout. ! queue ! ffmpegcolorspace");
pipeline.play();
}
void draw() {
if (pipeline.available()) {
pipeline.read();
image(pipeline, 0, 0);
}
}

This is the first time I've ever used the gstreamer framework and I don't know how I could modify it to have compressed audio and video so if anyone knows how to get that done please let me know.

So, here it is, it's possible and really easy to record audio and video from a webcam with processing.

Replies(11)

Alexandre..

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

1 year ago

Hi, protoboardmx, very nice to have this!
I've tried running it on Processing 2.0 alpha 4, GSvideo 1.0.0, OSX 10.7. It stops at pipeline.play() and prints:
GstException: no element "v4l2src"

Alexandre Rangel

bustup

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

1 year ago

The capture plugin for OSX is "osxvideosrc".

Alexandre..

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

1 year ago

I replaced v4l2src with osxvideosrc and now I get
GstException: no element "osxvideosrc"

protoboar..

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

1 year ago

The pipeline capture example from GSVideo says that for Mac OS X 64 bits the capture plugin is "qtkitvideosrc". Could that be your case?

However I haven't been able to get this code working on OS X, but I do get video from the webcam when I use this pipeline:

pipeline = new GSPipeline(this, "osxvideosrc");

Alexandre..

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

1 year ago

I can see the webcam ok with the line:

pipeline = new GSPipeline(this, "qtkitvideosrc");

But with the following line, I see only a still frame of the webcam:

pipeline = new GSPipeline(this, "qtkitvideosrc ! tee name=videoout ! queue ! videorate ! video/x-raw-yuv,width=640,height=480 ! queue ! xvidenc ! queue ! muxout. pulsesrc ! audio/x-raw-int,rate=22000,channels=1,width=16 ! queue ! muxout. avimux name=muxout ! filesink location=video.avi videoout ! queue ! ffmpegcolorspace");

alterscape

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

1 year ago

I've got the same problem (OS X 10.7.3, Processing 1.5.1, GSVideo 1.0.0) -- just

pipeline = new GSPipeline( this, "osxvideosrc" );

works fine, insofar as I get realtime-ish video in my PApplet. I can add more of the pipeline up to

pipeline = new GSPipeline( this, "osxvideosrc ! tee name = videoout ! queue ! videorate ! video/x-raw-yuv,width=640,height=480 ! queue" );

and I still get video in my PApplet. As soon as I add the xvidenc element, no joy. Any thoughts on what's going on here?

rsylv

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

1 year ago

I got this working on windows eventually using this:

recAV2pipe = new GSPipeline(this, "dshowvideosrc ! video/x-raw-rgb, width=320, height=240, framerate=30/1 ! tee name=tvid ! ffmpegcolorspace ! queue ! dshowvideosink tvid. ! ffmpegcolorspace ! queue ! videorate ! video/x-raw-yuv, width=320, height=240, framerate=30/1 ! theoraenc ! muxout. directsoundsrc ! audioconvert ! vorbisenc ! muxout. oggmux name=muxout ! filesink location=av2.ogg");

The issue I'm having now is being unable to stop the pipeline without closing the program. Code below for starting the pipe works, but the call to stop it does nothing.

void keyReleased()
{
if ( key == 'r') {
recAV2pipe.play();
if (recAV2pipe.available()) {
recAV2pipe.read();
image(recAV2pipe, 0, 0);
}
}
if ( key == 's') {
recAV2pipe.stop();
}
}

Any help appreciated,

thanks

andres

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

1 year ago

The GSPipeline. stop() method just calls the underlying stop function from GStreamer-java, so there might be a bug in the bindings, or even in GStreamer itself (you are running this pipeline on Windows right?)... Anyways, I cannot tell at this point, but will open an entry in the GSVideo tracker and will look at it later.

rsylv

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

1 year ago

Yes this is happening in Windows. More standard play pipelines seem to stop fine, I'll follow up if I discover anything else related to the odd behaviour on record pipeline.

braddock

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

1 year ago

Have you tried pause() instead of stop() ?
Stop() tries to rewind the video. I made a sketch that turned the webcam on and off and always got the "Seek operation failed." error with stop() and while the webcam would turn back on (green LED on laptop), the image that reappeared would be frozen from the first stop().
I'm using pause() now and it works fine.

kajuna

Re: Record video and audio from webcam with GSVideo

5 months ago

Hi guys,

I've been trying to get this same thing done on Windows. No success.

I've replaced

v4l2src

with

ksvideosrc device-index=0 ! decodebin2

But it does not seem to do anything with my webcam (.available returns false). This does work when used on its own, just to "see" the webcam.

and also

dshowvideosrc

which gives this error: GstException: no element "dshowvideosrc"

Any suggestions? :S

I find strange that there isn't a way to create a file with the pipeline + audio from minim, or add audio to GSMovieMaker... but there might be reasons for that.

Thanks in advance.

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