Develop Reference

Android camera2 jpeg framerate

I am trying to save image sequences with fixed framerates (preferably up to 30) on an android device with FULL capability for camera2 (Galaxy S7), but I am unable to a) get a steady framerate, b) reach even 20fps (with jpeg encoding). I already included the suggestions from Android camera2 capture burst is too slow.
The minimum frame duration for JPEG is 33.33 milliseconds (for resolutions below 1920x1080) according to
characteristics.get(CameraCharacteristics.SCALER_STREAM_CONFIGURATION_MAP).getOutputMinFrameDuration(ImageFormat.JPEG, size);
and the stallduration is 0ms for every size (similar for YUV_420_888).
My capture builder looks as follows:
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.CONTROL_AE_MODE, CONTROL_AE_MODE_OFF);
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.SENSOR_EXPOSURE_TIME, _exp_time);
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.CONTROL_AE_LOCK, true);
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.SENSOR_SENSITIVITY, _iso_value);
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.LENS_FOCUS_DISTANCE, _foc_dist);
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.CONTROL_AF_MODE, CONTROL_AF_MODE_OFF);
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.CONTROL_AWB_MODE, _wb_value);
// https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29265126/android-camera2-capture-burst-is-too-slow
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.EDGE_MODE,CaptureRequest.EDGE_MODE_OFF);
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.COLOR_CORRECTION_ABERRATION_MODE, CaptureRequest.COLOR_CORRECTION_ABERRATION_MODE_OFF);
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.NOISE_REDUCTION_MODE, CaptureRequest.NOISE_REDUCTION_MODE_OFF);
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.CONTROL_AF_TRIGGER, CaptureRequest.CONTROL_AF_TRIGGER_CANCEL);
// Orientation
int rotation = getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay().getRotation();
captureBuilder.set(CaptureRequest.JPEG_ORIENTATION,ORIENTATIONS.get(rotation));
Focus distance is set to 0.0 (inf), iso is set to 100, exposure-time 5ms. Whitebalance can be set to OFF/AUTO/ANY VALUE, it does not impact the times below.
I start the capture session with the following command:
session.setRepeatingRequest(_capReq.build(), captureListener, mBackgroundHandler);
Note: It does not make a difference if I request RepeatingRequest or RepeatingBurst..
In the preview (only texture surface attached), everything is at 30fps.
However, as soon as I attach an image reader (listener running on HandlerThread) which I instantiate like follows (without saving, only measuring time between frames):
reader = ImageReader.newInstance(_img_width, _img_height, ImageFormat.JPEG, 2);
reader.setOnImageAvailableListener(readerListener, mBackgroundHandler);
With time-measuring code:
ImageReader.OnImageAvailableListener readerListener = new ImageReader.OnImageAvailableListener() {
#Override
public void onImageAvailable(ImageReader myreader) {
Image image = null;
image = myreader.acquireNextImage();
if (image == null) {
return;
}
long curr = image.getTimestamp();
Log.d("curr- _last_ts", "" + ((curr - last_ts) / 1000000) + " ms");
last_ts = curr;
image.close();
}
}
I get periodically repeating time differences like this:
99 ms - 66 ms - 66 ms - 99 ms - 66 ms - 66 ms ...
I do not understand why these take double or triple the time that the stream configuration map advertised for jpeg? The exposure time is well below the frame duration of 33ms. Is there some other internal processing happening that I am not aware of?
I tried the same for the YUV_420_888 format, which resulted in constant time-differences of 33ms. The problem I have here is that the cellphone lacks the bandwidth to store the images fast enough (I tried the method described in How to save a YUV_420_888 image?). If you know of any method to compress or encode these images fast enough myself, please let me know.
Edit: From the documentation of getOutputStallDuration: "In other words, using a repeating YUV request would result in a steady frame rate (let's say it's 30 FPS). If a single JPEG request is submitted periodically, the frame rate will stay at 30 FPS (as long as we wait for the previous JPEG to return each time). If we try to submit a repeating YUV + JPEG request, then the frame rate will drop from 30 FPS." Does this imply that I need to periodically request a single capture()?
Edit2: From https://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/camera2/CaptureRequest.html: "The necessary information for the application, given the model above, is provided via the android.scaler.streamConfigurationMap field using getOutputMinFrameDuration(int, Size). These are used to determine the maximum frame rate / minimum frame duration that is possible for a given stream configuration.
Specifically, the application can use the following rules to determine the minimum frame duration it can request from the camera device:
Let the set of currently configured input/output streams be called S.
Find the minimum frame durations for each stream in S, by looking it up in android.scaler.streamConfigurationMap using getOutputMinFrameDuration(int, Size) (with its respective size/format). Let this set of frame durations be called F.
For any given request R, the minimum frame duration allowed for R is the maximum out of all values in F. Let the streams used in R be called S_r.
If none of the streams in S_r have a stall time (listed in getOutputStallDuration(int, Size) using its respective size/format), then the frame duration in F determines the steady state frame rate that the application will get if it uses R as a repeating request."

The JPEG output is by way not the fastest way to fetch frames. You can accomplish this a lot faster by drawing the frames directly onto a Quad using OpenGL.
For burst capture, a faster solution would be capturing the images to RAM without encoding them, then encoding and saving them asynchronously.
On this website you can find a lot of excellent code related to android multimedia in general.
This specific program uses OpenGL to fetch the pixel data from an MPEG video. It's not difficult to use the camera as input instead of a video. You can basically use the texture used in the CodecOutputSurface class from the mentioned program as output texture for your capture request.

A possible solution I found consists of using and dumping YUV without encoding it as JPEG in combination with a micro Sd-card that is able to save up to 95Mb per second. (I had the misconception that YUV images would be larger, so with a cellphone that has full support for the camera2-pipeline, the write speed should be the limiting factor.
With this setup, I was able to achieve the following stable rates:
1920x1080, 15fps (approx. 4Mb * 15 == 60Mb/sec)
960x720, 30fps. (approx. 1.5Mb * 30 == 45Mb/sec)
I then encode the images offline from YUV to PNG using a python script.

MediaCodec Encoding camera surface presentationTime not uniform

I am encoding raw video (1080p) from the camera preview using the MediaCodec class in asynchronous mode. I read the presentation time using the MediaCodec.BufferInfo.presentationTimeUs parameter.
void onOutputBufferAvailable (MediaCodec codec, int index, MediaCodec.BufferInfo info)
I have set the target FPS as 30, so I am expecting a frame every 33 millisecs. However, the presentation time is never uniform and jumps up and down. Has anyone faced similar issue?
See the graph below. It is a graph of time between two consecutive video frames' presentation time as received (Y-Axis) in micro seconds. X-Axis is samples.
Graph plot of video presentation time
Thank you,
Ajay

OpenGL rendering using the Graphika sample app from Google as reference gave much more smoother presentation timestamps.

glReadPixels return 0

I am doing my work about capturing screen and encoding on Android 5.0.
I want to control the frame rate and read this below
Controlling Frame Rate of VirtualDisplay
I created a SurfaceTexture and a Surface initialised by the SurfaceTexture , and pass the Surface to createVirtualDisplay.
The onFrameAvailable callback fired, almost 60 times per second.
But when I try to save a frame, the data got from glReadPixels is 0
Anyone knows about it? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Controlling Frame Rate of VirtualDisplay

I'm writing an Android application, and in it, I have a VirtualDisplay to mirror what is on the screen and I then send the frames from the screen to an instance of a MediaCodec. It works, but, I want to add a way of specifying the FPS of the encoded video, but I'm unsure how to do so.
From what I've read and experimented with, dropping encoded frames (based on the presentation times) doesn't work well as it ends up with blocky/artifact ridden video as opposed to a smooth video at a lower framerate. Other reading suggests that the only way to do what I want (limit the FPS) would be to limit the incoming FPS to the MediaCodec, but the VirtualDisplay just receives a Surface which is constructed from the MediaCodec as below
mSurface = <instance of MediaCodec>.createInputSurface();
mVirtualDisplay = mMediaProjection.createVirtualDisplay(
"MyDisplay",
screenWidth,
screenHeight,
screenDensity,
DisplayManager.VIRTUAL_DISPLAY_FLAG_AUTO_MIRROR,
mSurface,
null,
null);
I've also tried subclassing Surface and limit the frames that are fed to the MediaCodec via the unlockCanvasAndPost(Canvas canvas) but the function never seems to be called on my instance, so, there may be some weirdness in how I extended Surface and the interaction with the Parcel as writeToParcel function is called on my instance, but that is the only function that is called in my instance (that I can tell).
Other reading suggests that I can go from encoder -> decoder -> encoder and limit the rate in which the second encoder is fed frames, but that's a lot of extra computation that I'd rather not do if I can avoid it.
Has anyone successfully limited the rate at which a VirtualDisplay feeds its Surface? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Starting off with what you can't do...
You can't drop content from the encoded stream. Most of the frames in the encoded stream are essentially "diffs" from other frames. Without knowing how the frames interact, you can't safely drop content, and will end up with that corrupted macroblock look.
You can't specify the frame rate to the MediaCodec encoder. It might stuff that into metadata somewhere, but the only thing that really matters to the codec is the frames you're feeding into it, and the presentation time stamps associated with each frame. The encoder will not drop frames.
You can't do anything useful by subclassing Surface. The Canvas operations are only used for software rendering, which is unrelated to feeding in frames from a camera or virtual display.
What you can do is send the frames to an intermediate Surface, and then choose whether or not to forward them to the MediaCodec's input Surface. One approach would be to create a SurfaceTexture, construct a Surface from it, and pass that to the virtual display. When the SurfaceTexture's frame-available callback fires, you either ignore it, or render the texture onto the MediaCodec input Surface with GLES.
Various examples can be found in Grafika and on bigflake, none of which are an exact fit, but all of the necessary EGL and GLES classes are there.

You can reference the code sample from saki4510t's ScreenRecordingSample or RyanRQ's ScreenRecoder, they are all use the additional EGL Texture between the virtual display and media encoder, and the first one can keep at least 15 fps for the output video. You can search the keyword createVirtualDisplay from their code base for more details.

Strange performance of avcodec_decode_video2

I am developing an Android video player. I use ffmpeg in native code to decode video frame. In the native code, I have a thread called decode_thread that calls avcodec_decode_video2()
int decode_thread(void *arg) {
avcodec_decode_video2(codecCtx, pFrame, &frameFinished,pkt);
}
I have another thread called display_thread that uses aNativeWindow to display a decoded frame on a SurfaceView.
The problem is that if I let the decode_thread run continuously without a delay. It significantly reduces the performance of avcodec_decode_video2(). Sometimes it takes about 0.1 seconds to decode a frame. However if I put a delay on the decode_thread. Something likes this.
int decode_thread(void *arg) {
avcodec_decode_video2(codecCtx, pFrame, &frameFinished,pkt);
usleep(20*1000);
}
The performance of avcodec_decode_video2() is really good, about 0.001 seconds. However putting a delay on the decode_thread is not a good solution because it affects the playback. Could anyone explain the behavior of avcodec_decode_video2() and suggest me a solution?

It looks impossible that the performance of video decoding function would improve just because your thread sleeps. Most likely the video decoding thread gets preempted by another thread, and hence you get the increased timing (hence your thread did not work). When you add a call to usleep, this does the context switch to another thread. So when your decoding thread is scheduled again the next time, it starts with the full CPU slice, and is not interrupted in the decode_ video2 function anymore.
What should you do? You surely want to decode packets a little bit ahead than you show them - the performance of avcodec_decode_video2 certainly isn't constant, and if you try to stay just one frame ahead, you might not have enough time to decode one of the frames.
I'd create a producer-consumer queue with the decoded frames, with the top limit. The decoder thread is a producer, and it should run until it fills up the queue, and then it should wait until there's room for another frame. The display thread is a consumer, it would take frames from this queue and display them.