On some devices, onPreviewFrame is not called if no SurfaceView was set to display the camera preview.
However, I handle the camera in a service, so I can't set a SurfaceView but I don't want to have visible preview anyway.
How can this be done? Can I programmatically create a SurfaceView and set it with Camera::setPreviewDisplay?
This must be possible or not?
It works on almost every phone without a SurfaceView but not on HTC One X and Google Nexus One...
According to this question, creating a SurfaceView in code works fine. Though I don't think you can create it through a service.
Another approach is to create a 1px-1px SurfaceView inside a RelativeLayout and hiding it with some other view on top of it. (visibility should still be VISIBLE). We use this trick for Path camera UI where we render preview buffers through OpenGL and it works fine.
According to documentation readily configured, visible and displayed surface view is necessary to activate camera preview. It may be overlayued though
From API 11 on, you can use a SurfaceTexture instead of a SurfaceView to get frames from the camera. Then, instead of using Camera.setPreviewDisplay, simply use Camera.setPreviewTexture.
This answer as well as this one discuss this point.
Related
Previously, I've been developed a library to facilitates the usage of Camera API: The Camerakit. I'm recently developing a new project with this library and I want to perform animations on the top of camera preview(which extends SurfaceView),I found when I added such as the following code to my application, the animations of the view is not performed properly with camera preview, but performed well when without camera preview.
// MainActivity.class
capture.animate().yBy(2000).setDuration(10000).start();
Is there a way to solve this problem?
I got this problem when i code android with Unity.Then I solved this problem by setting SurfaceView's level on the Z axis direction. As we all know,SurfaceView is a view which drew above the shell.Maybe you can got the SurfaceView's instance,then set it under the view.like this:((SurfaceView)child).setZOrderOnTop(false);
So,in fact,the animation has already run.It just be covered by SurfaceView.
Playing around with animating camera controls over a custom camera activity and I too ran into this problem. My camera controls would get cut off at an almost random point in their animation over the camera view. After playing around for a few hours as well as trying out Z ordering, the thing that worked for me was adding a full size child view with a background color (transparent works fine!). Not sure if the ordering of the view matters (I placed it right before/above the view I wanted to animate).
I finally figured it out. By changing the preview component which is SurfaceView to TextureView solve this issue. Now I can overlay any animation on my camera preview.
I also updated my code on Github.
This commit reproduces the issue. And this one solved it.
if you have to use surfaceview, there is a solution, put a no-TRANSPARENT view between surfaceview and your target view.
I am creating a layout of type FrameLayout, in which I am adding two views. Two views are objects of GLSurfaceView and SurfaceView respectively. According to Android Developers Documentation regarding SurfaceView,
"The surface is Z ordered so that it is behind the window holding its SurfaceView; the SurfaceView punches a hole in its window to allow its surface to be displayed."
It works well for me and SurfaceView always stays behind my GLSurfaceView (used for opneGL drawings). But resuming after external event the behavior is odd for a following configuration,
Android Version: 4.3
Device Model Number : Nexus 7
Kernel Version 3.4.0.g1f57c39
Jun 13
Build Number: JWR66N
For this configuration, resuming after external event puts my GLSurfaceView behind SurfaceView. In other words, SurfaceView is placed at top in ZOrder and my OpenGL drawings are no more visible. On versions greater that Android 4.3, this behavior is not seen.
I can replicate this behavior on all versions by calling SurfaceView's following method with true as a parameter.
void setZOrderOnTop
Is this known issue. Anybody can help me on this?
Regards,
Sumedh
SurfaceViews have two parts, the Surface and the View. The Surface is a completely independent layer. The View is there so the UI layout code has something to work with. Generally the View is just transparent black, so you can see through to whatever is behind it.
GLSurfaceView is just SurfaceView with some code to manage EGL contexts and threading. Underneath it's just a SurfaceView. So if you have both a SurfaceView and a GLSurfaceView, and they have the same dimensions and Z-order, then one of them is going to "win" and the other is going to "lose" because they're trying to occupy the same space at the same time. There is no defined value for which one will "win", so inconsistent behavior is expected.
One way to avoid clashes is to leave one set to the default Z, and call setZOrderMediaOverlay() on the other. The "media overlay" is still behind the UI, but above the default Surface position. If you use setZOrderOnTop(), the Surface will be positioned above the UI as well.
The upper Surface will need to be rendered with transparent pixels if you want to see something behind it (the same way that the View needs to be transparent to see the Surface).
The most efficient way to avoid this issue is to not have this issue: use one SurfaceView for everything, rendering all of your non-UI-element content to it. This requires a bit more work (and probably a SurfaceTexture) if you're rendering video or showing a camera preview on one of the Surfaces.
You can find some examples in Grafika. The "multi-surface exerciser" demonstrates three overlapping SurfaceViews rendered in software, overlapping with UI elements. Other activities show ways to work with Surfaces, GLES, the camera, and video.
See also the Android System-Level Graphics Architecture doc, which explains all this in much greater detail.
Dont use "setZOrderOnTop" as true. That will get it over all the other layouts.
If you are using multiple surfaceviews. use this for each surfaceview
yourSurfaceView.setZOrderMediaOverlay(true);
then set this setZOrderOnTop as false for the surfaceview you initiated later and wanted it to get back to the other surfaceviews
secondSurfaceview.setZOrderOnTop(false);
I'm trying to do camera recording and drawings on top on Google Glass, using a LiveCard.
in a regular activity, this would be achieved by using a FrameLayout, with a SurfaceView for the camera preview 'in the back', and another View in front of it used for drawing.
but using a LiveCard, if one needs subsecond updates, one has to use the LiveCard itself as a Surface. according to the documentation: https://developers.google.com/glass/develop/gdk/reference/com/google/android/glass/timeline/LiveCard
If your application requires more frequent updates (several times per
second) or rendering more elaborate graphics than the standard widgets
support, enable direct rendering and add a SurfaceHolder.Callback to
the card's surface.
LiveCard liveCard; // initialized elsewhere
liveCard.setDirectRenderingEnabled(true);
liveCard.getSurfaceHolder().addCallback(callback); You can then draw directly on the surface inside a background thread or in response
to external events (for example, sensor or location updates). Use the
surfaceCreated and surfaceDestroyed methods to start and stop your
rendering logic when the card is displayed or hidden.
now I can either draw my on stuff on this Surface, or I can give this to the MediaRecorder as the camera preview service, but can't do both, as it will fail with an error
I wonder if anyone has ideas on how to make this work still?
the way I'd draw into the LiveCard myself is to 'manually' lock the canvas, and call FrameLayout.draw(canvas); one option would be to have a layout that contains two SurfaceViews - one for the camera preview, and one for my own drawings, and use the same approach. but, even if I define such a layout in XML, I can't get the SurfaceViews created (e.g. the appropriate SurfaceView callbacks are never called, and any attempt of drawing on them results in failure)
I have a camera preview in my android app. As you all probably know it is implemented by a surfaceview in android.
In my photo app, which allows users to take pictures, I want to blur the camera preview (the surface view) if the user has not logged in yet if the user is logged in, I will display the normal preview (without blur)
Blur as something like
But there seems to be no way to do it
Couple things come to mind but I am not sure how to achieve it
use a blur overlay and place it on top of the surface view, but how do u create such blur overlay?
another approach is to change the attribute of the window, but I can't do it to surfaceview,
getWindow().addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_BLUR_BEHIND);
So can we create a window overlay the surfaceview and set the flag like that? I don't think so
can someone tell me how to blur a camera preview, which is a surface view
note: I am trying to blur an area which is the output from camera preview, so it is not like I am blurring a static image, the blur area will change depending on where you point your phone camera
The best way to do this is to take a screen shot of the control, apply a blur to it, and then show that image over the top of the original control. This is how the yahoo weather app does it and its how google suggest you do things like this.
Render script does bluring fast. I've also got some code, but it's not currently at hand right now.
These might help:
http://blog.neteril.org/blog/2013/08/12/blurring-images-on-android
http://docs.xamarin.com/recipes/android/other_ux/drawing/blur_an_image_with_renderscript/
I've also read that there are methods built into Android that do this, but the API isn't public so we cannot use it... which sucks.
Although your 2nd option is losing support in later versions of the Android OS, it may be a good option. I would think to bring a window IN FRONT of your surfaceview, and use the blur_behind property of your now new IN FRONT window.
Android API documentation
"
This constant was deprecated in API level 14.
Blurring is no longer supported.
Window flag: blur everything behind this window.
Constant Value: 4 (0x00000004)"
I do have to admit, Im not 100% sure this would work, but its definitely worth a try.
You have to change the camera parameters; in this case with Camera.Parameters.setPictureSize().
The basic workflow here is :
Camera.Parameters cp = mCamera.getParameters(); // get the current params
cp.set...(); // change something
mCamera.setParameters(cp); // write the params back
Make sure that every resolution that you set via this function is supported. You can get a list of the resolutions that are supported on a device via Camera.Parameters.getSupportedPictureSizes(). and check this Camera documentation.
iam currently using camera and surfaceview in my app to use Torch etc ... , im using these in an Activity ,
How to use Camera and SurfaceView in Background , ex . : I want to keep Torch/Led Flash On , i saw many Widget that work fine in Background , how they do it ?
Thanks .
Take a look here:
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/camera.html
There is all the code you need to make an activity which shows the camera preview.
As the Camera API:
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/Camera.html#setPreviewDisplay%28android.view.SurfaceHolder%29
specifies...you need to use a SurfaceHolder for your preview. Thus you can only use a SurfaceView or a derived class for your automatic preview. Otherwise you can use for example a TextureView or an ImageView to draw your preview by yourself. You'll need though to implement the onFramePreview method to grab the frames from the preview and handle them by yourself. By using OpenGL or the ANI API you can also add effects to your frame. This is the only way, I know about, to also add effects directly on your preview, unless these effects can be achieved by overlaying a semi-transparent colored surface above your preview image.