video analysis with python

[Ashot]

Hi,

	I need to write a video analysis tool which extracts statistics from  
microsocope video.  Essentially what I need is to translate the video data  
into numerical matrices. I have been using Python for the past 1.5 years  
anytime I could for absolutely everything, because it has every library  
imaginable... Alas, I can not find a library for decoding video/using  
codecs.  The only solution I have been able to come up with is to create  
an image sequence and load those in with PIL, however this is not really  
feasible as the images are too large (nor is it proffessional).

	Is there a library or project that I have missed, or is there a way to  
incorporate something like vfw.lib directly?  If there isn't I think this  
would be a pretty large whole in Python's arsenal.  Thanks in advance for  
any help.

--
Ashot Petrosian
University of Texas at Austin, Computer Sciences