B-Roll (rosbag2_broll)
- Software
- Middleware
- Tool
B-Roll is a set of ROS 2 plugins and libraries for working with video data in rosbag2, letting mp4 video files be played back as image topics.
Made by ROS 2 Tooling Working Groups.
Source on GitHub: github.com/ros-tooling/rosbag2_broll (opens in a new tab). Facts read at commit d693ed0 (opens in a new tab).
Licenses
- Code
- Apache-2.0 (opens in a new tab)
Read by Robotheca from LICENSE (opens in a new tab) (Apache-2.0) at commit d693ed0 (opens in a new tab), on 16 Oct 2026.
- Commercial use
- Yes
What it does
- Provides a rosbag2 storage implementation that reads encoded video frames directly from video files.
- Can optionally decode the video frames into raw images before publishing them.
- Supports h264 and h265/hevc encoded video so far.
- Includes a main broll utility library and a rosbag2_storage_broll package.
- Playback is demonstrated with ros2 bag play and a decode_node, with output shown in Foxglove.
Written by Robotheca from the project's README (opens in a new tab) at commit d693ed0.
Getting started
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- How to start
- The project's README (opens in a new tab)
Maintenance
- Status
- Maintained: a commit in the last 12 months
- Newest commit
- 13 Nov 2025 on main
- Latest release
- None published on GitHub
Checked on GitHub on 16 Oct 2026.
Links
Robots that can run it
No robot on Robotheca is linked to it yet. Links come from a robot's robot.yaml, from its dependency files read as text, or from Robotheca's editors.
Robotheca lists software as a reference: nothing is hosted or run here, and every fact links to where it was read.