OpenCV VideoCapture can't open file, what am I doing wrong? - c++

Question

I am compiling on Ubuntu 14.04 using OpenCV 3.1. When trying to open a video file it gives this error:
"Cannot open the video file"
I installed everything i could install : ffmpeg etc. Haven't found a solution checking out similar questions on StackOF.
What do ?
cv::VideoCapture cap(argv[1]);
Where argv[1] is the file name in the same directory as the executable.

Answer 1

In case your constructor is failing, you may want to use the .open() method. So, if you want to open a file that is called "myVideo.mp4" that is in the folder of your project, you would do the following:
cv::VideoCapture cap;
cap.open("myVideo.mp4");
For more detailed informations about this method, check this documentation link
Also, the book Learning OpenCV 3, from the O'Rilley media, on page 26 gives you a good example. Here is a Gist that I made to give you as an example.
#include <opencv2/highgui/highgui.hpp>
#include <opencv2/imgproc/imgproc.hpp>
#include <iostream>
int main() {
cv::VideoCapture cap;
cap.open("myVideo.mp4" );
cv::namedWindow( "myVideo", cv::WINDOW_AUTOSIZE );
cv::Mat frame;
while(true) {
cap >> frame;
if( frame.empty() ){
std::cout << "Could not load the video frames. \n";
break;
}
cv::imshow( "myVideo", frame );
if( cv::waitKey(27) >= 0 ){
std::cout << "Escape pressed \n";
break;
}
}
return 0;
}