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I have found a work-around which is kind of hacky but it will probably work where other options have failed. It worked for me ;)

If you are able to open the stream with vlc (or other player/library) but fail to do it with opencv you can do this.

1 - Get vlc to open the http/rtsp stream from the ip camera.

2 - Set vlc to stream the source video to a file (Instructions here - http://www.ehow.com/how_11401801_stream-videos-internet-using-vlc.html).

You very likely do be able to do this step will a call to vlc executable with some parameters (Hint: you can run vlc without GUI by running cvlc).

3 - Use your preferred method of opening a file with opencv. I tested it this way (its standard video opening code):

int main(int, char**) {

    cv::VideoCapture vcap;
    cv::Mat image;
    const std::string video = "/path/video";

    if(!vcap.open(video)) {
        std::cout << "Error opening video stream or file" << std::endl;
        return -1;
    }

    for(;;) {
        if(!vcap.read(image)) {
            std::cout << "No frame" << std::endl;
            cv::waitKey();
        }
        cv::imshow("Output Window", image);
        if(cv::waitKey(1) >= 0) break;
    }   
}

Plus: this method could be improved if instead of redirecting the stream to a file, you could redirect to a device (/dev/something), and maybe opencv would be able to open it.

I have found a work-around which is kind of hacky but it will probably work where other options have failed. It worked for me ;)

If you are able to open the stream with vlc (or other player/library) but fail to do it with opencv you can do this.

1 - Get vlc to open the http/rtsp stream from the ip camera.

2 - Set vlc to stream the source video to a file (Instructions here - http://www.ehow.com/how_11401801_stream-videos-internet-using-vlc.html).

You very likely do be able to do this step will a call to vlc executable with some parameters (Hint: you can run vlc without GUI by running cvlc).

3 - Use your preferred method of opening a file with opencv. I tested it this way (its standard video opening code):

int main(int, char**) {

    cv::VideoCapture vcap;
    cv::Mat image;
    const std::string video = "/path/video";

    if(!vcap.open(video)) {
        std::cout << "Error opening video stream or file" << std::endl;
        return -1;
    }

    for(;;) {
        if(!vcap.read(image)) {
            std::cout << "No frame" << std::endl;
            cv::waitKey();
        }
        cv::imshow("Output Window", image);
        if(cv::waitKey(1) >= 0) break;
    }   
}

Plus: this method could be improved if instead of redirecting the stream to a file, you could redirect to a device (/dev/something), and maybe opencv would be able to open it.

I have found a work-around which is kind of hacky but it will probably work where other options have failed. It worked for me ;)

If you are able to open the stream with vlc (or other player/library) but fail to do it with opencv you can do this.

1 - Get vlc to open the http/rtsp stream from the ip camera.

2 - Set vlc to stream the source video to a file (Instructions here - http://www.ehow.com/how_11401801_stream-videos-internet-using-vlc.html).

You very likely do be able to can probably do this step will programmatically with a call to vlc executable with some parameters (Hint: you can run vlc without GUI by running cvlc).

3 - Use your preferred method of opening a file with opencv. I tested it this way (its standard video opening code):

int main(int, char**) {

    cv::VideoCapture vcap;
    cv::Mat image;
    const std::string video = "/path/video";

    if(!vcap.open(video)) {
        std::cout << "Error opening video stream or file" << std::endl;
        return -1;
    }

    for(;;) {
        if(!vcap.read(image)) {
            std::cout << "No frame" << std::endl;
            cv::waitKey();
        }
        cv::imshow("Output Window", image);
        if(cv::waitKey(1) >= 0) break;
    }   
}

Plus: this method could be improved if instead of redirecting the stream to a file, you could redirect to a device (/dev/something), and maybe opencv would be able to open it.

You can also read this stackoverflow post for more options: http://stackoverflow.com/a/7084081/1085483