movie_publisher

This package contains several tools for using movie files in ROS (playback, conversion to bag files etc.).

It handles any file formats the system installation of ffmpeg can decode.

Important: This package used to be implemented in Python using pip-installed libraries. That is no longer needed as the package now uses C++ API of ffmpeg/libav. Some things have changed and work a bit differently, but a big effort was spent to keep the new version as backwards compatible as possible.

It can also extract interesting image/video metadata like GPS coordinates and camera calibrations and provide them as ROS-native types.

Main tools

• movie_publisher_node: A ROS node that serves a video file as video topic source (sensor_msgs/Image and friends).
• movie_publisher.launch: A launch file for convenient usage of the node. In the immediate mode, it can also be used to convert video files to bagfiles in a batch.
• movie_to_bag: A script that takes a video as input and transforms it into a bag file.
• add_movie_to_bag: A batch script that adds a video as a topic into an existing bag file.

Helper tools

• fix_bag_timestamps: A batch script that rewrites bag files so that the message publication time is taken from the message header. This allows you to generate bagfile data at high speed and then reprocess them to have more suitable publication timestamps.

movie_publisher_node and nodelet movie_publisher/movie_publisher_nodelet

Published topics

• movie (sensor_msgs/Image): The published movie. Subtopics from image_transport are also provided.
• movie/camera_info (sensor_msgs/CameraInfo): Camera info.
• movie/azimuth (compass_msgs/Azimuth): Georeferenced heading of the camera.
• movie/faces (vision_msgs/Detection2DArray): Faces detected in the image.
• movie/fix (sensor_msgs/NavSatFix): GNSS position of the camera.
• movie/fix_detail (gps_common/GPSFix): GNSS position of the camera.
• movie/imu (sensor_msgs/Imu): Orientation and acceleration of the camera.
• movie/mag (sensor_msgs/MagneticField): Magnetic field strength.

To extract the additional topics except movie, the node uses metadata extractors. See the stack-level README for details about the provided metadata extractors.

Parameters

Parameters ~start, ~end and ~duration can be expressed in seconds (15.35), in (min, sec), in (hour, min, sec), or as a string: '01:03:05.35'.

• ~movie_file (string, required): Path to the movie to play. Any format that ffmpeg can decode.
• ~fps (float, optional): If set, the playback will be at the specified FPS (speeding up/slowing down the movie).
• ~start (float|tuple|string, optional): If set, playback will start from the specified time. Cannot be set together with ~end and ~duration.
• ~end (float|tuple|string, optional): If set, playback will stop at the specified time (not affected by start). Cannot be set together with ~start and ~duration.
• ~duration (float|tuple|string, optional): If set, playback will have this duration. If end is also set, the duration is counted from the end of the clip, otherwise, it is the duration from the start of the clip. Cannot be set together with ~start and ~end.
• ~loop (bool, default False): Whether to loop the movie until the node is shut down. Excludes ~immediate.
• ~immediate (bool, default False): If True, the movie will be processed and published as quickly as possible not waiting for the real time. The timestamps in the resulting messages act “real-world-like” (i.e. 15 FPS means the frames’ timestamps will be 1/15 sec apart). You can set ~fake_time_start if you want these timestamps to begin from a non-zero time. Excludes ~loop.
• ~playback_rate (float, optional): If set to a number, immediate mode will not play as fast as possible, but at this rate (set the rate to a number where you do not lose any messages, e.g. in image_transport/republish).
• ~fake_time_start (float, default 0.0): Used with ~immediate to specify the timestamp of the first message.
• ~timestamp_offset (int|float|string, default ~fake_time_start): Adjustment of timestamps determined by ~timestamp_source. If given as string, it can be a simple mathematical expression that can also resolve several variables: ros_time (current ROS time), wall_time (current wall time), metadata_start (start time from metadata).
• ~timestamp_source (str, default metadata): How to determine timestamps of the movie frames. Options are:
  • metadata: Extract absolute time when the movie was recorded and use that time as timestamps.
  • all_zeros: Use zero timestamps.
  • absolute_timecode: Use the absolute timecode as timestamps (i.e. time since start of movie file).
  • relative_timecode: Use the relative timecode as timestamps (i.e. time since ~start).
  • ros_time: Timestamp the frames with current ROS time.
• ~frame_id (string, default “”): The frame_id used in the geometrical messages’ headers.
• ~optical_frame_id (string, default ${frame_id}_optical_frame): The frame_id used in the image messages’ headers.
• ~spin_after_end (bool, default False): If True, a rospy.spin() is called after the movie has been published.
• ~verbose (bool, default False): If True, logs info about every frame played.
• ~allow_yuv_fallback (bool, default False): Set whether YUV*** formats should be decoded to YUV422, or whether the default encoding should be used.
• ~default_encoding (string, optional): Set the default encoding which should be used for output frames if there is no direct match between the libav pixel format and ROS image encodings.
• ~encoding (string, optional): Set the encoding which should be used for output frames regardless of their source encoding (one of sensor_msgs::image_encodings constants).
• ~wait_after_publisher_created (float, default 1.0): A workaround for the case where you need to give your subscribers some time after the publisher was created. Tweak this number until you get no missing start messages.
• ~publisher_queue_size (int, default 1000 in immediate mode, 10 otherwise): queue_size of the movie publisher.

movie_publisher.launch

This launch file takes arguments with the same name as the node’s parameters.

movie_to_bag

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Changelog for package movie_publisher

3.0.3 (2025-05-28)

• Fixed swapped roll and pitch in RollPitchComposer. Closes #16.
• Make timestamps of messages passed to MovieMetadataProcessors consistent. Closes #15.
• Set inner frame_ids of detected faces. Closes #14.
• Fixed creation of static TFs in movie_to_bag. Closes #13.
• Fixed setting frame_id to latest metadata before they are updated from latest metadata. Closes #10.
• Fixed handling of movies where image rotation changes in the middle of the movie. Closes #9.
• Fixed doc comments.
• Update latest metadata from timed metadata. Closes #8.
• Fixed OpticalFrameTFComposer producing too much output. Closes #7.
• Fixed priority of composers. Closes #6.
• Fixed exception when stream start_time is wrong and leads to negative stream time.
• Contributors: Martin Pecka

3.0.2 (2025-05-13)

• Added ROS parameters allowed_extractors and excluded_extractors.
• Contributors: Martin Pecka

3.0.1 (2025-05-13)

3.0.0 (2025-05-13)

• Finished the refactor for timed metadata support.
• Big refactoring towards better handling of timed metadata.
• Added more metadata: angular velocity, magnetic field and detected faces.
• Contributors: Martin Pecka

2.0.3 (2025-02-27)

2.0.2 (2025-02-19)

• Fixed buildfarm issues.
• Contributors: Martin Pecka

2.0.1 (2025-02-16)

• Try fixing build on buildfarm
• Contributors: Martin Pecka

2.0.0 (2025-02-13)

• Cleaned up dependencies.
• Refactor out MovieProcessorBase.
• CI: Add license linting.
• Compatibility with Melodic.
• Improved documentation, rewritten movie_to_bag to C++, added tests.
• Added support for ImgGPSDirection and GPSTrack expressed towards magnetic North.
• Big rewrite. Moved movie_publisher to a subfolder. Added C++/libav implementation and metadata extraction plugins.
• Contributors: Martin Pecka

1.4.0 (2022-06-08)

• Compatibility with Noetic
• Contributors: Martin Pecka

1.3.1 (2021-04-27)

• Fix pixel format of moviepy videos.
• Contributors: Martin Pecka

1.3.0 (2019-03-10)

• Updated for melodic.
• Contributors: Martin Pecka

1.2.1 (2019-02-07)

• Fixed permissions.
• Kinetic release.
• Moved to python from bc, because it is not installed everywhere.
• More informative error strings.
• Updated to the fixed version rosbash_params==1.0.2.
• Contributors: Martin Pecka

1.1.0 (2019-01-28)

• Added checks for exit codes to bash scripts.
• Fixed install targets.
• Added python-opencv alternative backend. This resolves debian packaging issues.

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