saving videos taken with raspicam with names in incremental order

[Guneshs]

Hi
I was taking videos from raspicam.
It was working.
But whenever i went to take another video the old video would be overwritten.
I wanted to know how to save videos with different names each time .
For eg. "video1.mp4", "video2.mp4", "video3.mp4"

It would be really helpful if some one shares some Python knowledge .
Thanks.

[6by9]

Duplicate of viewtopic.php?f=63&t=205972&p=1276052

You're the one calling "camera.start_recording('my_video.h264')" or similar (NB not an mp4 file, just the raw elementary stream), so you need to do something to form a string that fulfils your criteria.

[Guneshs]

Hi,
I removed the duplicate post.
Till now I have achieved to do this.

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/python
import time
import os
import sys
import re
import datetime
import subprocess
#from subprocess import call

#your_command = "raspistill -o videostaken/timelapse%04d.jpg -t 100000 -tl 5000 &"


inputimages = "timelapse%04d.jpg"
counter = 1
outputvideo = "myvideo.mp4"

def taketimelapsevideo():

	subprocess.call(["raspistill", "-o", "timelapsetaken/"+inputimages, "-t", "10000", "-tl", "2000"])


	subprocess.call(["avconv", "-r", "10", "-i", "timelapsetaken/"+inputimages, "-r", "10", "-vcodec", "libx264", "-vf", "scale=1280:720", "timelapsetaken/"+outputvideo])


if __name__ == '__main__':
        taketimelapsevideo()

i used avconv instead of mencoder to encode the h264 raw video into mp4 format.
I wanted something like %04d to increment on the next run of the script and not overwrite the old file.
How to do this. Please help . Thanks.

[gordon77]

try this...

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/python
import time
import os
import sys
import re
import datetime
import subprocess
#from subprocess import call

#your_command = "raspistill -o videostaken/timelapse%04d.jpg -t 100000 -tl 5000 &"


inputimages = "timelapse%04d.jpg"
counter = 0

#write counter file if first time
if os.path.exists('last.txt') == False:
    file = open("last.txt", "w")
    file.write(str(counter))
    file.close()
    
#read last counter file stored
file = open("last.txt", "r")
counter = int(file.read())
file.close()

def taketimelapsevideo(counter):

   subprocess.call(["raspistill", "-o", "timelapsetaken/"+inputimages, "-t", "10000", "-tl", "2000"])
   counter +=1
   # write counter file
   file = open("last.txt", "w")
   file.write(str(counter))
   file.close()
   outputvideo = "myvideo" + str(counter) + ".mp4"
   subprocess.call(["avconv", "-r", "10", "-i", "timelapsetaken/"+inputimages, "-r", "10", "-vcodec", "libx264", "-vf", "scale=1280:720", "timelapsetaken/"+outputvideo])


if __name__ == '__main__':
   taketimelapsevideo(counter)

[Guneshs]

Hi friend,

I get an error when i try to run the code:

Code: Select all

TypeError at /taketimelapsevideo
taketimelapsevideo() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)

I am using python 2.7.9.
Thanks

[Guneshs]

Hi buddy, I have solved the error.
I had to put counter in taketimelapsevideo() function in my views.py.
And defined it globally.

[Guneshs]

Hi,
It didnt worked .
i get this warning

Code: Select all

File 'timelapsetaken/myvideo1.mp4' already exists. Overwrite ? [y/N] Not overwriting - exiting

Since this is meant to be an automated script , I cant put the "y" to overwrite everytime.

Its not populating the counter on d second run.

[gordon77]

Hi friend,

I get an error when i try to run the code:

Code: Select all

TypeError at /taketimelapsevideo
taketimelapsevideo() takes exactly 1 argument (0 given)

I am using python 2.7.9.
Thanks

I don't understand that. Try deleting last.txt and try this original code again.

[Guneshs]

I solved that error

[gordon77]

I solved that error

There wasn't that error when l ran it, so it's confusing. It sounds like it's not reading counter and/or not incrementing it.
Try deleting last.txt and changing the line counter =O to counter =1

[Guneshs]

ohh.... I had added that code to my another script.
SO it gave me error .

[gordon77]

ohh.... I had added that code to my another script.
SO it gave me error .

I would assume you are calling taketimelapsevideo without the (counter)