Which is the best approach for dynamic drawing in Android? - android

I want to make a waveform drawing for an audio recorder in Android. The usual one with lines/bars, like this one:
More importantly, I want it live, while the song is being recorded. My app already computes the RMS through AudioRecord. But I am not sure which is the best approach for the actual drawing in terms of processing, resources, battery, etc.
The Visualizer does not show anything meaningful, IMO (are those graphs more or less random stuff??).
I've seen the canvas approach and the layout approach (there are probably more?). In the layout approach you add thin vertical layouts in a horizontal layout. The advantage is that you don't need to redraw the whole thing each 1/n secs, you just add one layout each 1/n secs... but you need hundreds of layouts (depending on n). In the canvas layout, you need to redraw the whole thing (right??) n times per second. Some even create bitmaps for each drawing...
So, which is cheaper, and why? Is there anything better nowadays? How much frequency update (i.e., n) is too much for generic low end devices?
EDIT1
Thanks to the beautiful trick #cactustictacs taught me in his answer, I was able to implement this with ease. Yet, the image is strangely rendered kind of "blurry by movement":
The waveform runs from right to left. You can easily see the blur movement, and the left-most and right-most pixels get "contaminated" by the other end. I guess I can just cut both extremes...
This renders better if I make my Bitmap bigger (i.e., making widthBitmap bigger), but then the onDraw will be heavier...
This is my full code:
package com.floritfoto.apps.ave;
import android.content.Context;
import android.graphics.Bitmap;
import android.graphics.Canvas;
import android.graphics.Paint;
import android.graphics.Rect;
import android.util.AttributeSet;
import java.util.Arrays;
public class Waveform extends androidx.appcompat.widget.AppCompatImageView {
//private float lastPosition = 0.5f; // 0.5 for drawLine method, 0 for the others
private int lastPosition = 0;
private final int widthBitmap = 50;
private final int heightBitmap = 80;
private final int[] transpixels = new int[heightBitmap];
private final int[] whitepixels = new int[heightBitmap];
//private float top, bot; // float for drawLine method, int for the others
private int aux, top;
//private float lpf;
private int width = widthBitmap;
private float proportionW = (float) (width/widthBitmap);
Boolean firstLoopIsFinished = false;
Bitmap MyBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(widthBitmap, heightBitmap, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
//Canvas canvasB = new Canvas(MyBitmap);
Paint MyPaint = new Paint();
Paint MyPaintTrans = new Paint();
Rect rectLbit, rectRbit, rectLdest, rectRdest;
public Waveform(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
super(context, attrs);
MyPaint.setColor(0xffFFFFFF);
MyPaint.setStrokeWidth(1);
MyPaintTrans.setColor(0xFF202020);
MyPaintTrans.setStrokeWidth(1);
Arrays.fill(transpixels, 0xFF202020);
Arrays.fill(whitepixels, 0xFFFFFFFF);
}
public void drawNewBar() {
// For drawRect or drawLine
/*
top = ((1.0f - Register.tone) * heightBitmap / 2.0f);
bot = ((1.0f + Register.tone) * heightBitmap / 2.0f);
// Using drawRect
//if (firstLoopIsFinished) canvasB.drawRect(lastPosition, 0, lastPosition+1, heightBitmap, MyPaintTrans); // Delete last stuff
//canvasB.drawRect(lastPosition, top, lastPosition+1, bot, MyPaint);
// Using drawLine
if (firstLoopIsFinished) canvasB.drawLine(lastPosition, 0, lastPosition, heightBitmap, MyPaintTrans); // Delete previous stuff
canvasB.drawLine(lastPosition ,top, lastPosition, bot, MyPaint);
*/
// Using setPixel (no tiene sentido, mucho mejor setPixels.
/*
int top = (int) ((1.0f - Register.tone) * heightBitmap / 2.0f);
int bot = (int) ((1.0f + Register.tone) * heightBitmap / 2.0f);
if (firstLoopIsFinished) {
for (int i = 0; i < top; ++i) {
MyBitmap.setPixel(lastPosition, i, 0xFF202020);
MyBitmap.setPixel(lastPosition, heightBitmap - i-1, 0xFF202020);
}
}
for (int i = top ; i < bot ; ++i) {
MyBitmap.setPixel(lastPosition,i,0xffFFFFFF);
}
//System.out.println("############## "+top+" "+bot);
*/
// Using setPixels. Works!!
top = (int) ((1.0f - Register.tone) * heightBitmap / 2.0f);
if (firstLoopIsFinished)
MyBitmap.setPixels(transpixels,0,1,lastPosition,0,1,heightBitmap);
MyBitmap.setPixels(whitepixels, top,1, lastPosition, top,1,heightBitmap-2*top);
lastPosition++;
aux = (int) (width - proportionW * (lastPosition));
rectLbit.right = lastPosition;
rectRbit.left = lastPosition;
rectLdest.right = aux;
rectRdest.left = aux;
if (lastPosition >= widthBitmap) { firstLoopIsFinished = true; lastPosition = 0; }
}
#Override
protected void onSizeChanged(int w, int h, int oldw, int oldh) {
super.onSizeChanged(w, h, oldw, oldh);
width = w;
proportionW = (float) width/widthBitmap;
rectLbit = new Rect(0, 0, widthBitmap, heightBitmap);
rectRbit = new Rect(0, 0, widthBitmap, heightBitmap);
rectLdest = new Rect(0, 0, width, h);
rectRdest = new Rect(0, 0, width, h);
}
#Override
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
super.onDraw(canvas);
drawNewBar();
canvas.drawBitmap(MyBitmap, rectLbit, rectRdest, MyPaint);
canvas.drawBitmap(MyBitmap, rectRbit, rectLdest, MyPaint);
}
}
EDIT2
I was able to prevent the blurring just using null as Paint in the canvas.drawBitmap:
canvas.drawBitmap(MyBitmap, rectLbit, rectRdest, null);
canvas.drawBitmap(MyBitmap, rectRbit, rectLdest, null);
No Paints needed.

Your basic custom view approach would be to implement onDraw and redraw your current data each frame. You'd probably keep some kind of circular Buffer holding your most recent n amplitude values, so each frame you'd iterate over those, and use drawRect to draw the bars (you'd calculate things like width, height scaling, start and end positions etc in onSizeChanged, and use those values when defining the coordinates for the Rects).
That in itself might be fine! The only way you can really tell how expensive draw calls are is to benchmark them, so you could try this approach out and see how it goes. Profile it to see how much time it takes, how much the CPU spikes etc.
There are a few things you can do to make onDraw as efficient as possible, mostly things like avoiding object allocations - so watch out for loop functions that create Iterators, and in the same way you're supposed to create a Paint once instead of creating them over and over in onDraw, you could reuse a single Rect object by setting its coordinates for each bar you need to draw.
Another approach you could try is creating a working Bitmap in your custom view, which you control, and calling drawBitmap inside onDraw to paint it onto the Canvas. That should be a pretty inexpensive call, and it can easily be stretched as required to fit the view.
The idea there, is that very time you get new data, you paint it onto the bitmap. Because of how your waveform looks (like blocks), and the fact you can scale it up, really all you need is a single vertical line of pixels for each value, right? So as the data comes in, you paint an extra line onto your already-existing bitmap, adding to the image. Instead of painting the entire waveform block by block every frame, you're just adding the new blocks.
The complication there is when you "fill" the bitmap - now you have to "shift" all the pixels to the left, dropping the oldest ones on the left side, so you can draw the new ones on the right. So you'll need a way to do that!
Another approach would be something similar to the circular buffer idea. If you don't know what that is, the idea is you take a normal buffer with a start and an end, but you treat one of the indices as your data's start point, wrap around to 0 when you hit the last index of the buffer, and stop when you hit the index you're calling your end point:
Partially filled buffer:
|start
123400
|end
Data: 1234
Full buffer:
|start
123456
|end
Data: 123456
After adding one more item:
|start
723456
|end
Data: 234567
See how once it's full, you shift the start and end one step "right", wrapping around if necessary? So you always have the most recent 6 values added. You just have to handle reading from the correct index ranges, from start -> lastIndex and then firstIndex -> end
You could do the same thing with a bitmap - start "filling" it from the left, increasing end so you can draw the next vertical line. Once it's full, start filling from the left by moving end there. When you actually draw the bitmap, instead of drawing the whole thing as-is (723456) you draw it in two parts (23456 then 7). Make sense? When you draw a bitmap to the canvas, there's a call that takes a source Rect and a destination one, so you can draw it in two chunks.
You could always redraw the bitmap from scratch each frame (clear it and draw the vertical lines), so you're basically redrawing your whole data buffer each time. Probably still faster than the drawRect approach for each value, but honestly not much easier than the "treat the bitmap as another circular buffer" method. If you're already managing one circular buffer, it's not much more work - since the buffer and the bitmap will have the same number of values (horizontal pixels in the bitmap's case) you can use the same start and end values for both

You would never do this with layouts. Layouts are for premade components. They're high level combinations of components and you don't want to dynamically add or remove views from it frequently. For this, you use a custom view with a canvas. Layouts aren't even an option for something like this.

Related

Add animation to drawLine and drawBitmap

I have a custom view that extends relative layout. In the dispatchDraw method I draw lines and images inside a for loop because i have different start and end points for multiple lines.
I would like to know the easiest way to draw lines with animations from point a to point b in a slow way for example, this animation must be set only for a line that I decide and not for all the others.
I would also like to draw images with animations, I don't want to move the image but I would like to draw the image a little bigger first and then reduce it to the right size, or draw the image from top to bottom. Again this animation must be set only for a image that I decide and not for all the others.
#Override
protected void dispatchDraw(Canvas canvas) {
int width = getWidth();
int height = getHeight();
super.dispatchDraw(canvas);
size = width / (lines);
insideMargin = size / margin;
vMargin = (height - lines * size) / 2f;
canvas.translate(0,vMargin);
for(int x=0; x<lines;x++){
for(int y=0;y<lines;y++){
if(/*a condintion is true*/) {
//draw line with animation, how to do it?
}else{
canvas.drawLine(x * size,
y * size,
(x + 1) * size,
y* size,
paint
);
}
if(/*a condition is true*/) {
//draw bitmap with animation, how to do it?
}else
canvas.drawBitmap(image, src, dest, null);
}
}
}
//i have on touch event that will call invalidate
I think you should use ValueAnimator for your purpose. As I understood, you want to animate values once a touch event occurs. The value returned by the animator must be used for all objects so the animated value should be general as possible. I recommend to use 0 to 1 as float value. You can use this value for the animation. For the bitmap animation, you can define target rectangle start and end size then you can find appropriate size by facilitating the animated fraction value. For the line case, you can use the slope for the animation. I think you already have the line's start and end point so you can use slope and fraction to calculate animated end point.

Android: Repeatedly drawing many small shapes efficiently and accurately

I am working on a project in Android that builds Abelian Sandpiles (a type of 2D cellular Automaton). I have a grid of cells (that starts out small but later grows) and I'm drawing square (or circles) on the grid to show the state of each cell. At each step, I update usually less than 30% of the cells.
My basic approach is taken from this post: Android: How to get a custom view to redraw partially?
I draw all the shapes to the canvas and cache it as a bitmap, then at each step I update only the cells that need updating, then cache the result and repeat. This works well enough when the grid is fairly small (less than 50 x 50), but becomes increasingly unsatisfactory as the grid size increase. The problems are that
1) it is too slow when the number of updates becomes high
2) even when it runs smoothly, the drawing doesn't look clean - e.g., a line of small rectangles looks quite choppy and inconsistent (see image).
I am sure that there must be a better way to approach this problem. With a larger grid (e.g., 150 x 150), I'm drawing rects or circles with a width of ~2.33, and this can't be optimal. Any advice for improving performance and/or image quality?
Simplified drawing code is here:
#Override
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
super.onDraw(canvas);
if (ready) {
if (needsCompleteRedraw) {
this.cachedBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(getWidth(), getHeight(), Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
cacheCanvas = new Canvas(this.cachedBitmap);
doInitialDrawing(cacheCanvas);
canvas.drawBitmap(this.cachedBitmap, 0, 0, null);
needsCompleteRedraw = false;
} else {
canvas.drawBitmap(this.cachedBitmap, 0, 0, null);
doPartialRedraws(cacheCanvas);
}
}
}
private void doInitialDrawing(Canvas clean) {
for (int i = 0; i < pile.gridHeight; i++) {
for (int j = 0; j < pile.gridWidth; j++) {
int state = pile.getGridValueAtPoint(new Point(j, i ));
clean.drawRect(j * cellSize, i * cellSize, (j + 1 )* cellSize, (i + 1) * cellSize, paints[state]);
}
}
}
private void doPartialRedraws(Canvas cached) {
for (Point p : pile.needsUpdateSet) {
int state = pile.getGridValueAtPoint(p);
cached.drawRect(p.x * cellSize, p.y * cellSize, (p.x + 1 )* cellSize, (p.y + 1) * cellSize, paints[state]);
}
pile.needsUpdateSet = new HashSet<Point>();
}
and my paint objects are set with antialias as true, and I've tried setting the style to both FILL and FILL_AND_STROKE.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Ok. Several problems here.
1)Don't ever create a canvas in onDraw. If you think you need to, you haven't architected your drawing code correctly.
2)The point of doing draws to a cache bitmap is NOT to draw the cache in onDraw, but to do it on its own thread- or at least not at draw time.
You should have a second thread that draws to the cached bitmap on demand, then calls postInvalidate() on the view. The onDraw function should only be a call to drawBitmap, drawing the cached bitmap to the screen.

Draw a segmented circle in Android: OpenGL vs Cavans?

I need to draw something like this:
I was hoping that this guy posted some code of how he drew his segmented circle to begin with, but alas he didn't.
I also need to know which segment is where after interaction with the wheel - for instance if the wheel is rotated, I need to know where the original segments are after the rotation action.
Two questions:
Do I draw this segmented circle (with varying colours and content placed on the segment) with OpenGL or using Android Canvas?
Using either of the options, how do I register which segment is where?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EDIT:
Ok, so I've figured out how to draw the segmented circle using Canvas (I'll post the code as an answer). And I'm sure I'll figure out how to rotate the circle soon. But I'm still unsure how I'll recognize a separate segment of the drawn wheel after the rotation action.
Because, what I'm thinking of doing is drawing the segmented circle with these wedges, and the sort of handling the entire Canvas as an ImageView when I want to rotate it as if it's spinning. But when the spinning stops, how do I differentiate between the original segments drawn on the Canvas?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I've read about how to draw a segment on its own (here also), OpenGL, Canvas and even drawing shapes and layering them, but I've yet to see someone explaining how to recognize the separate segments.
Can drawBitmap() or createBitmap() perhaps be used?
If I go with OpenGL, I'll probably be able to rotate the segmented wheel using OpenGL's rotation, right?
I've also read that OpenGL might be too powerful for what I'd like to do, so should I rather consider "the graphic components of a game library built on top of OpenGL"?
This kind of answers my first question above - how to draw the segmented circle using Android Canvas:
Using the code found here, I do this in the onDraw function:
// Starting values
private int startAngle = 0;
private int numberOfSegments = 11;
private int sweepAngle = 360 / numberOfSegments;
#Override
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
setUpPaint();
setUpDrawingArea();
colours = getColours();
Log.d(TAG, "Draw the segmented circle");
for (int i = 0; i < numberOfSegments; i++) {
// pick a colour that is not the previous colour
paint.setColor(colours.get(pickRandomColour()));
// Draw arc
canvas.drawArc(rectF, startAngle, sweepAngle, true, paint);
// Set variable values
startAngle -= sweepAngle;
}
}
This is how I set up the drawing area based on the device's screen size:
private void setUpDrawingArea() {
Log.d(TAG, "Set up drawing area.");
// First get the screen dimensions
Point size = new Point();
Display display = DrawArcActivity.this.getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay();
display.getSize(size);
int width = size.x;
int height = size.y;
Log.d(TAG, "Screen size = "+width+" x "+height);
// Set up the padding
int paddingLeft = (int) DrawArcActivity.this.getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.padding_large);
int paddingTop = (int) DrawArcActivity.this.getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.padding_large);
int paddingRight = (int) DrawArcActivity.this.getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.padding_large);
int paddingBottom = (int) DrawArcActivity.this.getResources().getDimension(R.dimen.padding_large);
// Then get the left, top, right and bottom Xs and Ys for the rectangle we're going to draw in
int left = 0 + paddingLeft;
int top = 0 + paddingTop;
int right = width - paddingRight;
int bottom = width - paddingBottom;
Log.d(TAG, "Rectangle placement -> left = "+left+", top = "+top+", right = "+right+", bottom = "+bottom);
rectF = new RectF(left, top, right, bottom);
}
That (and the other functions which are pretty straight forward, so I'm not going to paste the code here) draws this:
The segments are different colours with every run.

Converting Camera Coordinates to Custom View Coordinates

I am trying to make a simple face detection app consisting of a SurfaceView (essentially a camera preview) and a custom View (for drawing purposes) stacked on top. The two views are essentially the same size, stacked on one another in a RelativeLayout. When a person's face is detected, I want to draw a white rectangle on the custom View around their face.
The Camera.Face.rect object returns the face bound coordinates using the coordinate system explained here and the custom View uses the coordinate system described in the answer to this question. Some sort of conversion is needed before I can use it to draw on the canvas.
Therefore, I wrote an additional method ScaleFacetoView() in my custom view class (below) I redraw the custom view every time a face is detected by overriding the OnFaceDetection() method. The result is the white box appears correctly when a face is in the center. The problem I noticed is that it does not correct track my face when it moves to other parts of the screen.
Namely, if I move my face:
Up - the box goes left
Down - the box goes right
Right - the box goes upwards
Left - the box goes down
I seem to have incorrectly mapped the values when scaling the coordinates. Android docs provide this method of converting using a matrix, but it is rather confusing and I have no idea what it is doing. Can anyone provide some code on the correct way of converting Camera.Face coordinates to View coordinates?
Here's the code for my ScaleFacetoView() method.
public void ScaleFacetoView(Face[] data, int width, int height, TextView a){
//Extract data from the face object and accounts for the 1000 value offset
mLeft = data[0].rect.left + 1000;
mRight = data[0].rect.right + 1000;
mTop = data[0].rect.top + 1000;
mBottom = data[0].rect.bottom + 1000;
//Compute the scale factors
float xScaleFactor = 1;
float yScaleFactor = 1;
if (height > width){
xScaleFactor = (float) width/2000.0f;
yScaleFactor = (float) height/2000.0f;
}
else if (height < width){
xScaleFactor = (float) height/2000.0f;
yScaleFactor = (float) width/2000.0f;
}
//Scale the face parameters
mLeft = mLeft * xScaleFactor; //X-coordinate
mRight = mRight * xScaleFactor; //X-coordinate
mTop = mTop * yScaleFactor; //Y-coordinate
mBottom = mBottom * yScaleFactor; //Y-coordinate
}
As mentioned above, I call the custom view like so:
#Override
public void onFaceDetection(Face[] arg0, Camera arg1) {
if(arg0.length == 1){
//Get aspect ratio of the screen
View parent = (View) mRectangleView.getParent();
int width = parent.getWidth();
int height = parent.getHeight();
//Modify xy values in the view object
mRectangleView.ScaleFacetoView(arg0, width, height);
mRectangleView.setInvalidate();
//Toast.makeText( cc ,"Redrew the face.", Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show();
mRectangleView.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
//rest of code
Using the explanation Kenny gave I manage to do the following.
This example works using the front facing camera.
RectF rectF = new RectF(face.rect);
Matrix matrix = new Matrix();
matrix.setScale(1, 1);
matrix.postScale(view.getWidth() / 2000f, view.getHeight() / 2000f);
matrix.postTranslate(view.getWidth() / 2f, view.getHeight() / 2f);
matrix.mapRect(rectF);
The returned Rectangle by the matrix has all the right coordinates to draw into the canvas.
If you are using the back camera I think is just a matter of changing the scale to:
matrix.setScale(-1, 1);
But I haven't tried that.
The Camera.Face class returns the face bound coordinates using the image frame that the phone would save into its internal storage, rather than using the image displayed in the Camera Preview. In my case, the images were saved in a different manner from the camera, resulting in a incorrect mapping. I had to manually account for the discrepancy by taking the coordinates, rotating it counter clockwise 90 degrees and flipping it on the y-axis prior to scaling it to the canvas used for the custom view.
EDIT:
It would also appear that you can't change the way the face bound coordinates are returned by modifying the camera capture orientation using the Camera.Parameters.setRotation(int) method either.

Android: onDraw method using DrawPoint() causing jitter and distortion on canvas

I am developing an app which draws more or less a two-dimensional matrix of values to a canvas. The values of this matrix are scaled to Alpha levels to illustrate intensity, and the coordinates for the matrix are simply extrapolated from row and column indexes. Below is my onDraw routine.
public void onDraw(Canvas canvas, float [][] spectrum, float nsegs,int seglen) {
//canvas.translate(0,0);
//alpha = 0;
int canHeight = canvas.getHeight();
int canWidth = canvas.getWidth();
//float[] array = generateData(512);
float [] spec = new float[seglen];
final float bw = (float)(canWidth-2)/nsegs;
final float bh = (float)(canHeight-2)/(float) seglen;
for (int i = 0;i<seglen;i++){
spec[i] = spectrum[i][index]; // One column at a time
}
float max = maxVal(spec);
float min = minVal(spec);
xcoor = index;
for (int n = 0; n < seglen; n++){
//Scale value to alpha (0-255)
alpha =(int)Math.round((((spec[n] - min)/max)*255.0));
ycoor = n;
paint.setAlpha(alpha);
canvas.drawPoint(xcoor,ycoor, paint);
}
index = (int) (index +1);
if (index == nsegs-1){
index = 0;
}
}
Here paint configuration is pre-defined as:
Paint paint = new Paint();
paint.setStyle(Paint.Style.FILL);
paint.setColor(Color.WHITE);
paint.setStrokeWidth(2);
This program draws one pixel at a time, fills one column of pixels equal to the number of elements in a column of the matrix. Then it starts on the next column, where the previous column is still displayed and so forth. At this stage when all columns are full it stars from the first column again, drawing on top of previous elements.
The Problem: The tailing columns although already drawn appear to flicker and jump around, as does the Alpha. I have attempted to canvas.save() and canvas.restore() to capture the entire canvas and restore it after a column is printed. I have double checked all my row and column indexing and alpha vales to ensure the coordinates increment as per desired (and they do). This is very similar to the sample APIdemo DrawPoints.java, however there are three primary differences.
I am using DrawPoint not DrawPoints, and
I don't use "canvas.setColour" as it removes the tailing columns from the canvas.
This onDraw function is operating in a Thread which extends SurfaceView
Any idea's would be much appreciated, thank you for your time.
In the case above, I was using a SurfaceView instead of a View. Out of the Android dev docs
Note: On each pass you retrieve the Canvas from the SurfaceHolder, the previous state of the Canvas will be retained. In order to properly animate your graphics, you must re-paint the entire surface. For example, you can clear the previous state of the Canvas by filling in a color with drawColor() or setting a background image with drawBitmap(). Otherwise, you will see traces of the drawings you previously performed.
The Solution, re-draw the entire canvas each time to prevent the jitter.

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