Noetic python raw Image publisher (from video)

Question

Hi everyone, I have spent nearly 2 full days with this problem now and have some extensive research, but just can't figure it out. My apologies for being a burden, I ussually hesitate to waste anyones time. Before asking any questions I give it a good amount of effort.

I'm attempting to read a video stream from a file with opencv and then just publish every single fram on a topic. should be of message type sensor_msgs/Image

Once I have this completed, I will write a subscriber on a remote host, but I have to get the publisher done first, which is where I'm struggling. I have tried the below program, which executes without errors, until I add go into rviz and add new item by topic. that's when the application crashes.

I'm not sure at this point if the publisher works and the problem is on rviz side, or if the publisher is not properly set-up.

PLEASE help !

ROS noetic on Ubuntu 20_04 (native, not in a VM)

#! /usr/bin/env python

import rospy
import cv2
from std_msgs.msg import String
from sensor_msgs.msg import Image
from cv_bridge import CvBridge, CvBridgeError
import sys

VERBOSE=True

bridge = CvBridge()


def main(args):
    rospy.init_node('video_stream', anonymous=True)

    image_publisher = rospy.Publisher("/output/image_raw/stream", Image, queue_size=10)
    video_capture = cv2.VideoCapture('../video/ros.mp4')
    width  = video_capture.get(3)  # float `width`
    height = video_capture.get(4)  # float `height`
    
    if VERBOSE:
        print("initiated node and publisher")
    
    while not rospy.is_shutdown():
        try:
            ret, frame = video_capture.read()
            #cv_image = bridge.imgmsg_to_cv2(frame, "bgr8")

            vmsg = Image
            vmsg.header = rospy.Time.now()
            vmsg.height = height
            vmsg.width = width
            vmsg.encoding = "rgb8"
            vmsg.is_bigendian = True
            vmsg.step = 3
            vmsg.data = frame


            # Publish new image
            image_publisher.publish(vmsg)

        except KeyboardInterrupt:
            break
            print("Shutting down")    
    
    # </while>
    cv2.destroyAllWindows()

    return 0


if __name__ == '__main__':
    try:
        main(sys.argv)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print("Shutting down")
    
    
    

Here is the error output I get when connecting it in rviz:

publish_video.py 
initiated node and publisher
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./publish_video.py", line 58, in <module>
    main(sys.argv)
  File "./publish_video.py", line 44, in main
    image_publisher.publish(vmsg)
  File "/opt/ros/noetic/lib/python3/dist-packages/rospy/topics.py", line 882, in publish
    self.impl.publish(data)
  File "/opt/ros/noetic/lib/python3/dist-packages/rospy/topics.py", line 1066, in publish
    serialize_message(b, self.seq, message)
  File "/opt/ros/noetic/lib/python3/dist-packages/rospy/msg.py", line 152, in serialize_message
    msg.serialize(b)
TypeError: serialize() missing 1 required positional argument: 'buff'

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Originally posted by USAotearoa on ROS Answers with karma: 78 on 2021-12-15

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by ljaniec on 2021-12-15:
Can you first listen to a topic in a terminal first to see if the first few Image messages are structured correctly? Shouldn't the line with vmsg = Image have a () on the end (for calling the constructor)?

Answer 1

Figured it out

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import rospy
from sensor_msgs.msg import Image
from cv_bridge import CvBridge
import cv2
  
def publish_message():
 
  # Node is publishing to the video_frames topic using 
  # the message type Image
  pub = rospy.Publisher('video_frames', Image, queue_size=10)
     
  # Tells rospy the name of the node.
  # Anonymous = True makes sure the node has a unique name. Random
  # numbers are added to the end of the name.
  rospy.init_node('video_pub_py', anonymous=True)
     
  # Go through the loop 10 times per second
  rate = rospy.Rate(10) # 10hz
     
  # Create a VideoCapture object
  # The argument '0' gets the default webcam.
  #cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
  cap = cv2.VideoCapture('../video/ros.mp4')
     
  # Used to convert between ROS and OpenCV images
  br = CvBridge()
 
  # While ROS is still running.
  while not rospy.is_shutdown():
     
      # Capture frame-by-frame
      # This method returns True/False as well
      # as the video frame.
      ret, frame = cap.read()
         
      if ret == True:
        # Print debugging information to the terminal
        rospy.loginfo('publishing video frame')
             
        # Publish the image.
        # The 'cv2_to_imgmsg' method converts an OpenCV
        # image to a ROS image message
        pub.publish(br.cv2_to_imgmsg(frame))
             
      # Sleep just enough to maintain the desired rate
      rate.sleep()
         
if __name__ == '__main__':
  try:
    publish_message()
  except rospy.ROSInterruptException:
    pass

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Originally posted by USAotearoa with karma: 78 on 2021-12-15

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 4

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Original comments

Comment by osilva on 2021-12-15:
Thank you for your efforts and posting the answers so others can benefit.

Comment by osilva on 2021-12-15:
Also you can accept your answer by clicking on the check mark.

Comment by fegaeze on 2022-07-25:
Had to sign up to comment! This was useful in solving my problem. Thank you.