FFGear API
FFGear API usage examples can be found here âž¶
FFGear API parameters are explained here âž¶
FFGear API is a multi-threaded, high-performance wrapper around DeFFcode's FFdecoder API that compiles and executes an FFmpeg pipeline inside a subprocess pipe for generating real-time, low-overhead, lightning-fast decoded video frames in Python.
FFGear API provides direct, transparent access to the full FFdecoder feature-set, including:
- Hardware-Accelerated Decoding — CUDA/CUVID and other
-hwaccelbackends. - Flexible Pixel Formats — any FFmpeg-supported
-pix_fmt(e.g.bgr24,yuv420p,gray), with an optional OpenCV-compatibility patch (-enforce_cv_patch) for YUV/NV layouts. - Per-Frame Metadata Extraction — asynchronous
showinfofilter integration via-extract_metadata, yielding(frame, metadata)tuples withframe_num,pts_time,is_keyframe, andframe_type. - Complex Filtergraphs — live simple (
-vf) and complex (-filter_complex) FFmpeg filter pipelines. - Multi-Input Sources — multiple simultaneous inputs routed via
-mapor-filter_complex. - Wide Source Support — USB/Virtual/IP camera feeds, multimedia files, image sequences, screen recordings, and network protocols (HTTP(s), RTP/RTSP, etc.).
Internally, FFGear employs a Producer-Consumer threaded queue (configurable via QUEUE_SIZE, THREADED_QUEUE_MODE, THREAD_TIMEOUT) for zero-bottleneck asynchronous frame delivery, and maintains the standard OpenCV-Python coding syntax for drop-in integration.
Similar to CamGear, FFGear also supports the yt_dlp backend via stream_mode=True for seamlessly pipelining live video-frames and metadata from streaming services like YouTube, Dailymotion, Twitch, and many more âž¶.
Source code in vidgear/gears/ffgear.py
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__init__(source=None, stream_mode=False, source_demuxer=None, frame_format='bgr24', custom_ffmpeg='', logging=False, **options) ¶
This constructor method initializes the object state and attributes of the FFGear class.
Parameters:
| Name | Type | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
source | Any | defines the source for the input stream (URL, file path, or device index). | None |
stream_mode | bool | controls the exclusive Stream Mode for handling streaming URLs. | False |
source_demuxer | str | specifies the demuxer for the source (e.g., 'v4l2', 'dshow'). | None |
frame_format | str | specifies the pixel layout for decoding (e.g., 'bgr24', 'rgb24', 'yuv420p', 'gray'). | 'bgr24' |
custom_ffmpeg | str | specifies a custom FFmpeg executable path. | '' |
logging | bool | enables/disables console logging. | False |
options | dict | FFdecoder configuration (like -hwaccel, -enforce_cv_patch, -extract_metadata) and FFGear queue tweaks. | {} |
Source code in vidgear/gears/ffgear.py
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read() ¶
Consumer Thread: Pops frames symmetrically from the queue block.
Returns: NDArray | tuple[NDArray, dict] | None: When -extract_metadata is disabled (default), returns an N-dimensional numpy.ndarray representing the decoded frame, or None when the stream has ended. When -extract_metadata is enabled, returns a (frame, metadata) tuple where frame is a numpy.ndarray and metadata is a dict with keys frame_num, pts_time, is_keyframe, and frame_type; or None when the stream has ended.
Source code in vidgear/gears/ffgear.py
start() ¶
stop() ¶
Safely halts processes, unblocks memory, and flushes pipelines.
Source code in vidgear/gears/ffgear.py