GrabFrame() to return a string of pixel information?

Question

Hi everyone,
Basically what im looking for is creating a 2d array of values(but id be happy with a string) corrosponding to each of the 320*240 pixels of my camera. At the moment i can get back an awt image using:
Buffer buf = frameGrabber.grabFrame();
Image img = (new BufferToImage((VideoFormat) buf.getFormat()).createImage(buf));
I would of thought that i should meerly use the toString() method. But if i toString() buf i get:
javax.media.Buffer@22c95b
and if i toString() img i get:
BufferedImage@22c95b: type = 1 DirectColorModel: rmask=ff0000 gmask=ff00 bmask=ff amask=0 IntegerInterleavedRaster: width = 320 height = 240 #Bands = 3 xOff = 0 yOff = 0 dataOffset[0] 0
If anyone could help, and point me in the direction of the right method to use, i would be greatly appreciative.
Thanks.

Answer 1

You will need integer values from an image to do anything meaningful with the data. Something like this -
int redValues = new int[imageWidth * imageHeight];
int greenValues  = new int[imageWidth * imageHeight];
int blueValues  = new int[imageWidth * imageHeight];
int alphaValues  = new int[imageWidth * imageHeight];
int counter = 0;
public void grabEveryPixelInThe Image(Image img, int x, int y, int w, int h) {
        int[] pixels = new int[w * h];
        PixelGrabber pg = new PixelGrabber(img, x, y, w, h, pixels, 0, w);
        try {
            pg.grabPixels();
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
            System.err.println("interrupted waiting for pixels!");
            return;
        if ((pg.getStatus() & ImageObserver.ABORT) != 0) {
            System.err.println("image fetch aborted or errored");
            return;
        for (int j = 0; j < h; j++) {
            for (int i = 0; i < w; i++) {
                doOnePixel(pixels[j * w + i]);
public void doOnePixel( int pixel) {
        int alpha = (pixel >> 24) & 0xff;
        int red   = (pixel >> 16) & 0xff;
        int green = (pixel >>  8) & 0xff;
        int blue  = (pixel      ) & 0xff;
       redValues[ counter] = red ;
       greenValues [ counter] = green ;
       blueValues  [ counter] = blue ;
       AlphaValues [ counter ] = alpha ;
       counter++;
}regards