12. API - Encoders¶
Encoders are typically used by the camera to compress captured images or video frames for output to disk. However, picamera also has classes representing “unencoded” output (raw RGB, etc). Most users will have no direct need to use these classes directly, but advanced users may find them useful as base classes for Custom encoders.
Note
It is strongly recommended that you familiarize yourself with the
mmalobj
layer before attempting to understand the encoder
classes as they deal with several concepts native to that layer.
The inheritance diagram for the following classes is displayed below: