How to encode images into a video file in Java through programming?

Question

I am trying to encode some images of same resolution into a video file using, For that I have tried:

jCodec

• jcodec..example description

  But it is very time consuming and not a proper tool to encode large number of images and it creates a quick time extension.

FFMPEG

• FFMPEG..example description

  But ffmpeg only able to create video from image files. Images need to be create on physical system.

I have heard Xuggler that its APIs can be used in java program to create video file but as its site seems broken. I am unable to try it.

Does anybody know how to encode images in java format into a video file Please help!

THanks in Advance !

Answer 1

Xuggler is deprecated, use Humble-Video instead. It already comes with some demo projects, including how to take screenshots and convert it to a video file: RecordAndEncodeVideo.java

/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2014, Art Clarke.  All rights reserved.
 * <p>
 * This file is part of Humble-Video.
 * <p>
 * Humble-Video is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 * <p>
 * Humble-Video is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
 * GNU Affero General Public License for more details.
 * <p>
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
 * along with Humble-Video.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 *******************************************************************************/
package io.humble.video.demos;

import io.humble.video.*;
import io.humble.video.awt.MediaPictureConverter;
import io.humble.video.awt.MediaPictureConverterFactory;
import org.apache.commons.cli.*;

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.IOException;

/**
 * Records the contents of your computer screen to a media file for the passed in duration.
 * This is meant as a demonstration program to teach the use of the Humble API.
 * <p>
 * Concepts introduced:
 * </p>
 * <ul>
 * <li>Muxer: A {@link Muxer} object is a container you can write media data to.</li>
 * <li>Encoders: An {@link Encoder} object lets you convert {@link MediaAudio} or {@link MediaPicture} objects into {@link MediaPacket} objects
 * so they can be written to {@link Muxer} objects.</li>
 * </ul>
 *
 * <p>
 * To run from maven, do:
 * </p>
 * <pre>
 * mvn install exec:java -Dexec.mainClass="io.humble.video.demos.RecordAndEncodeVideo" -Dexec.args="filename.mp4"
 * </pre>
 *
 * @author aclarke
 *
 */
public class RecordAndEncodeVideo
{
    /**
     * Records the screen
     */
    private static void recordScreen (String filename, String formatname, String codecname, int duration, int snapsPerSecond) throws AWTException, InterruptedException, IOException
    {
        /**
         * Set up the AWT infrastructure to take screenshots of the desktop.
         */
        final Robot robot = new Robot();
        final Toolkit toolkit = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
        final Rectangle screenbounds = new Rectangle(toolkit.getScreenSize());

        final Rational framerate = Rational.make(1, snapsPerSecond);

        /** First we create a muxer using the passed in filename and formatname if given. */
        final Muxer muxer = Muxer.make(filename, null, formatname);

        /** Now, we need to decide what type of codec to use to encode video. Muxers
         * have limited sets of codecs they can use. We're going to pick the first one that
         * works, or if the user supplied a codec name, we're going to force-fit that
         * in instead.
         */
        final MuxerFormat format = muxer.getFormat();
        final Codec codec;
        if (codecname != null)
        {
            codec = Codec.findEncodingCodecByName(codecname);
        }
        else
        {
            codec = Codec.findEncodingCodec(format.getDefaultVideoCodecId());
        }

        /**
         * Now that we know what codec, we need to create an encoder
         */
        Encoder encoder = Encoder.make(codec);

        /**
         * Video encoders need to know at a minimum:
         *   width
         *   height
         *   pixel format
         * Some also need to know frame-rate (older codecs that had a fixed rate at which video files could
         * be written needed this). There are many other options you can set on an encoder, but we're
         * going to keep it simpler here.
         */
        encoder.setWidth(screenbounds.width);
        encoder.setHeight(screenbounds.height);
        // We are going to use 420P as the format because that's what most video formats these days use
        final PixelFormat.Type pixelformat = PixelFormat.Type.PIX_FMT_YUV420P;
        encoder.setPixelFormat(pixelformat);
        encoder.setTimeBase(framerate);

        /** An annoynace of some formats is that they need global (rather than per-stream) headers,
         * and in that case you have to tell the encoder. And since Encoders are decoupled from
         * Muxers, there is no easy way to know this beyond
         */
        if (format.getFlag(MuxerFormat.Flag.GLOBAL_HEADER))
        {
            encoder.setFlag(Encoder.Flag.FLAG_GLOBAL_HEADER, true);
        }

        /** Open the encoder. */
        encoder.open(null, null);


        /** Add this stream to the muxer. */
        muxer.addNewStream(encoder);

        /** And open the muxer for business. */
        muxer.open(null, null);

        /** Next, we need to make sure we have the right MediaPicture format objects
         * to encode data with. Java (and most on-screen graphics programs) use some
         * variant of Red-Green-Blue image encoding (a.k.a. RGB or BGR). Most video
         * codecs use some variant of YCrCb formatting. So we're going to have to
         * convert. To do that, we'll introduce a MediaPictureConverter object later. object.
         */
        MediaPictureConverter converter = null;
        final MediaPicture picture = MediaPicture.make(encoder.getWidth(), encoder.getHeight(), pixelformat);
        picture.setTimeBase(framerate);

        /** Now begin our main loop of taking screen snaps.
         * We're going to encode and then write out any resulting packets. */
        final MediaPacket packet = MediaPacket.make();
        for (int i = 0; i < duration / framerate.getDouble(); i++)
        {
            /** Make the screen capture && convert image to TYPE_3BYTE_BGR */
            final BufferedImage screen = convertToType(robot.createScreenCapture(screenbounds), BufferedImage.TYPE_3BYTE_BGR);

            /** This is LIKELY not in YUV420P format, so we're going to convert it using some handy utilities. */
            if (converter == null)
            {
                converter = MediaPictureConverterFactory.createConverter(screen, picture);
            }
            converter.toPicture(picture, screen, i);

            do
            {
                encoder.encode(packet, picture);
                if (packet.isComplete())
                {
                    muxer.write(packet, false);
                }
            } while (packet.isComplete());

            /** now we'll sleep until it's time to take the next snapshot. */
            Thread.sleep((long) (1000 * framerate.getDouble()));
        }

        /** Encoders, like decoders, sometimes cache pictures so it can do the right key-frame optimizations.
         * So, they need to be flushed as well. As with the decoders, the convention is to pass in a null
         * input until the output is not complete.
         */
        do
        {
            encoder.encode(packet, null);
            if (packet.isComplete())
            {
                muxer.write(packet, false);
            }
        } while (packet.isComplete());

        /** Finally, let's clean up after ourselves. */
        muxer.close();
    }

    @SuppressWarnings("static-access")
    public static void main (String[] args) throws InterruptedException, IOException, AWTException
    {
        final Options options = new Options();
        options.addOption("h", "help", false, "displays help");
        options.addOption("v", "version", false, "version of this library");
        options.addOption(OptionBuilder.withArgName("format").withLongOpt("format").hasArg().
                withDescription("muxer format to use. If unspecified, we will guess from filename").create("f"));
        options.addOption(OptionBuilder.withArgName("codec")
                .withLongOpt("codec")
                .hasArg()
                .withDescription("codec to use when encoding video; If unspecified, we will guess from format")
                .create("c"));
        options.addOption(OptionBuilder.withArgName("duration")
                .withLongOpt("duration")
                .hasArg()
                .withDescription("number of seconds of screenshot to record; defaults to 10.")
                .create("d"));
        options.addOption(OptionBuilder.withArgName("snaps per second")
                .withLongOpt("snaps")
                .hasArg()
                .withDescription("number of pictures to take per second (i.e. the frame rate); defaults to 5")
                .create("s"));

        final CommandLineParser parser = new org.apache.commons.cli.BasicParser();
        try
        {
            final CommandLine cmd = parser.parse(options, args);
            final String[] parsedArgs = cmd.getArgs();
            if (cmd.hasOption("version"))
            {
                // let's find what version of the library we're running
                final String version = io.humble.video_native.Version.getVersionInfo();
                System.out.println("Humble Version: " + version);
            }
            else if (cmd.hasOption("help") || parsedArgs.length != 1)
            {
                final HelpFormatter formatter = new HelpFormatter();
                formatter.printHelp(RecordAndEncodeVideo.class.getCanonicalName() + " <filename>", options);
            }
            else
            {
                /**
                 * Read in some option values and their defaults.
                 */
                final int duration = Integer.parseInt(cmd.getOptionValue("duration", "10"));
                if (duration <= 0)
                {
                    throw new IllegalArgumentException("duration must be > 0");
                }
                final int snaps = Integer.parseInt(cmd.getOptionValue("snaps", "5"));
                if (snaps <= 0)
                {
                    throw new IllegalArgumentException("snaps must be > 0");
                }
                final String codecname = cmd.getOptionValue("codec");
                final String formatname = cmd.getOptionValue("format");
                final String filename = cmd.getArgs()[0];

                recordScreen(filename, formatname, codecname, duration, snaps);
            }
        } catch (ParseException e)
        {
            System.err.println("Exception parsing command line: " + e.getLocalizedMessage());
        }
    }

    /**
     * Convert a {@link BufferedImage} of any type, to {@link BufferedImage} of a
     * specified type. If the source image is the same type as the target type,
     * then original image is returned, otherwise new image of the correct type is
     * created and the content of the source image is copied into the new image.
     *
     * @param sourceImage
     *          the image to be converted
     * @param targetType
     *          the desired BufferedImage type
     *
     * @return a BufferedImage of the specifed target type.
     *
     * @see BufferedImage
     */
    public static BufferedImage convertToType (BufferedImage sourceImage, int targetType)
    {
        BufferedImage image;

        // if the source image is already the target type, return the source image

        if (sourceImage.getType() == targetType)
        {
            image = sourceImage;
        }

        // otherwise create a new image of the target type and draw the new
        // image

        else
        {
            image = new BufferedImage(sourceImage.getWidth(), sourceImage.getHeight(), targetType);
            image.getGraphics().drawImage(sourceImage, 0, 0, null);
        }

        return image;
    }
}

Check other demos too : humble-video-demos

I am using it for real time using on a webapp.

If you will gonna stream this in real time you will need a RTSP server. You can either use big frameworks like Red 5 Server, Wowza Streaming Engine or you can built your own server using Netty which has a built in RTSP codec since version 3.2.

Answer 2

Using command line, there are various ways to convert image to video. You can use those command in java for saving. You can get those commands from the following link:

1. Using ffmpeg to convert a set of images into a video
2. Create a video slideshow from images

I am sharing a code snippet to solve the issue:

code to save png image from HTML5 canvas

Base64 decoder = new Base64();
byte[] pic = decoder.decodeBase64(request.getParameter("pic"));
String frameCount = request.getParameter("frame");
InputStream in = new ByteArrayInputStream(pic);
BufferedImage bImageFromConvert = ImageIO.read(in);
String outdir = "output\\"+frameCount;
//Random rand = new Random();
File file = new File(outdir);
if(file.isFile()){
    if(file.delete()){
        File writefile = new File(outdir);
        ImageIO.write(bImageFromConvert, "png", file);
    }
}

Code for creating image from video

String filePath = "D:\\temp\\some.mpg";
String outdir = "output";
File file = new File(outdir);
file.mkdirs();
Map<String, String> m = System.getenv();

/*
 * String command[] =
 * {"D:\\ffmpeg-win32-static\\bin\\ffmpeg","-i",filePath
 * ,"-r 30","-f","image2",outdir,"\\user%03d.jpg"};
 * 
 * ProcessBuilder pb = new ProcessBuilder(command); pb.start();
 */
String commands = "D:\\ffmpeg-win32-static\\bin\\ffmpeg -i " + filePath
        + " -r 30  -f image2 " + outdir + "\\image%5d.png";
Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(commands);

code for creating video from image

String filePath = "output";
File fileP = new File(filePath);
String commands = "D:\\ffmpeg-win32-static\\bin\\ffmpeg -f image2 -i "
        + fileP + "\\image%5d.png " + fileP + "\\video.mp4";
System.out.println(commands);
Runtime.getRuntime().exec(commands);
System.out.println(fileP.getAbsolutePath());

Credit goes to @yashprit

---

Another approach for Android developers:

1. Create a temporary folder inside the Android.
2. Copy your images in the new folder
3. First, rename your pictures to follow a numerical sequence. For example, img1.jpg, img2.jpg, img3.jpg,... Then you may run:
4. Run this program programmetcally ffmpeg -f image2 -i img%d.jpg /tmp/a.mpg To run this programmatically,

Use the following code:

void convertImg_to_vid()
{
    Process chperm;
    try {
        chperm=Runtime.getRuntime().exec("su");
          DataOutputStream os = 
              new DataOutputStream(chperm.getOutputStream());

              os.writeBytes("ffmpeg -f image2 -i img%d.jpg /tmp/a.mpg\n");
              os.flush();

              chperm.waitFor();

    } catch (IOException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}

Resource Link:

1. Create a Video file from images using ffmpeg