OpenCV VideoCapture reading issue - opencv

Question

This will probably be a dumb question, but i really can't figure it out.
First of all: sorry for the vague title, i'm not really sure about how to describe my problem in a couple of words.
I'm using OpenCV 2.4.3 in MS Visual Studio, C++. I'm using the VideoCapture interface for capturing frames from my laptop webcam.
What my program should do is:
Loop on different poses of the user, for each pose:
wait that the user is in position (a getchar() waits for an input that says "i'm in position" by simply hitting enter)
read the current frame
extract a region of intrest from that frame
save the image in the ROI and then label it
Here is the code:
int main() {
Mat img, face_img, img_start;
Rect *face;
VideoCapture cam(0);
ofstream fout("dataset/dataset.txt");
if(!fout) {
cout<<"Cannot open dataset file! Aborting"<<endl;
return 1;
}
int count = 0; // Number of the (last + 1) image in the dataset
// Orientations are: 0°, +/- 30°, +/- 60°, +/-90°
// Distances are just two, for now
// So it is 7x2 images
cam.read(img_start);
IplImage image = img_start;
face = face_detector(image);
if(!face) {
cout<<"No face detected..? Aborting."<<endl;
return 2;
}
// Double ROI dimensions
face->x = face->x-face->width / 2;
face->y = face->y-face->height / 2;
face->width *= 2;
face->height *=2;
for(unsigned i=0;i<14;++i) {
// Wait for the user to get in position
getchar();
// Get the face ROI
cam.read(img);
face_img = Mat(img, *face);
// Save it
stringstream sstm;
string fname;
sstm << "dataset/image" << (count+i) << ".jpeg";
fname = sstm.str();
imwrite(fname,face_img);
//do some other things..
What i expect from it:
i stand in front of the camera when the program starts and it gets the ROI rectangle using the face_detector() function
when i'm ready, say in pose0, i hit enter and a picture is taken
from that picture a subimage is extracted and it is saved as image0.jpeg
loop this 7 times
What it does:
i stand in front of the camera when the program starts, nothing special here
i hit enter
the ROI is extracted not from the picture taken in that moment, but from the first one
At first, i used img in every cam.capture(), then i changed the first one in cam.capture(img_start) but that didn't help.
The second iteration of my code saves the image that should have been saved in the 1st, the 3rd iteration the one that should have been saved in the 2nd and so on.
I'm probably missing someting important from the VideoCapture, but i really can't figure it out, so here i am.
Thanks for any help, i really appreciate it.

Answer 1

The problem with your implementation is that the camera is not running freely and capturing images in real time. When you start up the camera, the videocapture buffer is filled up while waiting for you to read in the frames. Once the buffer is full, it doesn't drop old frames for new ones until you read and free up space in it.
The solution would be to have a separate capture thread, in addition to your "process" thread. The capture thread keeps reading in frames from the buffer whenever a new frame comes in and stores it in a "recent frame" image object. When the process thread needs the most recent frame (i.e. when you hit Enter), it locks a mutex for thread safety, copies the most recent frame into another object and frees the mutex so that the capture thread continues reading in new frames.

Answer 2

#include <iostream>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <thread>
#include <mutex>
#include <opencv2/objdetect/objdetect.hpp>
#include <opencv2/highgui/highgui.hpp>
#include <opencv2/imgproc/imgproc.hpp>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
using namespace cv;
void camCapture(VideoCapture cap, Mat* frame, bool* Capture){
while (*Capture==true) {
cap >> *frame;
}
cout << "camCapture finished\n";
return;
}
int main() {
VideoCapture cap(0); // open the default camera
if (!cap.isOpened()) // check if we succeeded
return -1;
Mat *frame, SFI, Input;
frame = new Mat;
bool *Capture = new bool;
*Capture = true;
//your capture thread has started
thread captureThread(camCapture, cap, frame, Capture);
mtx.lock();
imshow(*frame,current_frame);
mtx.unlock();
//Terminate the thread
mtx.lock();
*Capture = false;
mtx.unlock();
captureThread.join();
return 0;
}
This is the code that I wrote from the above advice. I hope someone can get help from this.

Answer 3

When you are capturing the image continuously, no captured frame will be stored in the opencv buffer, such that there will be no lag in streaming.
If you take screenshot/capture image with some time gap inbetween, the captured image will be first stored in the opencv buffer, after that the image is retrieved from the buffer.
When the buffer is full, when you are calling captureObject >> matObject, the last frame from the image is returned, not the current frame in the capturecard/webcam.
So only you are seeing a lag in your code. This issue can be resolved by taking screenshot based on the frames per second (fps) value of the webcam and time taken to capture the screenshot.
The time taken to read frame from buffer is very less, Measure the time taken to take the screenshot. If it is lesser than the fps we can assume that is read from buffer else it means it is captured from webcam.
Sample Code:
For capturing a recent screenshot from webcam.
#include <opencv2/opencv.hpp>
#include <time.h>
#include <thread>
#include <chrono>
using namespace std;
using namespace cv;
int main()
{
struct timespec start, end;
VideoCapture cap(-1); // first available webcam
Mat screenshot;
double diff = 1000;
double fps = ((double)cap.get(CV_CAP_PROP_FPS))/1000;
while (true)
{
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &start);
//camera.grab();
cap.grab();// can also use cin >> screenshot;
clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, &end);
diff = (end.tv_sec - start.tv_sec)*1e9;
diff = (diff + (end.tv_nsec - start.tv_nsec))*1e-9;
std::cout << "\n diff time " << diff << '\n';
if(diff > fps)
{
break;
}
}
cap >> screenshot; // gets recent frame, can also use cap.retrieve(screenshot);
// process(screenshot)
cap.release();
screenshot.release();
return 0;
}