How to get exit code when using Python subprocess communicate method?

Popen.communicate will set the returncode attribute when it's done(*). Here's the relevant documentation section:

Popen.returncode 
  The child return code, set by poll() and wait() (and indirectly by communicate()). 
  A None value indicates that the process hasn’t terminated yet.

  A negative value -N indicates that the child was terminated by signal N (Unix only).

So you can just do (I didn't test it but it should work):

import subprocess as sp
child = sp.Popen(openRTSP + opts.split(), stdout=sp.PIPE)
streamdata = child.communicate()[0]
rc = child.returncode

(*) This happens because of the way it's implemented: after setting up threads to read the child's streams, it just calls wait.

.poll() will update the return code.

Try

child = sp.Popen(openRTSP + opts.split(), stdout=sp.PIPE)
returnCode = child.poll()

In addition, after .poll() is called the return code is available in the object as child.returncode.

You should first make sure that the process has completed running and the return code has been read out using the .wait method. This will return the code. If you want access to it later, it's stored as .returncode in the Popen object.

exitcode = data.wait(). The child process will be blocked If it writes to standard output/error, and/or reads from standard input, and there are no peers.