Convert raw image to buffer - node.js

Question

There is apparently no easy way to stream images in Raspberry Pi. While there are many hacks available, in my Raspberry Pi Zero it has some trouble keeping a decent framerate.
I suspect one of the main problems is that the 1st Google solution and most of them writes/reads to the SD for each image. I've got so far to read from the terminal an image without touching the SD:
const out = await exec(`fswebcam -r 640x480 -`);
const img = out[0];
console.log(img);
This gives me this on the terminal:
����JFIF``��>CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), default quality
��
$.' ",#(7),01444'9=82<.342��C
And many more. Previously I was doing something similar with buffers:
const file = fs.readFileSync(temp);
console.log(file.toString('base64'));
ctx.socket.emit('frame', { image: true, buffer: file.toString('base64') });
Where file is a Buffer and file.toString('base64') is a string in the form of:
/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEAYABgAAD//gA8Q1JFQVRPUjogZ2QtanBlZyB2MS4wICh1c2luZyBJSkcgSlBFRyB2ODApLCBxdWFsaXR5ID0gMTAwCv ...
And this worked (but through the SD card). So my question is, what is the format of the first output in terminal? And how can I convert it to a Buffer or a String similar to the latter.

Answer 1

I ended up just using the terminal through pipe to convert it to base64:
fswebcam -r 640x480 - | base64
So now my whole snippet is:
// Take a picture in an async way and return it as a base64 encoded string
// Props: https://scottlinux.com/2012/09/01/encode-or-decode-base64-from-the-command-line/
module.exports = async ({ resolution = '640x480', rotate = 0 } = {}) => {
const query = `fswebcam -r ${resolution} --rotate ${rotate} - | base64`;
const out = await exec(query, { maxBuffer: 1024 * 1024 });
return out[0];
};