How to convert binaryproto to npy (like ilsvrc_2012_mean.npy)?

[ShiqiYu]

When I run the pretrained ImageNet model, I found the python wrapper (wrapper.py) will read this file:
python/caffe/imagenet/ilsvrc_2012_mean.npy
To my understanding, the file is the numpy version of file "imagenet_mean.binaryproto".

1. Do anyone know how to convert "imagenet_mean.binaryproto" to "ilsvrc_2012_mean.npy"?
2. If the mean file ("ilsvrc_2012_mean.npy") is a parameter in imagenet_deploy.prototxt, will it be better?

Thank you!

[shelhamer]

1: For binaryproto/numpy conversion see convert.py and its utility functions. Load the binaryproto in python, yielding a blob, then call blobproto_to_array, and save the numpy array however you like (for instance as a npy).

2: The mean would ideally be embedded in the net definition, so that it doesn't need to be carried around elsewhere. There is ongoing work #148 #244 and a planned change to a channel mean that could be easily written in prototxt (that is, each channel would have a space invariant mean value, which has comparable performance to a full image mean and simplifies processing).

[ShiqiYu]

Dear Evan Shelhamer,

Thank you for you help! I have read convert.py and found that the function 'blobproto_to_array'. To convert the format, I think it should be:
Step1: dat = to_load_datum('imagenet_mean.binaryproto')
Step2: arr = blobproto_to_array(dat)
Step3: ny.save('ilsvrc_2012_mean.npy', arr)
Because I'm not familiar with datum and python enough, I don't know how to load the 'imagenet_mean.binaryproto' file. Could you kindly give me some lines of code for doing that? Thank you.

[shelhamer]

The binaryproto file is a protobuf for BlobProto. Refer to the protobuf python tutorial and do from caffe.proto import caffe_pb2 to make a blob = caffe_pb2.BlobProto().

[wendlerc]

As a tip for people who are reading this now, the file: convert.py does not exist anymore, instead it's function blobproto_to_array moved into the caffe.io module.

[HoldenCaulfieldRye]

I think @Mezn means the caffe/python/caffe/io.py module

[sg90]

#808

import caffe
import numpy as np
import sys

if len(sys.argv) != 3:
print "Usage: python convert_protomean.py proto.mean out.npy"
sys.exit()

blob = caffe.proto.caffe_pb2.BlobProto()
data = open( sys.argv[1] , 'rb' ).read()
blob.ParseFromString(data)
arr = np.array( caffe.io.blobproto_to_array(blob) )
out = arr[0]
np.save( sys.argv[2] , out )

[RafaRuiz]

where are all these files? 404 or doesn't exist now

[wendlerc]

The utility functions to read protofiles and to write them into other formats are in the io module. You can find the code here:
CPP:
https://github.com/BVLC/caffe/blob/master/src/caffe/util/io.cpp
Python:
https://github.com/BVLC/caffe/blob/master/python/caffe/io.py

[ghost]

Great thanks to @sg90 for sharing such a nice snippet 👍