Python OpenCV video.get(cv2.CAP_PROP_FPS) returns 0.0 FPS

Question

This is my video

This is the script to find fps:

import cv2
if __name__ == '__main__' :

    video = cv2.VideoCapture("test.mp4");

    # Find OpenCV version
    (major_ver, minor_ver, subminor_ver) = (cv2.__version__).split('.')

    if int(major_ver)  < 3 :
        fps = video.get(cv2.cv.CV_CAP_PROP_FPS)
        print "Frames per second using video.get(cv2.cv.CV_CAP_PROP_FPS): {0}".format(fps)
    else :
        fps = video.get(cv2.CAP_PROP_FPS)
        print "Frames per second using video.get(cv2.CAP_PROP_FPS) : {0}".format(fps)

    video.release(); 

This is the output of the script for this video: Frames per second using video.get(cv2.CAP_PROP_FPS) : 0.0

Why is it returning 0.0? The FPS is 14.0

Soak

did you check opencv actually opened the file? (with video.isOpened()) – Particularize

@Particularize you are right it didn't, it returns False. Why is that? – Soak

well, it didn't open it, you can try with video.open("test.mp4") try, to put the full path just in case... if not try another video (to discard a codec problem) – Particularize

It was actually because opencv was not installed via pip (I have no idea how it was being importing, it's my first time using it). So after doing pip-install python-opencv, it worked like a charm. – Soak

That just explains what was the problem in the first place, when you install opencv with pip it brings its own backends (ffmpeg) so I think the problem was that your first opencv backend was broken – Hattie

Answer 1

Performing pip install python-opencv fixed the problem and the FPS is correctly detected.

EDIT: tested with python 3.8 and indeed it is pip install opencv-python. Cannot remember two years ago what python I was using.

EDIT November 2022: please also check Perry's answer below, if you are using a newer opencv-python version

Soak

When I try this on Windows 10, I get three rows of output: Collecting python-opencv, ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement python-opencv (from versions: none) and ERROR: No matching distribution found for python-opencv – Calces

Actually it should be pip install opencv-python – Ultrasonic

On a Google Colab Notebook, I had to use pip install --upgrade --force-reinstall opencv-python – Presser

Answer 2

The recent versions of opencv-python will give an error called AttributeError because cv2 doesn't have any attribute named cv.

Instead use the following

import cv2

vidcap = cv2.VideoCapture('some_video.avi')
fps = vidcap.get(cv2.CAP_PROP_FPS)

print(f"{fps} frames per second")

This will give the frames per second value

Yeta