How to 'mirror' live webcam video when using cv2?

Question

I want to have two different outputs of webcam videos, one being the normal webcam footage and the other to be the "mirrored" version of it. Is that possible with cv2?

import time, cv2


video=cv2.VideoCapture(0)
a=0
while True:
    a=a+1
    check, frame= video.read()

    gray=cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
    cv2.imshow("Capturing",gray)

    key=cv2.waitKey(1)

    if key==ord('q'):
        break
print(a)

video.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows

Answer 1

In short, Yes it is possible using cv2. I have made some modification in your code to make it happen.

# Loading modules
import cv2
import numpy as np     # Numpy module will be used for horizontal stacking of two frames

video=cv2.VideoCapture(0)
a=0
while True:
    a=a+1
    check, frame= video.read()

    # Converting the input frame to grayscale
    gray=cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)   

    # Fliping the image as said in question
    gray_flip = cv2.flip(gray,1)

    # Combining the two different image frames in one window
    combined_window = np.hstack([gray,gray_flip])

    # Displaying the single window
    cv2.imshow("Combined videos ",combined_window)
    key=cv2.waitKey(1)

    if key==ord('q'):
        break
print(a)

video.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows

Hope you get what you were looking for :)

Answer 2

to get the mirror image:

flip_img = cv2.flip(img,1)