Python Video Streaming

This is a tool for video streaming in python. It has two core functions: video encoding and video decoding.

Essentially, this is a wrapper for FFmpeg codecs. It is based on these two examples.

Usage

This module is supposed to be used in a setting with two peers: a receiver and a sender.

The sender uses a PyVideoEncoder object to encode video frames into messages, the receiver uses a PyVideoDecoder to decode messages into frames.

Crucially, there's no one-to-one correspondence between frames and messages. The receiver needs to supply messages into decoder in one thread and wait for decoded frames in another thread.

Examples

Execute these two commands in separate terminals to run video streaming on your local machine:

video@streaming:~/ python receiver.py
video@streaming:~/ python sender.py

Installation

Set your environment:

conda create -n video_streaming python=3.6
conda activate video_streaming
pip install numpy
pip install cython
pip install opencv-python

Linux

Install libvpx and libx264.

Build FFmpeg from source:

git clone https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg.git
cd FFmpeg
./configure --enable-pic --enable-gpl --enable-shared --enable-libx264
make
sudo make install

Build video_streaming:

python setup.py build_ext --inplace

Windows

Download latest FFmpeg builds from https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/win64/ (you need dev and shared), unpack.

In file setup.py set paths include_dir and lib_dir to your newly downloaded resources.

Build video_streaming:

python setup.py build_ext --inplace

You may need to copy FFmpeg .dll's and binaries to your folder.

MacOS

Contributions welcome.

Acknowledgments

Thanks go to FFmpeg team and to Fabrice Bellard in particular for providing the examples. I also thank Gael Varoquaux for providing an example of python bindings for c-computed arrays: https://gist.github.com/GaelVaroquaux/1249305