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Install from source⚓

Best option for trying latest patches(maybe experimental), forking for Pull Requests, or automatically installing all prerequisites(with a few exceptions).

Prerequisites⚓

When installing VidGear from source, FFmpeg is the only API specific prerequisites you need to install manually:

What about rest of the prerequisites?

Any other python prerequisites (Critical/API specific) will be automatically installed based on your OS/System specifications.

Upgrade your pip

It strongly advised to upgrade to latest pip before installing vidgear to avoid any undesired installation error(s).

There are two mechanisms to upgrade pip:

You can use existing pip to upgrade itself:

Install pip if not present 
python get-pip.py

py get-pip.py

More details about this script can be found in pypa/get-pip’s README.

python -m pip install pip --upgrade

py -m pip install pip --upgrade

Python also comes with an ensurepip module1, which can easily upgrade/install pip in any Python environment.

python -m ensurepip --upgrade

py -m ensurepip --upgrade

API Specific Prerequisites⚓

 

Installation⚓

If you want to checkout the latest beta testing branch , you can do so with the following commands:

This can be useful if you want to provide feedback for a new feature or bug fix in the testing branch.

DO NOT clone or install any other branch other than testing unless advised, as it is not tested with CI environments and possibly very unstable or unusable.

Installing vidgear with only selective dependencies

Starting with version v0.2.2, you can now run any VidGear API by installing only just specific dependencies required by the API in use(except for some Core dependencies).

This is useful when you want to manually review, select and install minimal API-specific dependencies on bare-minimum vidgear from scratch on your system:

  • To clone and install bare-minimum vidgear without any dependencies do as follows:

    # clone the repository and get inside
git clone https://github.com/abhiTronix/vidgear.git && cd vidgear

# checkout the latest testing branch
git checkout testing

# Install stable release with bare-minimum dependencies
pip install .

  • Then, you must install Critical dependencies(if not already):

    # Install opencv(only if not installed previously)
pip install opencv-python

  • Finally, manually install your API-specific dependencies as required by your API(in use):

    # Just copy-&-paste from table below
pip install <API-specific dependencies>
    APIs Dependencies
    CamGear yt_dlp
    PiGear picamera
    VideoGear Based on CamGear or PiGear backend in use
    ScreenGear dxcam, mss, pyscreenshot, Pillow
    WriteGear FFmpeg: See this doc ➶
    StreamGear FFmpeg: See this doc ➶
    NetGear pyzmq, simplejpeg
    WebGear starlette, jinja2, uvicorn, simplejpeg
    WebGear_RTC aiortc, starlette, jinja2, uvicorn
    NetGear_Async pyzmq, msgpack, msgpack_numpy, uvloop
    Stabilizer Class -
Windows Installation

If you are using Windows, some of the commands given below, may not work out-of-the-box.

A quick solution may be to preface every Python command with python -m like this:

# Install latest stable release with all Core dependencies
python -m pip install -U .[core]

# Or Install latest stable release with all Core & Asyncio dependencies
python -m pip install -U .[asyncio]

And, If you don't have the privileges to the directory you're installing package. Then use --user flag, that makes pip install packages in your home directory instead:

# Install latest stable release with all Core dependencies
python -m pip install --upgrade --user .[core]

# Or Install latest stable release with all Core & Asyncio dependencies
python -m pip install --upgrade --user .[asyncio]

Or, If you're using py as alias for installed python, then:

# Install latest stable release with all Core dependencies
py -m pip install --upgrade --user .[core]

# Or Install latest stable release with all Core & Asyncio dependencies
py -m pip install --upgrade --user .[asyncio]

# clone the repository and get inside
git clone https://github.com/abhiTronix/vidgear.git && cd vidgear

# checkout the latest testing branch
git checkout testing

# Install latest stable release with all Core dependencies
pip install -U .[core]

# Or Install latest stable release with all Core & Asyncio dependencies
pip install -U .[asyncio]

 

  1. ⚠ The ensurepip module is missing/disabled on Ubuntu. Use pip method only. ↩

Last update: July 25, 2023