Capturing Video from Two Cameras in Opencv At Once

Capturing video from two cameras in OpenCV at once

Yes you're definitely limited by the USB bandwidth. Attempting to read from both devices at full-rez you probably got error:

libv4l2: error turning on stream: No space left on device
VIDIOC_STREAMON: No space left on device
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "p.py", line 7, in <module>
    assert ret1 # fails?!
AssertionError

And then when you reduce the res to 160x120:

import cv2
cap0 = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
cap0.set(3,160)
cap0.set(4,120)
cap1 = cv2.VideoCapture(1)
cap1.set(3,160)
cap1.set(4,120)
ret0, frame0 = cap0.read()
assert ret0 # succeeds
ret1, frame1 = cap1.read()
assert ret1 # fails?!

now it seems to work! I bet you have both cams connected on the same USB card. You can run lsusb command to make sure, and it should indicate something like:

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 046d:081b Logitech, Inc. Webcam C310
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 046d:0990 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Pro 9000
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1058:0401 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

(Note both cameras on same bus.) If possible, you can add another USB card to your machine to gain more bandwidth. I've done this before in order to run multiple cams at full resolution on a single machine. Albeit that was a tower workstation with available motherboard slots, and unfortunately you may not have that option on a MacBook laptop.

How to capture multiple camera streams with OpenCV?

To capture multiple streams with OpenCV, I recommend using threading which can improve performance by alleviating the heavy I/O operations to a separate thread. Since accessing the webcam/IP/RTSP stream using cv2.VideoCapture().read() is a blocking operation, our main program is stuck until the frame is read from the camera device. If you have multiple streams, this latency will definitely be visible. To remedy this problem, we can use threading to spawn another thread to handle retrieving the frames using a deque in parallel instead of relying on a single thread to obtain the frames in sequential order. Threading allows frames to be continuously read without impacting the performance of our main program. The idea to capture a single stream using threading and OpenCV, is from a previous answer in Python OpenCV multithreading streaming from camera.

But if you want to capture multiple streams, OpenCV alone is not enough. You can use OpenCV in combination with a GUI framework to stitch each image onto a nice display. I will use PyQt4 as the framework, qdarkstyle for GUI CSS, and imutils for OpenCV convenience functions.

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Here is a very stripped down version of the camera GUI I currently use without the placeholder images, credential admin login page, and camera switching ability. I've kept the automatic camera reconnect feature incase the internet dies or the camera connection is lost. I only have 8 cameras as shown in the image above, but it is very simple to add in another camera and should not impact performance. This camera GUI currently performs at about ~60 FPS so it is real-time. You can easily rearrange the layout using PyQt layouts so feel free to modify the code! Remember to change the stream links!

from PyQt4 import QtCore, QtGui
import qdarkstyle
from threading import Thread
from collections import deque
from datetime import datetime
import time
import sys
import cv2
import imutils

class CameraWidget(QtGui.QWidget):
    """Independent camera feed
    Uses threading to grab IP camera frames in the background

    @param width - Width of the video frame
    @param height - Height of the video frame
    @param stream_link - IP/RTSP/Webcam link
    @param aspect_ratio - Whether to maintain frame aspect ratio or force into fraame
    """

    def __init__(self, width, height, stream_link=0, aspect_ratio=False, parent=None, deque_size=1):
        super(CameraWidget, self).__init__(parent)
        
        # Initialize deque used to store frames read from the stream
        self.deque = deque(maxlen=deque_size)

        # Slight offset is needed since PyQt layouts have a built in padding
        # So add offset to counter the padding 
        self.offset = 16
        self.screen_width = width - self.offset
        self.screen_height = height - self.offset
        self.maintain_aspect_ratio = aspect_ratio

        self.camera_stream_link = stream_link

        # Flag to check if camera is valid/working
        self.online = False
        self.capture = None
        self.video_frame = QtGui.QLabel()

        self.load_network_stream()
        
        # Start background frame grabbing
        self.get_frame_thread = Thread(target=self.get_frame, args=())
        self.get_frame_thread.daemon = True
        self.get_frame_thread.start()

        # Periodically set video frame to display
        self.timer = QtCore.QTimer()
        self.timer.timeout.connect(self.set_frame)
        self.timer.start(.5)

        print('Started camera: {}'.format(self.camera_stream_link))

    def load_network_stream(self):
        """Verifies stream link and open new stream if valid"""

        def load_network_stream_thread():
            if self.verify_network_stream(self.camera_stream_link):
                self.capture = cv2.VideoCapture(self.camera_stream_link)
                self.online = True
        self.load_stream_thread = Thread(target=load_network_stream_thread, args=())
        self.load_stream_thread.daemon = True
        self.load_stream_thread.start()

    def verify_network_stream(self, link):
        """Attempts to receive a frame from given link"""

        cap = cv2.VideoCapture(link)
        if not cap.isOpened():
            return False
        cap.release()
        return True

    def get_frame(self):
        """Reads frame, resizes, and converts image to pixmap"""

        while True:
            try:
                if self.capture.isOpened() and self.online:
                    # Read next frame from stream and insert into deque
                    status, frame = self.capture.read()
                    if status:
                        self.deque.append(frame)
                    else:
                        self.capture.release()
                        self.online = False
                else:
                    # Attempt to reconnect
                    print('attempting to reconnect', self.camera_stream_link)
                    self.load_network_stream()
                    self.spin(2)
                self.spin(.001)
            except AttributeError:
                pass

    def spin(self, seconds):
        """Pause for set amount of seconds, replaces time.sleep so program doesnt stall"""

        time_end = time.time() + seconds
        while time.time() < time_end:
            QtGui.QApplication.processEvents()

    def set_frame(self):
        """Sets pixmap image to video frame"""

        if not self.online:
            self.spin(1)
            return

        if self.deque and self.online:
            # Grab latest frame
            frame = self.deque[-1]

            # Keep frame aspect ratio
            if self.maintain_aspect_ratio:
                self.frame = imutils.resize(frame, width=self.screen_width)
            # Force resize
            else:
                self.frame = cv2.resize(frame, (self.screen_width, self.screen_height))

            # Add timestamp to cameras
            cv2.rectangle(self.frame, (self.screen_width-190,0), (self.screen_width,50), color=(0,0,0), thickness=-1)
            cv2.putText(self.frame, datetime.now().strftime('%H:%M:%S'), (self.screen_width-185,37), cv2.FONT_HERSHEY_SIMPLEX, 1.2, (255,255,255), lineType=cv2.LINE_AA)

            # Convert to pixmap and set to video frame
            self.img = QtGui.QImage(self.frame, self.frame.shape[1], self.frame.shape[0], QtGui.QImage.Format_RGB888).rgbSwapped()
            self.pix = QtGui.QPixmap.fromImage(self.img)
            self.video_frame.setPixmap(self.pix)

    def get_video_frame(self):
        return self.video_frame
    
def exit_application():
    """Exit program event handler"""

    sys.exit(1)

if __name__ == '__main__':

    # Create main application window
    app = QtGui.QApplication([])
    app.setStyleSheet(qdarkstyle.load_stylesheet_pyqt())
    app.setStyle(QtGui.QStyleFactory.create("Cleanlooks"))
    mw = QtGui.QMainWindow()
    mw.setWindowTitle('Camera GUI')
    mw.setWindowFlags(QtCore.Qt.FramelessWindowHint)

    cw = QtGui.QWidget()
    ml = QtGui.QGridLayout()
    cw.setLayout(ml)
    mw.setCentralWidget(cw)
    mw.showMaximized()
    
    # Dynamically determine screen width/height
    screen_width = QtGui.QApplication.desktop().screenGeometry().width()
    screen_height = QtGui.QApplication.desktop().screenGeometry().height()
    
    # Create Camera Widgets 
    username = 'Your camera username!'
    password = 'Your camera password!'
    
    # Stream links
    camera0 = 'rtsp://{}:{}@192.168.1.43:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0'.format(username, password)
    camera1 = 'rtsp://{}:{}@192.168.1.45/axis-media/media.amp'.format(username, password)
    camera2 = 'rtsp://{}:{}@192.168.1.47:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0'.format(username, password)
    camera3 = 'rtsp://{}:{}@192.168.1.40:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0'.format(username, password)
    camera4 = 'rtsp://{}:{}@192.168.1.44:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0'.format(username, password)
    camera5 = 'rtsp://{}:{}@192.168.1.42:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0'.format(username, password)
    camera6 = 'rtsp://{}:{}@192.168.1.46:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0'.format(username, password)
    camera7 = 'rtsp://{}:{}@192.168.1.41:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0'.format(username, password)
    
    # Create camera widgets
    print('Creating Camera Widgets...')
    zero = CameraWidget(screen_width//3, screen_height//3, camera0)
    one = CameraWidget(screen_width//3, screen_height//3, camera1)
    two = CameraWidget(screen_width//3, screen_height//3, camera2)
    three = CameraWidget(screen_width//3, screen_height//3, camera3)
    four = CameraWidget(screen_width//3, screen_height//3, camera4)
    five = CameraWidget(screen_width//3, screen_height//3, camera5)
    six = CameraWidget(screen_width//3, screen_height//3, camera6)
    seven = CameraWidget(screen_width//3, screen_height//3, camera7)
    
    # Add widgets to layout
    print('Adding widgets to layout...')
    ml.addWidget(zero.get_video_frame(),0,0,1,1)
    ml.addWidget(one.get_video_frame(),0,1,1,1)
    ml.addWidget(two.get_video_frame(),0,2,1,1)
    ml.addWidget(three.get_video_frame(),1,0,1,1)
    ml.addWidget(four.get_video_frame(),1,1,1,1)
    ml.addWidget(five.get_video_frame(),1,2,1,1)
    ml.addWidget(six.get_video_frame(),2,0,1,1)
    ml.addWidget(seven.get_video_frame(),2,1,1,1)

    print('Verifying camera credentials...')

    mw.show()

    QtGui.QShortcut(QtGui.QKeySequence('Ctrl+Q'), mw, exit_application)

    if(sys.flags.interactive != 1) or not hasattr(QtCore, 'PYQT_VERSION'):
        QtGui.QApplication.instance().exec_()

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Related camera/IP/RTSP, FPS, video, threading, and multiprocessing posts

1. Python OpenCV streaming from camera - multithreading, timestamps

2. Video Streaming from IP Camera in Python Using OpenCV cv2.VideoCapture

3. How to capture multiple camera streams with OpenCV?

4. OpenCV real time streaming video capture is slow. How to drop frames or get synced with real time?

5. Storing RTSP stream as video file with OpenCV VideoWriter

6. OpenCV video saving

7. Python OpenCV multiprocessing cv2.VideoCapture mp4

Show Multiple Cameras in One Window

You can do this using numpy methods.

Option 1: np.vstack/np.hstack
Option 2: np.concatenate

Note 1: The methods will fail if you have different frames sizes because you are trying to do operation on matrices of different dimensions. That's why I resized one of the frames to fit the another.

Note 2: OpenCV also has hconcat and vconcat methods but I didn't try to use them in python.

Example Code: (using my Camera feed and a Video)

import cv2
import numpy as np

capCamera = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
capVideo = cv2.VideoCapture("desk.mp4")



while True:
    isNextFrameAvail1, frame1 = capCamera.read()
    isNextFrameAvail2, frame2 = capVideo.read()
    if not isNextFrameAvail1 or not isNextFrameAvail2:
        break
    frame2Resized = cv2.resize(frame2,(frame1.shape[0],frame1.shape[1]))

    # ---- Option 1 ----
    #numpy_vertical = np.vstack((frame1, frame2))
    numpy_horizontal = np.hstack((frame1, frame2))

    # ---- Option 2 ----
    #numpy_vertical_concat = np.concatenate((image, grey_3_channel), axis=0)
    #numpy_horizontal_concat = np.concatenate((frame1, frame2), axis=1)

    cv2.imshow("Result", numpy_horizontal)
    cv2.waitKey(1)

Result: (for horizontal concat)

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