OpenCV MP4 Creation

Question

I've been trying to trying to write MP4 video files using OpenCV, in python.

AVI creation works fine, both on linux and windows, when I use both:

out = cv2.VideoWriter('x.avi', 0, 30, (640, 480))

and

fourcc = cv2.VideoWriter_fourcc(*"XVID")
out = cv2.VideoWriter('x.avi', fourcc, 30, (640, 480))

and even

fourcc = cv2.VideoWriter_fourcc(*"XVID")
out = cv2.VideoWriter('x', fourcc, 30, (640, 480))

.

When I try to save an MP4 however nothing ever saves - using:

fourcc = cv2.VideoWriter_fourcc(*"H264")
out = cv2.VideoWriter('x.mp4', fourcc, 30, (640, 480))

and

fourcc = cv2.VideoWriter_fourcc(*"AVC1")
out = cv2.VideoWriter('x.mp4', fourcc, 30, (640, 480))

No errors occur, just nothing saves.

I've tried everything over the past few days, doing everything to avoid creating the AVI and then converting it to MP4 using ffmpeg as I find that to be horrible practice.

Answer 1

cap = cv2.VideoCapture(0)
cap.set(3,640)
cap.set(4,480)

fourcc = cv2.VideoWriter_fourcc(*'MP4V')
out = cv2.VideoWriter('output.mp4', fourcc, 20.0, (640,480))

while(True):
    ret, frame = cap.read()
    out.write(frame)
    cv2.imshow('frame', frame)
    c = cv2.waitKey(1)
    if c & 0xFF == ord('q'):
        break

cap.release()
out.release()
cv2.destroyAllWindows()