python video capture loop

Question

I've written a simple script to continuously capture snapshots from my webcam. My only issue is the videocapture module doesn't always grab an image which in turn crashes the program. I think I could solve this by using an infinite loop but I'm not real certain how to go about it. Here's the script:

from VideoCapture import Device
import datetime
def capt():
  a = datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y%m%dT%H%M%S%ms")

  b = str(a)
  cam = Device(devnum=0)
  cam.setResolution(1280, 960)

  cam.saveSnapshot('%s.png' % (b))

for i in range(1, 100000):
  capt()

Andrey Sboev · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-08T13:34:09.263

Try to use cam.getImage instead of cam.saveSnapshot. cam.getImage returns PIL image, thus you are able to determine whether any frame has been actually grabbed or not. The folloing code hasnt been tested:

from VideoCapture import Device
import datetime
def capt():
  a = datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%Y%m%dT%H%M%S%ms")

  b = str(a)
  cam = Device(devnum=0)
  cam.setResolution(1280, 960)

  return cam.getImage(), b

while True:
  im, b = capt()
  if im:
    break
im.save('%s.png' % (b), 'JPEG')

python video capture loop

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