images.md

Video Recording

Image-only video

The simplest way to record video in TDW is to capture image data per-frame, save it to disk, and convert the images to a video using ffmpeg.

1. Capture image data

This example controller will:

1. Add a third-person camera
2. Enable image capture
3. Add an object
4. Set the target framerate to 30 or 60 frames per second
5. Let the object fall (images will be saved each frame)

from os import chdir
from subprocess import call
from tdw.controller import Controller
from tdw.tdw_utils import TDWUtils
from tdw.add_ons.third_person_camera import ThirdPersonCamera
from tdw.add_ons.image_capture import ImageCapture
from tdw.backend.paths import EXAMPLE_CONTROLLER_OUTPUT_PATH

c = Controller()
camera = ThirdPersonCamera(position={"x": 2, "y": 1.6, "z": -1},
                           look_at={"x": 0, "y": 0, "z": 0},
                           avatar_id="a")
c.add_ons.append(camera)
path = EXAMPLE_CONTROLLER_OUTPUT_PATH.joinpath("image_only_video")
print(f"Images will be save to: {path.resolve()}")
capture = ImageCapture(path=path, avatar_ids=["a"])
c.add_ons.append(capture)
c.communicate([TDWUtils.create_empty_room(12, 12),
               {"$type": "set_target_framerate",
                "framerate": 60},
               c.get_add_object(model_name="iron_box",
                                position={"x": 1, "y": 3, "z": -0.5},
                                object_id=c.get_unique_id())])
for i in range(100):
    c.communicate([])
c.communicate({"$type": "terminate"})

2. Convert image data to a video file

1. cd ~/tdw_example_controller_output/image_only_video
2. ffmpeg -i img_%04d.jpg -vcodec libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p image_only_video.mp4

If you saved png files instead of jpg files, replace img_%04d.jpg with img_%04d.png

---

Next: Video with audio

Return to the README

---

Example controllers:

• image_only_video.py Capture image data and automatically call ffmpeg to convert it to a video.

Command API:

• set_target_framerate