Webcam

A webcam view with a recording badge showing the moving test pattern

ui.camera.Webcam(device=0, width=480, height=360, mirror=True)

How frames arrive

The camera is read in a background thread. Every new frame asks the window to redraw, so the view stays live without a timer and without slowing the rest of the app. Two Webcams of the same device share one capture.

The capture uses whichever of these is available, in this order (backend="auto"):

Backend	Needs	Notes
`"opencv"`	`pip install opencv-python`	The most compatible on every system.
`"ffmpeg"`	the `ffmpeg` program	Video4Linux on Linux, AVFoundation on macOS, DirectShow on Windows.
`"test"`	nothing	Moving color bars: for screenshots, tests and machines without a camera.

Using the frames

pyzed.camera.Camera gives you the frames to process (detect faces, measure brightness, record):

from pyzed import camera

cam = camera.Camera(0, width=640, height=480, mirror=True)
cam.start()
frame = cam.read()             # waits for the next Frame(width, height, pixels, index, time)
cam.snapshot("photo.png")      # saved without Pillow
cam.on_frame.append(lambda f: print(f.index))   # runs in the camera thread
cam.stop()

frame.pixels are RGBA bytes (width * height * 4): numpy.frombuffer(frame.pixels, "uint8") turns them into an array, and pz.image(frame.pixels, size=(frame.width, frame.height)) draws them. camera.devices() lists the cameras found.

Property	Default	What it does
`device`	`0`	Camera index, a path (`"/dev/video2"`) or, on Windows with ffmpeg, its name.
`camera`	`None`	A `Camera` of yours to show instead.
`width`, `height`	`320`, `240`	Size of the view.
`capture_width`, `capture_height`, `fps`	`640`, `480`, `30`	What to ask the camera for.
`mirror`	`True`	Flip it like a mirror.
`fit`	`"cover"`	`"cover"` crops to fill, `"contain"` shows it all.
`radius`	`8`	Rounded corners.
`overlay`	`True`	A badge with a recording dot and the frame rate.
`paused`	`False`	Freezes the last frame.
`backend`	`"auto"`	See above.