VideoCapture

A Win32 Python Extension for Accessing Video Devices (e.g. a USB WebCam, a TV-Card, ...)

by Markus Gritsch ()
I would like to put together a list of Python-powered WebCam URLs, so please send me an email with the URL of the plain image or the URL of the HTML page if you use VideoCapture.

 Download
PIL version 1.1.2 and below shows a memory leak when using .gif fonts. Remove the files 'helvB08.gif' and 'helvetica-10.gif' in the Lib folder of your Python installation if you have used a version of VideoCapture prior to 0.7!!
[ VideoCapture-0.9-5.zip ]
binaries, sourcecode, examples, and batteries included - no warranty, no liability, provided 'as is'

A stand-alone binary of the included GUI tool 'webcam-watcher' is available here.

 What it is
VideoCapture is a Python extension for Win32 which makes it possible to access video-capture devices (e.g. a USB webcam). It consists of a low-level native module (vidcap.pyd) and a high-level module written in Python (VideoCapture.py) which should be used solely.

Also included are some tools which can be used to periodically upload a WebCam-image to a WebServer, monitor and save a picture at a given URL to the local disk, and so on. Please refer to the README.txt file in the 'Tools' folder for further details.

 In action
Here is a list of VideoCapture-powered WebCams:

 What you need
Beside Python and the VideoCapture module itself, you will need the following additional components:

 How you install it
To make use of VideoCapture just copy the files from the 'PythonXX' folder to the corresponding folders of your 'PythonXX' installation, where XX must match with the version of Python you have installed on your system.

 Trying it out
Taking a snapshot is as easy as

            from VideoCapture import Device

            cam = Device()
            cam.saveSnapshot('image.jpg')
        

 Shortcomings (ToDo)

 Related stuff
If you want to acquire pictures from a scanner or a digital camera which supports the TWAIN protocol you can use Kevin Gill's excellent twainmodule.

 Version history

Have fun!


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