VidGear Stable v0.3.3

---

This update significantly enhances Vidgear's capabilities, ensuring better performance, broader compatibility, and improved user experience. The introduction of the Picamera2 API support, enhanced error handling, and detailed documentation updates are pivotal in making Vidgear more robust and user-friendly.

📓 Complete Release Notes can be found here ↗️

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VidGear is free and open source and will always remain so. ❤️

It is something I am doing with my own free time. But so much more needs to be done, and I need your help to do this. For just the price of a cup of coffee, you can make a difference 🙂

What's Changed

New Features ✨

• PiGear:
  • Official Support for Picamera2 API backend:
    • This massive update brings official support for the new Picamera2 API, unlocking powerful features for Raspberry Pi Camera Modules and limited USB camera support.
    • Seamless Python wrapper: A robust wrapper around Picamera2 API library simplifies integration with minimal code changes for existing PiGear users.
    • Enhanced camera control: Leverages libcamera API under the hood for Raspberry Pi Camera Modules.
    • Existing compatibility: Maintains compatibility with PiGear's existing super-charged multi-threaded and colorspace manipulation framework.
    • Proper Resource management: Ensures proper resource release during PiGear termination.
    • USB camera support (limited): Provides basic functionality for USB webcams. PiGear could accurately differentiates between USB and Raspberry Pi cameras using metadata.
    • Backward compatibility: Seamlessly switches to the legacy Picamera library backend if Picamera2 is unavailable.
    • Standalone functionalities: Standalone functionalities for both legacy picamera and newer picamera2 backends for clarity.
    • Advanced optional parameters handling: Handles camera configurational parameters and user-defined settings for various camera types.
• StreamGear:
  • Introduced new -enable_force_termination attribute for immediate FFmpeg process termination.
• Helper:
  • Added support for SRTP/RTSPS in is_valid_url function:
    • SRTP/RTSPS extends RTSP/RTP to encrypt video and audio data using the same ciphers as HTTPS, typically AES with a 128-bit key length.
  • Added a custom deprecated decorator to mark deprecated functions and parameters.

Updates/Improvements ⚡️

• Core:
  • Improved exception handling for module imports.
  • Improved colorspace handling in videocapture gears.
• Asyncio:
  • Replaced deprecated Starlette's on_shutdown parameter with an async context manager lifespan in WebGear and WebGear_RTC APIs.
• NetGear_Async API:
  • Changed launch method to use self.loop.create_task() instead of asyncio.ensure_future()
  • Moved the event loop initialization code to an earlier point before setting event loop policy to ensure it is set up correctly before selecting WindowsSelectorEventLoop policy.
• StreamGear:
  • Updated close() methods for handling gracefully signal interruptions based on different operating systems with device audio streams.
  • Enhanced stream copy support in Single Source mode.
• NetGear:
  • Handled socket session expiration more gracefully in recv_handler.
  • Ensured proper termination of the ZMQ context and socket when closing the NetGear instance.
• WebGear:
  • Enhanced error messages for WebGear auto-generation workflow.
• WriteGear:
  • Improved error handling in execute_ffmpeg_cmd method.
• Setup.py:
  • Dropped legacy picamera dependency in setup.py.
  • Updated pyzmq version to address installation issues.
• Helper:
  • Updated extract_time helper function regex to handle milliseconds.

Breaking Updates/Changes 💥

• StreamGear:
  • 💣 Deprecated terminate() method and introduce close() method.
    • The terminate() method in StreamGear is now deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Developers should use the new close() method instead, which provides a more descriptive name like in WriteGear API for terminating StreamGear processes safely.
  • 💣 Deprecated rgb_mode parameter in stream() method.
    • This parameter will be removed in a future version, and only BGR format frames will be supported.
  • 💣 Restricted -livestream parameter to Real-time Frames Mode only.
    • Live streaming is intended for low-latency streaming of real-time frames, where chunks contain only the most recent frames. It doesn't make sense when streaming from a video file, as the entire file can be streamed normally without the need for live streaming.

Bug-fixes 🐛

• PiGear:
  • Modify PiGear class behavior when enforce_legacy_picamera=True on unsupported system.
• StreamGear:
  • Removed non-essential aspect ratio parameter to prevent unwanted distortions.
• NetGear:
  • Fixed Secure Mode failing to work on conflicting ZMQ Contexts.
  • Fixed msg_json undefined when terminating context in the recv_handler method.
• CamGear:
  • Fixed logging condition for yt-dlp.

VidGear Stable v0.3.2

📓 Complete Release Notes can be found here ↗️

---

New Features ✨

• NetGear:
  • Added new kill parameter to close() method to forcefully kill ZMQ context instead of graceful exit only in the receive mode.
  • Added new subscriber_timeout integer optional parameter to support timeout with pattern=2 (or Publisher-Subscriber) pattern.
    • Receiver will exit safely if timeout defined(any value(in milliseconds) > 0), and timeout occurs in Receiver Mode with pattern=2.
    • 💬 Note: Default behavior still is to block the thread till infinite time.
• WriteGear:
  • Added new -disable_ffmpeg_window optional Boolean flag to enable patch that prevents FFmpeg creation window from opening when building .exe files on Windows OS. (PR by @ibtsam3301)
    • 💬 Note: -disable_ffmpeg_window optional Boolean flag is only available on Windows OS with logging disabled(logging=False) in compression mode.
    • 💬 Use Case: This flag can be useful while creating an .exe file for a python script that uses WriteGear API. On windows even after creating the .exe file in windowed mode or no-console mode, the ffmpeg.exe command line window would pop up while its being used by WriteGear API.
• Setup.py
  • Added official support for python 3.11.x legacies.

Updates/Improvements ⚡️

• Asyncio:
  • Formatted TemplateResponse class parameters w.r.t new changes in backend Starlette API.
• Setup.py:
  • Readded latest patch to uvicorn, starlette, pyzmq dependencies.
  • Removed 3.7 legacy from Programming Language metadata.
• Maintenance:
  • Added GitHub sponsors and dropped liberapay from Funding.yml.
• Docs:
  • Updated information related to Supported Dimensional Attributes in ScreenGear docs.
  • Updated minimum python to version 3.8 while installing vidgear in docs.
  • Updated API-specific dependencies in docs.

Breaking Updates/Changes 💥

• Setup.py:
  • 💣 Removed support for python-3.7 legacies
    • 💬 Raised python_requires to >=3.8. Thereby python 3.7 and any before legacy are no longer supported.

Bug-fixes 🐛

• ScreenGear:
  • Fixed swapped region dimensions bug with dxcam backend.
  • Fixed "mss" backend disabled when monitor parameter is not defined.
• Docs:
  • Fixed missing compression_mode flags in WriteGear API docs.

VidGear Stable v0.3.1

📓 Complete Release Notes can be found here ↗️

---

New Features ✨

• WebGear:
  • Added an option to add a custom video endpoint path.
    • Users can now change the video endpoint path from "/video" to any alphanumeric string.
    • Added the custom_video_endpoint optional string attribute for this purpose.
    • Only alphanumeric strings with no spaces in between are allowed as its value.
• ScreenGear:
  • Added dxcam backend support for Windows machines.
    • dxcam is now the default backend for Windows machines when no backend is defined.
    • Added support for variable screen dimensions to capture an area from the screen.
    • Added the optional flag dxcam_target_fps to control the target fps in dxcam. Defaults to 0 (disabled).
  • Added support for tuple values in the monitor parameter to specify device and output indexes as (int[device_idx], int[output_idx]) in the dxcam backend only.
    • Default int index is also allowed as a value for selecting device index.
• Helper
  • Added multiple servers support for downloading assets.
    • Added GitHub server to the generate_webdata method to make it more robust for rate limits and other shortcomings.
    • Now, the generate_webdata method will retry a different server when one fails.
• Setup.py
  • Added dxcam dependency in core and asyncio extra requires for Windows machines.

Updates/Improvements ⚡️

• WebGear:
  • Improved the conditions logic to check if non-empty values are assigned to optional parameters.
• WebGear_RTC:
  • Improved the handling of the format parameter when constructing a VideoFrame from ndarray frames.
• ScreenGear:
  • Enforced dxcam backend (if installed) when monitor is defined on Windows machines.
  • Refactored code blocks to ensure backward compatibility.

Breaking Updates/Changes 💥

• ScreenGear:
  • 💣 Previously enforced threaded queue mode is now completely removed, resulting in a potential performance boost.
    + 💬 Reason: The IO is automatically blocked by the screen refresh rate, so adding the overhead of maintaining a separate queue is pointless.
  • 💣 Removed the THREAD_TIMEOUT optional flag.

Bug-fixes 🐛

• WebGear_RTC:
  • Fixed a bug caused by PyAV's error when ndim==3 grayscale frames are encountered.
    • The API will now drop the third dimension if ndim==3 grayscale frames are detected.
• Setup.py:
  • Starting from version 8.0.0, the python-mss library dropped support for Python 3.7, so as a temporary measure, mss dependency has been pinned to version 7.0.1.

VidGear Stable v0.3.0

📓 Complete Release Notes can be found here ↗️

---

New Features ✨

• WriteGear:
  • Added support for higher than 8-bit depth frames with datatypes of unsigned integer(uint) kind and element size 2.
  • Added new -input_pixfmt attribute to output_params dictionary parameter for easily specifying custom input pixel-format.
  • Added support for Context Managers __enter__() and __exit__() methods for proper handling of resources via with statement for allocating and releasing resources precisely. (Suggested by @sueskind)
• StreamGear:
  • Added support for Context Managers __enter__() and __exit__() methods for proper handling of resources via with statement for allocating and releasing resources precisely. (Suggested by @sueskind)
• WebGear:
  • Added new skip_generate_webdata boolean optional attribute(False by default) to completely disable Data-Files Auto-Generation WorkFlow.
    • This flag enables only /video route for disabled Data-Files Auto-Generation WorkFlow.
• Helper:
  • Added more robust implementation of validate_audio method with more robust regex pattern for extracting audio-samplerate.
  • Added support for Linux video device path (such as /dev/video0).
• Maintenance:
  • Logging current vidgear version when vidgear APIs are called, not at import.
    • Current version can only be logged by VidGear APIs with the logging turned on (i.e. logging=True).

Updates/Improvements ⚡️

• WriteGear:
  • Updated comments, description, and logging messages to more sensible and developer friendly.
    • Renamed startFFmpeg_Process internal class method to start_FFProcess.
    • Renamed Preprocess internal class method to PreprocessFFParams.
    • Renamed startCV_Process internal class method to start_CVProcess.
    • Renamed initiate internal class parameter to initiate_process.
    • Renamed force_termination internal class parameter to forced_termination.
• Helper:
  • Updated validate_audio method with improved and more robust regex patterns for identifying audio bitrate in ay audio file.
• Setup.py:
  • Replaced distutils.version.LooseVersion with pkg_resources.parse_version.
• Maintenance:
  • Replaced depreciated LooseVersion with parse_version.
  • Updated Retry package to be imported from requests.adapters.
• Bash Scripts:
  • Updated FFmpeg Static Binaries links to latest date/version tag to 12-07-2022.

Breaking Updates/Changes 💥

• WriteGear:
  • 💣 Renamed output_filename string parameter to output.
  • 💣 Renamed cmd parameter in execute_ffmpeg_cmd() class method to more sensible command.
  • 💣 ValueError will be raised if datatype of input frames mismatches.

Bug-fixes 🐛

• Camgear:
  • Fixed CamGear.read() blocked unnecessarily.
  • Fixed deadlock on termination.
• ScreenGear:
  • Fixed ScreenGear.read() blocked during startup.
    • 💬 During startup, ScreenGear.read() doesn't checks if queue is empty before continuing.
• WriteGear:
  • Fixed gstpipeline_mode not activating when wrongly assuming output value as valid path.
  • Fixed name 'compression' is not defined bug.
• Helper:
  • Fixed fltp keyword in regex pattern causing non-ftlp streams to be not recognized.
  • Fixed response.headers returning content-length as Nonetype since it may not necessarily have the Content-Length header set.
• Setup:
  • Pinned pyzmq==24.0.1 working version.

VidGear Stable v0.2.6

📓 Complete Release Notes can be found here ↗️

---

New Features ✨

• Docs:
  • Added new bonus example for RSTP/RTP Live-Streaming using WriteGear's Compression Mode.
  • Added "How to resolve zmq.error.ZMQError" FAQ for NetGear API.(PR by @iandol)
• Maintenance:
  • Added new patterns to .gitignore to ignore pypi's build directory and egg-info files.
• CI:
  • Switched to new Issue GitHub's form schema using YAMLs.

Updates/Improvements ⚡️

• Setup.py:
  • Replaced distutils.version.LooseVersion with pkg_resources.parse_version.
• Docs:
  • Updated Site Navigation.
    • Added new notices to inform users more effectively about bonus examples.
    • Added new Bonus section to navigation and moved suitable pages under it.
  • Redesigned and Rewritten Donation and Contribution section to README.md.
• API:
  • Updated depreciated tostring() to tobytes() for the purposes for clarity in Python 3.2.
• CI:
  • Added more paths and files to skip commits.

Breaking Updates/Changes 💥

• -input_framerate parameter now accepts any positive value for WriteGear and StreamGear APIs.

Bug-fixes 🐛

• API: Fixed -input_framerate less than 5 does not get used in WriteGear and StreamGear APIs.(PR by @freol35241)
• CamGear: Fixed Yt-dlp generated HTTP DASH Segments URLs not supported by OpenCV's VideoCapture(PR by @DynamiteC)
• StreamGear:
  • Fixed hls_segment_type not working bug. (PR by @enarche-ahn)
  • Fixed critical logging parameter bug
    • Fixed debug logs even when logging=False in StreamGear's Real-time Mode. (patch suggested by @enarche-ahn)
    • Added length check to -video_source attribute to correctly infers it as empty(or invalid).
• CI:
  • Fixed pinned version syntax bug in docs_deployer workflow.
  • Fixed typos in Github forms and its context.
• Docs:
  • Fixed jinja2 3.1.0 or above breaks mkdocs.
    • jinja2>=3.1.0 breaks mkdocs (mkdocs/mkdocs#2799), therefore pinned jinja2 version to <3.1.0.
  • Fixed support for new mkdocstring versions
  • Fixed Netgear+Webgear bonus example code bugs.(PR by @iandol)
  • Fixed external bug that causing "Home" tab not responsive randomly when accessed from other tabs.

VidGear Stable v0.2.5

📓 Complete Release Notes can be found here ↗️

---

New Features ✨

• WriteGear:
  • Added support for GStreamer pipeline in WriteGear API's Non-Compression mode:
    • Implemented GStreamer Pipeline Mode to accept GStreamer pipeline formatted as string to its output_filename parameter.
    • Added new special -gst_pipeline_mode attribute to its output_params dictionary parameter to enable this mode.
    • This feature provides flexible way to directly write video frames into custom GStreamer Pipeline with controlled bitrate.
  • Added new -ffpreheaders special attribute to WriteGear's output_params dictionary parameter in Compression mode:
    • This attribute is specifically required to set special FFmpeg parameters in Compression Mode that are present at the starting of command(such as -re).
    • This attribute only accepts list datatype as value.
• NetGear:
  • Added bidirectional data transfer support to existing exclusive Multi-Clients and Multi-Servers exclusive modes:
    • Users will now able to send data bidirectionally in both Multi-Clients and Multi-Servers exclusive modes.
    • Bidirectional mode will no longer disables automatically when enabled along with Multi-Clients and Multi-Servers exclusive modes.
• Maintenance:
  • 🌟 Added official support for Python-3.10 legacies. 🌟
  • Added float value support to THREAD_TIMEOUT optional attributes in threaded gears.

Updates/Improvements ⚡️

• Setup.py:
  • Dropped support for Python-3.6 and below legacies.
  • Updated logging formating.
  • Updated python_requires to >=3.7.
• Helper:
  • Vidgear will now report current version on every run.

Breaking Updates/Changes 💥

• ⚠️ Dropped support for Python-3.6 legacies from vidgear.

Bug-fixes 🐛

• NetGear: Fixed bidirectional mode forcefully overriding multi-clients mode's payload.
• Setup: Fixed uvicorn and aiortc dropped support for Python-3.6 legacies.

VidGear Stable v0.2.4

📓 Complete Release Notes can be found here ↗️

---

New Features ✨

• CamGear:
  • Added a new YT_backend Internal Class with YT-DLP backend:
    • Implemented YT_backend a new CamGear's Internal YT-DLP backend class for extracting metadata from Streaming URLs.
    • Added support for pipeling (live) video-frames from all yt-dlp supported streaming sites: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/supportedsites.md#supported-sites
    • Implemented algorithm from scratch for auto-extracting resolution specific streamable URLs for pipelineing.
    • Added new ytv_metadata global parameter to CamGear for accessing video's metadata(such as duration, title, description) on-the-go.
    • ⚠️ Playlists are still unsupported.
• WebGear_RTC:
  • Implemented a new easy way of defining Custom Streaming Class with suitable source(such as OpenCV):
    • Added new custom_stream attribute with WebGear_RTC options parameter that allows you to easily define your own Custom Streaming Class with suitable source(such as OpenCV).
    • This implementation supports repeated Auto-Reconnection or Auto-Refresh out-of-the-box.
    • This implementation is more user-friendly and easy to integrate within complex APIs.
    • This implementation supports all vidgear's VideoCapture APIs readily as input.

Updates/Improvements ⚡️

• CamGear:
  • Added is_livestream global YT_backend parameters.
  • Added default options for yt-dlp for extracting info_dict(metadata) of the video as a single JSON line.
  • Removed all dead code related to streamlink backend.
• Setup.py:
  • Moved all API specific dependencies to extra_requires under the name "core". [PR #268 by @zpapakipos]
  • Added rule to replace GitHub heading links in description.
  • Updated extra_require dependencies.
  • Removed streamlink dependency.
  • Removed pafy dependency.

Breaking Updates/Changes 💥

• ⚠️ Installation command with pip has been changed in v0.2.4:
  • The legacy pip install vidgear command now installs critical bare-minimum dependencies only. Therefore in order to automatically install all the API specific dependencies as previous versions, use pip install vidgear[core] command instead.
• CamGear:
  • ⚠️ Removed streamlink backend support from stream_mode in favor of more reliable CamGear's Internal YT-DLP backend class for extracting metadata from Streaming URLs.
    • CamGear will raise ValueError if streaming site URL is unsupported by yt-dlp backend.
    • CamGear will raise ValueError if yt-dlp isn't installed and stream_mode is enabled.
  • ⚠️ Removed automatic enforcing of GStreamer backend for YouTube-livestreams and made it optional.
    • The CamGear will not raise ValueError if GStreamer support is missing in OpenCV backends.
• WebGear_RTC:
  • ⚠️ Removed support for assigning Custom Media Server Class(inherited from aiortc's VideoStreamTrack) in WebGear_RTC through its config global parameter.
  • ⚠️ WebGear_RTC API will now throws ValueError if source parameter is NoneType as well as custom_stream attribute is undefined.
• Helper:
  • ⚠️ Removed restore_levelnames method.
  • ⚠️ Removed youtube_url_validator method.

Bug-fixes 🐛

• CamGear:
  • Fixed KeyError Bug for missing attributed in meta_data json in some streaming sites.
• Helper:
  • Removed unused imports.

Related Pull Requests 🔧

• PR #268
• PR #272
• PR #274

VidGear Stable v0.2.3

📓 Complete Release Notes can be found here ↗️

---

New Features ✨

• CamGear:
  • Added support for 4K Streaming URLs.
• Helper:
  • Implemented logging ColorFormatter string alignment.

Updates/Improvements ⚡️

• CamGear:
  • Replaced youtube-dl with yt-dlp as pafy backend for YouTube videos pipelining.
    • Implemented hack to trick pafy into assuming yt-dlp as youtube-dl.
    • Replaced youtube-dl dependency with yt-dlp.
    • Replaced youtube-dl imports with yt-dlp.
• Helper:
  • Enabled logging for check_WriteAccess method.
• Maintenance:
  • Added .gitignore for specifying intentionally untracked files to ignore
  • Added .gitattributes to manage how Git reads line endings.
  • Introduced python short-circuiting for handling logging logic in APIs.

Breaking Updates/Changes 💥

• check_WriteAccess will now return as invalid path if writing directory does not exists. This will effect output file handling in WriteGear and StreamGear APIs.

Bug-fixes 🐛

• StreamGear:
  • Fixed StreamGear Malformed URI Error with HLS Segments [PR #243 by @Vboivin]
    • Removed the extra '%' character from the naming convention for segment files.
    • Used internal stream_count dict variable to alter template for HLS segment filenames.
• WriteGear:
  • Fixed bug in -disable_force_termination attribute logic which accidentally disables force termination.
• WebGear_RTC:
  • Fixed name 'VideoStreamTrack' is not defined bug.
• Setup.py:
  • Fixed TypeError bug.
  • Fixed invalid latest_version retrieval.
• Helper:
  • Fixed check_WriteAccess failing to recognize correct permission for writing the output file on windows platform.
    • Implemented separate logic for Windows and *nix platforms.
  • Fixed bug in check_WriteAccess that throws OSError while handling URLs.

Related Pull Requests 🔧

• PR #249
• PR #262

VidGear Stable v0.2.2

📓 Complete Release Notes can be found here ↗️

 

New Features ✨

• StreamGear:
  • Added native support for new Apple HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) HTTP streaming format in StreamGear.
  • Added seamless support for audio input from external audio devices.
• NetGear:
  • New SSH Tunneling Mode for remote connection of ZMQ sockets across machines via SSH tunneling.
  • Additional colorspace support for input frames with Frame-Compression enabled.
    • Allowed users to manually select colorspace on-the-fly with its JPEG frame compression mode.
• NetGear_Async:
  • New exclusive Bidirectional Mode for bidirectional data transfer with pure asyncio implementation.
    • ⚠️ Bidirectional mode is only available with User-defined Custom Source(i.e. source=None)
    • ⚠️ NetGear_Async will throw RuntimeError if bidirectional mode is disabled at server or client but not both.
  • Added new disable_confirmation used to force disable termination confirmation from client in terminate_connection.
  • Added task_done() method after every get() call to gracefully terminate queues.
  • Added new secrets and string imports.
• WebGear:
  • Updated JPEG Frame compression with simplejpeg:
    • Implemented JPEG compression algorithm for 4-5% performance boost at cost of minor loss in quality.
    • Utilized encode_jpeg and decode_jpeg methods to implement turbo-JPEG transcoding with simplejpeg.
    • Added new options to control JPEG frames quality, enable fastest dct, fast upsampling to boost performance.
    • Added new jpeg_compression, jpeg_compression_quality, jpeg_compression_fastdct, jpeg_compression_fastupsample attributes.
  • Added new WebGear Theme: (Checkout at https://github.com/abhiTronix/vidgear-vitals)
    • Added responsive image scaling according to screen aspect ratios.
    • Added responsive text scaling.
• WebGear_RTC:
  • Added native support for middlewares:
    • Added new global middleware variable for easily defining Middlewares as list.
  • Added new WebGear_RTC Theme: (Checkout at https://github.com/abhiTronix/vidgear-vitals)
    • Implemented new responsive video scaling according to screen aspect ratios.
    • Added bootstrap CSS properties to implement auto-scaling.
• Helper:
  • New automated interpolation selection for gears:
    • Implemented retrieve_best_interpolation method to automatically select best available interpolation within OpenCV.
  • Implemented get_supported_demuxers method to get list of supported demuxers.
• Setup.py:
  • Added new cython and msgpack dependency.
  • Added msgpack and msgpack_numpy to auto-install latest.

 

Updates/Improvements ⚡️

• VidGear Core:
  • New behavior to virtually isolate optional API specific dependencies by silencing ImportError on all VidGear's APIs import.
  • Implemented algorithm to cache all imports on startup but silence any ImportError on missing optional dependency.
  • ⚠️ Now ImportError will be raised only any certain API specific dependency is missing during given API's initialization.
• StreamGear:
  • Replaced depreciated -min_seg_duration flag with -seg_duration.
  • Removed redundant -re flag from RTFM.
  • Improved Live-Streaming performance by disabling SegmentTimline
  • Improved DASH assets detection for removal by using filename prefixes.
• NetGear:
  • Replaced np.newaxis with np.expand_dims.
  • Replaced random module with secrets while generating system ID.
  • Update array indexing with np.copy.
• NetGear_Async:
  • Improved custom source handling.
  • Removed deprecated loop parameter from asyncio methods.
  • Re-implemented skip_loop parameter in close() method.
  • ⚠️ run_until_complete will not used if skip_loop is enabled.
  • ⚠️ skip_loop now will create asyncio task instead and will enable disable_confirmation by default.
  • Replaced create_task with ensure_future to ensure backward compatibility with python-3.6 legacies.
  • Simplified code for transceive_data method.
• WebGear_RTC:
  • Improved handling of failed ICE connection.
  • Made is_running variable globally available for internal use.
• Helper:
  • Added 4320p resolution support to dimensions_to_resolutions method.
  • Implemented new delete_file_safe to safely delete files at given path.
  • Replaced os.remove calls with delete_file_safe.
  • Added support for filename prefixes in delete_ext_safe method.
  • Improved and simplified create_blank_frame functions frame channels detection.
  • Added logging parameter to capPropId function to forcefully discard any error(if required).
• Setup.py:
  • Added patch for numpy dependency, numpy recently dropped support for python 3.6.x legacies. See https://github.com/numpy/numpy/releases/tag/v1.20.0
  • Removed version check on certain dependencies.
  • Re-added aiortc to auto-install latest version.
• Asyncio:
  • Changed asyncio.sleep value to 0.
    • The amount of time sleep is irrelevant; the only purpose await asyncio.sleep() serves is to force asyncio to suspend execution to the event loop, and give other tasks a chance to run. Also, await asyncio.sleep(0) will achieve the same effect. https://stackoverflow.com/a/55782965/10158117
• License:
  • Dropped publication year range to avoid confusion. (Signed and Approved by @abhiTronix)
  • Updated Vidgear license's year of first publication of the work in accordance with US copyright notices defined by Title 17, Chapter 4(Visually perceptible copies): https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap4.html

 

Breaking Updates/Changes 💥

• 💣 Virtually isolated all API specific dependencies, Now ImportError for API-specific dependencies will be raised only when any of them is missing at API's initialization.
• 💣 Renamed delete_safe to delete_ext_safe.
• 💣 Dropped support for frame_jpeg_quality, frame_jpeg_optimize, frame_jpeg_progressive attributes from WebGear.

 

Bug-fixes 🐛

• CamGear:
  • Hot-fix for Live Camera Streams:
    • Added new event flag to keep check on stream read.
    • Implemented event wait for read() to block it when source stream is busy.
    • Added and Linked THREAD_TIMEOUT with event wait timout.
    • Improved backward compatibility of new additions.
• NetGear:
  • Fixed Bidirectional Video-Frame Transfer broken with frame-compression:
    • Fixed return_data interfering with return JSON-data in receive mode.
    • Fixed logic.
  • Fixed color-subsampling interfering with colorspace.
  • Patched external simplejpeg bug. Issue: https://gitlab.com/jfolz/simplejpeg/-/issues/11
    • Added np.squeeze to drop grayscale frame's 3rd dimension on Client's end.
  • Fixed bug that cause server end frame dimensions differ from client's end when frame compression enabled.
• NetGear_Async:
  • Fixed bug related asyncio queue freezing on calling join().
  • Fixed ZMQ connection bugs in bidirectional mode.
  • Fixed several critical bugs in event loop handling.
  • Fixed several bugs in bidirectional mode implementation.
  • Fixed missing socket termination in both server and client end.
  • Fixed timeout parameter logic.
• WebGear_RTC:
  • Fixed stream freezes after web-page reloading:
    • Implemented new algorithm to continue stream even when webpage is reloaded.
    • Inherit and modified next_timestamp VideoStreamTrack method for generating accurate timestamps.
    • Implemented reset_connections callable to reset all peer connections and recreate Video-Server timestamps. (Implemented by @kpetrykin)
    • Added close_connection endpoint in JavaScript to inform server page refreshing.(Thanks to @kpetrykin)
    • Added exclusive reset connection node /close_connection in routes.
    • Added reset() method to Video-Server class for manually resetting timestamp clock.
    • Added reset_enabled flag to keep check on reloads.
    • Fixed premature webpage auto-reloading.
  • Fixed web-page reloading bug after stream ended:
    • Disable webpage reload behavior handling for Live broadcasting.
    • Disable reload CI test on Windows machines due to random failures.
    • Improved handling of failed ICE connection.
  • Fixed Assertion error bug:
    • Source must raise MediaStreamError when stream ends instead of returning None-type.
• WebGear:
  • Removed format specific OpenCV decoding and encoding support for WebGear.
• Helper:
  • Regex bugs fixed:
    • New improved regex for discovering supported encoders in get_supported_vencoders.
    • Re-implemented check for extracting only valid output protocols in is_valid_url.
  • Bugfix related to OpenCV import:
    • Bug fixed for OpenCV import comparison test failing with Legacy versions and throwing ImportError.
  • Fixed bug with create_blank_frame that throws error with gray frames.
  • Implemented RSTP protocol validation as demuxer, since it's not a protocol but a demuxer.
  • Removed redundant logger_handler, mkdir_safe, retrieve_best_interpolation, capPropId helper functions from asyncio package. Relatively imported helper functions from non-asyncio package.
  • Removed unused aiohttp dependency.
  • Removed asctime formatting from logging.
• StreamGear:
  • Fixed Multi-Bitrate HLS VOD streams:
    • Re-implemented complete workflow for Multi-Bitrate HLS VOD streams.
    • Extended support to both Single-Source and Real-time Frames Mode...

VidGear v0.2.1

New Features ✨

• WebGear_RTC:
  • A new API that is similar to WeGear API in all aspects but utilizes WebRTC standard instead of Motion JPEG for streaming.
  • Added a flexible backend for aiortc - a python library for Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC).
  • Integrated all functionality and parameters of WebGear into WebGear_RTC API.
  • Implemented JSON Response with a WebRTC Peer Connection of Video Server.
  • Added a internal RTC_VideoServer server on WebGear_RTC, a inherit-class to aiortc's VideoStreamTrack API.
  • New Standalone UI Default theme v0.1.1 for WebGear_RTC from scratch without using 3rd-party assets. (by @abhiTronix)
  • New custom.js and custom.css for custom responsive behavior.
  • Added WebRTC support to custom.js and ensured compatibility with WebGear_RTC.
  • Added example support for ICE framework and STUN protocol like WebRTC features to custom.js.
  • Added resize() function to custom.js to automatically adjust video & img tags for smaller screens.
  • Added WebGear_RTC support in main.py for easy access through terminal using --mode flag.
  • Integrated all WebGear_RTC enhancements to WebGear Themes.
  • Added CI test for WebGear_RTC.
  • Added complete docs for WebGear_RTC API.
  • Added bare-minimum as well as advanced examples usage code.
  • Added new theme images.
  • Added Reference and FAQs.
• CamGear API:
  • New Improved Pure-Python Multiple-Threaded Implementation:
    • Optimized Threaded-Queue-Mode Performance. (PR by @bml1g12)
    • Replaced regular queue.full checks followed by sleep with implicit sleep with blocking queue.put.
    • Replaced regular queue.empty checks followed by queue.
    • Replaced nowait_get with a blocking queue.get natural empty check.
    • Up-to 2x performance boost than previous implementations.
  • New THREAD_TIMEOUT attribute to prevent deadlocks:
    • Added support for THREAD_TIMEOUT attribute to its options parameter.
    • Updated CI Tests and docs.
• WriteGear API:
  • New more robust handling of default video-encoder in compression mode:
    • Implemented auto-switching of default video-encoder automatically based on availability.
    • API now selects Default encoder based on priority: "libx264" > "libx265" > "libxvid" > "mpeg4".
    • Added get_supported_vencoders Helper method to enumerate Supported Video Encoders.
    • Added common handler for -c:v and -vcodec flags.
• NetGear API:
  • New Turbo-JPEG compression with simplejpeg
    • Implemented JPEG compression algorithm for 4-5% performance boost at cost of minor loss in quality.
    • Utilized encode_jpeg and decode_jpeg methods to implement turbo-JPEG transcoding with simplejpeg.
    • Added options to control JPEG frames quality, enable fastest dct, fast upsampling to boost performance.
    • Added new jpeg_compression, jpeg_compression_quality, jpeg_compression_fastdct, jpeg_compression_fastupsample attributes.
    • Enabled fast dct by default with JPEG frames at 90%.
    • Added Docs for JPEG Frame Compression.
• WebGear API:
  • New modular and flexible configuration for Custom Sources:
    • Implemented more convenient approach for handling custom source configuration.
    • Added new config global variable for this new behavior.
    • Now None-type source parameter value is allowed for defining own custom sources.
    • Added new Example case and Updates Docs for this feature.
    • Added new CI Tests.
  • New Browser UI Updates:
    • New Standalone UI Default theme v0.1.0 for browser (by @abhiTronix)
    • Completely rewritten theme from scratch with only local resources.
    • New custom.js and custom.css for custom responsive behavior.
    • New sample glow effect with css.
    • New sample click to full-screen behavior with javascript.
    • Removed all third-party theme dependencies.
    • Update links to new github server abhiTronix/vidgear-vitals
    • Updated docs with new theme's screenshots.
  • Added enable_infinite_frames attribute for enabling infinite frames.
  • Added New modular and flexible configuration for Custom Sources.
  • Bumped WebGear Theme Version to v0.1.1.
  • Updated Docs and CI tests.
• ScreenGear API:
  • Implemented Improved Pure-Python Multiple-Threaded like CamGear.
  • Added support for THREAD_TIMEOUT attribute to its options parameter.
• StreamGear API:
  • Enabled pseudo live-streaming flag re for live content.
• Docs:
  • Added new native docs versioning to mkdocs-material.
  • Added new examples and few visual tweaks.
  • Updated Stylesheet for versioning.
  • Added new DASH video chunks at https://github.com/abhiTronix/vidgear-docs-additionals for StreamGear and Stabilizer streams.
  • Added open-sourced "Tears of Steel" * project Mango Teaser video chunks.
  • Added open-sourced "Subspace Video Stabilization" http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~fliu/project/subspace_stabilization/ video chunks.
  • Added support for DASH Video Thumbnail preview in Clappr within custom.js.
  • Added responsive clappr DASH player with bootstrap's embed-responsive.
  • Added new permalink icon and slugify to toc.
  • Added "back-to-top" button for easy navigation.
• Helper:
  • New GitHub Mirror with latest Auto-built FFmpeg Static Binaries:
    • Replaced new GitHub Mirror abhiTronix/FFmpeg-Builds in helper.py
    • New CI maintained Auto-built FFmpeg Static Binaries.
    • Removed all 3rd-party and old links for better compatibility and Open-Source reliability.
    • Updated Related CI tests.
    • Added auto-font-scaling for create_blank_frame method.
  • Added c_name parameter to generate_webdata and download_webdata to specify class.
  • A more robust Implementation of Downloading Artifacts:
    • Added a custom HTTP TimeoutHTTPAdapter Adapter with a default timeout for all HTTP calls based on this GitHub comment.
    • Implemented http client and the send() method to ensure that the default timeout is used if a timeout argument isn't provided.
    • Implemented Requests sessionwith block to exit properly even if there are unhandled exceptions.
    • Add a retry strategy to custom TimeoutHTTPAdapter Adapter with max 3 retries and sleep(backoff_factor=1) between failed requests.
  • Added create_blank_frame method to create bland frames with suitable text.
• [CI] Continuous Integration:
  • Added new fake frame generated for fake picamera class with numpy.
  • Added new create_bug parameter to fake picamera class for emulating various artificial bugs.
  • Added float/int instance check on time_delay for camgear and pigear.
  • Added EXIT_CODE to new timeout implementation for pytests to upload codecov report when no timeout.
  • Added auxiliary classes to fake picamera for facilitating the emulation.
  • Added new CI tests for PiGear Class for testing on all platforms.
  • Added shutdown() function to gracefully terminate WebGear_RTC API.
  • Added new coreutils brew dependency.
  • Added handler for variable check on exit and codecov upload.
  • Added is_running flag to WebGear_RTC to exit safely.
• Setup:
  • New automated latest version retriever for packages:
    • Implemented new latest_version method to automatically retrieve latest version for packages.
    • Added Some Dependencies.
  • Added simplejpeg package for all platforms.

 

Updates/Improvements 🔧

• Added exception for RunTimeErrors in NetGear CI tests.
• WriteGear: Critical file write access checking method:
  • Added new check_WriteAccess Helper method.
  • Implemented a new robust algorithm to check if given directory has write-access.
  • Removed old behavior which gives irregular results.
• Helper: Maintenance Updates
  • Added workaround for Python bug.
  • Added safe_mkdir to check_WriteAccess to automatically create non-existential parent folder in path.
  • Extended check_WriteAccess Patch to StreamGear.
  • Simplified check_WriteAccess to handle Windows envs easily.
  • Updated FFmpeg Static Download URL for WriteGear.
  • Implemented fallback option for auto-calculating bitrate from extracted audio sample-rate in validate_audio method.
• Docs: General UI Updates
  • Updated Meta tags for og site and twitter cards.
  • Replaced Custom dark theme toggle with mkdocs-material's official Color palette toggle
  • Added example for external audio input and creating segmented MP4 video in WriteGear FAQ.
  • Added example for YouTube streaming with WriteGear.
  • Removed custom dark-material.js and header.html files from theme.
  • Added blogpost link for detailed information on Stabilizer Working.
  • Updated mkdocs.yml and custom.css configuration.
  • Remove old hack to resize clappr DASH player with css.
  • Updated Admonitions.
  • Improved docs contexts.
  • Updated CSS for version-selector-button.
  • Adjusted files to match new themes.
  • Updated welcome-bot message for typos.
  • Removed redundant FAQs from NetGear Docs.
  • Updated Assets Images.
  • Updated spacing.
• CI:
  • Removed unused github.ref from yaml.
  • Updated OpenCV Bash Script for Linux envs.
  • Added timeout-minutes flag to github-actions workflow.
  • Added timeout flag to pytest.
  • Replaced Threaded Gears with OpenCV VideoCapture API.
  • Moved files and Removed redundant code.
  • Replaced grayscale frames with color frames for WebGear tests.
  • Updat...