Reading and Writing Images and Video

cv::imdecode

Mat imdecode(const Mat& buf, int flags)

Reads an image from a buffer in memory.

Parameters:

• buf – The input array of vector of bytes
• flags – The same flags as in imread

The function reads image from the specified buffer in memory. If the buffer is too short or contains invalid data, the empty matrix will be returned.

See imread for the list of supported formats and the flags description.

cv::imencode

bool imencode(const string& ext, const Mat& img, vector<uchar>& buf, const vector<int>& params=vector<int>())

Encode an image into a memory buffer.

Parameters:

• ext – The file extension that defines the output format
• img – The image to be written
• buf – The output buffer; resized to fit the compressed image
• params – The format-specific parameters; see imwrite

The function compresses the image and stores it in the memory buffer, which is resized to fit the result. See imwrite for the list of supported formats and the flags description.

cv::imread

Mat imread(const string& filename, int flags=1)

Loads an image from a file.

Parameters:

• filename – Name of file to be loaded.
• flags –

  Specifies color type of the loaded image:

  • >0 the loaded image is forced to be a 3-channel color image
  • =0 the loaded image is forced to be grayscale
  • <0 the loaded image will be loaded as-is (note that in the current implementation the alpha channel, if any, is stripped from the output image, e.g. 4-channel RGBA image will be loaded as RGB if ).

The function imread loads an image from the specified file and returns it. If the image can not be read (because of missing file, improper permissions, unsupported or invalid format), the function returns empty matrix ( Mat::data==NULL ).Currently, the following file formats are supported:

• Windows bitmaps - *.bmp, *.dib (always supported)
• JPEG files - *.jpeg, *.jpg, *.jpe (see Note2 )
• JPEG 2000 files - *.jp2 (see Note2 )
• Portable Network Graphics - *.png (see Note2 )
• Portable image format - *.pbm, *.pgm, *.ppm (always supported)
• Sun rasters - *.sr, *.ras (always supported)
• TIFF files - *.tiff, *.tif (see Note2 )

Note1 : The function determines type of the image by the content, not by the file extension.

Note2 : On Windows and MacOSX the shipped with OpenCV image codecs (libjpeg, libpng, libtiff and libjasper) are used by default; so OpenCV can always read JPEGs, PNGs and TIFFs. On MacOSX there is also the option to use native MacOSX image readers. But beware that currently these native image loaders give images with somewhat different pixel values, because of the embedded into MacOSX color management.

On Linux, BSD flavors and other Unix-like open-source operating systems OpenCV looks for the supplied with OS image codecs. Please, install the relevant packages (do not forget the development files, e.g. “libjpeg-dev” etc. in Debian and Ubuntu) in order to get the codec support, or turn on OPENCV_BUILD_3RDPARTY_LIBS flag in CMake.

cv::imwrite

bool imwrite(const string& filename, const Mat& img, const vector<int>& params=vector<int>())

Saves an image to a specified file.

Parameters:

• filename – Name of the file.
• img – The image to be saved.
• params –

  The format-specific save parameters, encoded as pairs paramId_1, paramValue_1, paramId_2, paramValue_2, ... . The following parameters are currently supported:

  • In the case of JPEG it can be a quality ( CV_IMWRITE_JPEG_QUALITY ), from 0 to 100 (the higher is the better), 95 by default.
  • In the case of PNG it can be the compression level ( CV_IMWRITE_PNG_COMPRESSION ), from 0 to 9 (the higher value means smaller size and longer compression time), 3 by default.
  • In the case of PPM, PGM or PBM it can a binary format flag ( CV_IMWRITE_PXM_BINARY ), 0 or 1, 1 by default.

The function imwrite saves the image to the specified file. The image format is chosen based on the filename extension, see imread for the list of extensions. Only 8-bit (or 16-bit in the case of PNG, JPEG 2000 and TIFF) single-channel or 3-channel (with ‘BGR’ channel order) images can be saved using this function. If the format, depth or channel order is different, use Mat::convertTo , and cvtColor to convert it before saving, or use the universal XML I/O functions to save the image to XML or YAML format.

VideoCapture

VideoCapture

Class for video capturing from video files or cameras

class VideoCapture
{
public:
    // the default constructor
    VideoCapture();
    // the constructor that opens video file
    VideoCapture(const string& filename);
    // the constructor that starts streaming from the camera
    VideoCapture(int device);

    // the destructor
    virtual ~VideoCapture();

    // opens the specified video file
    virtual bool open(const string& filename);

    // starts streaming from the specified camera by its id
    virtual bool open(int device);

    // returns true if the file was open successfully or if the camera
    // has been initialized succesfully
    virtual bool isOpened() const;

    // closes the camera stream or the video file
    // (automatically called by the destructor)
    virtual void release();

    // grab the next frame or a set of frames from a multi-head camera;
    // returns false if there are no more frames
    virtual bool grab();
    // reads the frame from the specified video stream
    // (non-zero channel is only valid for multi-head camera live streams)
    virtual bool retrieve(Mat& image, int channel=0);
    // equivalent to grab() + retrieve(image, 0);
    virtual VideoCapture& operator >> (Mat& image);

    // sets the specified property propId to the specified value
    virtual bool set(int propId, double value);
    // retrieves value of the specified property
    virtual double get(int propId);

protected:
    ...
};

The class provides C++ video capturing API. Here is how the class can be used:

#include "cv.h"
#include "highgui.h"

using namespace cv;

int main(int, char**)
{
    VideoCapture cap(0); // open the default camera
    if(!cap.isOpened())  // check if we succeeded
        return -1;

    Mat edges;
    namedWindow("edges",1);
    for(;;)
    {
        Mat frame;
        cap >> frame; // get a new frame from camera
        cvtColor(frame, edges, CV_BGR2GRAY);
        GaussianBlur(edges, edges, Size(7,7), 1.5, 1.5);
        Canny(edges, edges, 0, 30, 3);
        imshow("edges", edges);
        if(waitKey(30) >= 0) break;
    }
    // the camera will be deinitialized automatically in VideoCapture destructor
    return 0;
}

VideoWriter

VideoWriter

Video writer class

class VideoWriter
{
public:
    // default constructor
    VideoWriter();
    // constructor that calls open
    VideoWriter(const string& filename, int fourcc,
                double fps, Size frameSize, bool isColor=true);

    // the destructor
    virtual ~VideoWriter();

    // opens the file and initializes the video writer.
    // filename - the output file name.
    // fourcc - the codec
    // fps - the number of frames per second
    // frameSize - the video frame size
    // isColor - specifies whether the video stream is color or grayscale
    virtual bool open(const string& filename, int fourcc,
                      double fps, Size frameSize, bool isColor=true);

    // returns true if the writer has been initialized successfully
    virtual bool isOpened() const;

    // writes the next video frame to the stream
    virtual VideoWriter& operator << (const Mat& image);

protected:
    ...
};