I have a thread dedicated to reading frames from a camera, aiming to read at a specific frequency (self.target_fps). Therefore, I need to perform a read every self.target_frequency = 1 / self.target_fps.

The video thread runs a loop where it reads at each iteration, regardless of the target frequency (target_fps), to empty the VideoCapture buffer (particularly useful when self.target_fps is low, for example, 1 fps). After the read, I want to add the frame to a queue only if it’s the right time, i.e., if a time interval equal to self.target_frequency has passed. The “start” timer helps me determine when it’s time to enqueue the frame and when it’s not. Are there better approaches for efficiently reading frames from an RTSP camera and achieving a reasonably accurate frame rate?

            self.target_fps = 7
            self.target_frequency = 1 / self.target_fps

            start = time.time()

            while not self.stop_video_thread.is_set():
                success, frame = cap.read()

                interval = time.time() - start

                if interval >= self.target_frequency:
                    start = time.time()

                    if success:
                        frame_queue.put_nowait(frame)