ColorEffect not visible on camera preview - android

I am trying to get a camera preview with a color effect applied to it, such as for example the NEGATIVE effect. There are no errors, and the preview is visible without problems, but independent of the ColorEffect I set - the camera preview remains unchanged. I tested if the effects I am trying to use are available to my phone by running params.getSupportedColorEffects() (also these effects also work in the built in photo app).
I have no idea what is wrong with the code - I am posting it below. Perhaps someone here has an idea what could make this work? Thanks in advance.
public class CustomCameraView extends SurfaceView{
Camera mCamera;
SurfaceHolder mHolder;
public CustomCameraView(Context context){
super(context);
mHolder = this.getHolder();
mHolder.setType(SurfaceHolder.SURFACE_TYPE_PUSH_BUFFERS);
mHolder.addCallback(mSurfaceHolderListener);
}
SurfaceHolder.Callback mSurfaceHolderListener = new SurfaceHolder.Callback() {
public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder holder) {
mCamera=Camera.open();
try {
mCamera.setPreviewDisplay(mHolder);
}
catch (Exception e){ }
}
public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder holder, int format, int width,
int height)
{
Camera.Parameters params = mCamera.getParameters();
params.setColorEffect(Camera.Parameters.EFFECT_NEGATIVE);
mCamera.setParameters(params);
mCamera.startPreview();
}
public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder arg0)
{
mCamera.stopPreview();
mCamera.release();
}
};
}
After some testing it turned out the problem could be related to the HTC Desire I was testing on (or maybe its OS version). The code works correctly on some other Samsung phones. I haven't figured out what could be the problem on the HTC.
UPDATE:
I have managed to get the effects working, but truly by accident, and I still don't understand why. But I will give the answer here - perhaps someone will find it useful, or maybe will be able to explain why it happens this way:
I added the following line to the surfaceChanged method because I was trying to decrease the size of the preview:
previewHolder.setFixedSize(width, height-1);
This had the result of making the selected effect visible.
When I changed this line to:
previewHolder.setFixedSize(width, height);
the effect was not visible any more once again. So odd.... it works for set height being anything less than the received height parameter.

I have been struggling with this as well. I found out that the HTC Desire its camera needs a strange order of executing the setParameters, setPreviewDisplay and startPreview for the color effect to work. The order is:
Camera.Parameters parameters = camera.getParameters();
//set the parameters
camera.setParameters(parameters);
camera.startPreview();
camera.setParameters(parameters);
camera.setPreviewDisplay(surfaceHolder);
Calling startPreview before setPreviewDisplay is documented in the Android SDK as a way of initializing the camera and the surfaceView in parallel.
Regarding your update about getting the effects to work by accident, the same happend to me! I assume for the same reason, some of my code got called twice in quick succesion (in my case due to a changing database object). This caused the method to (re)set the parameters and (re)start the preview to be called twice producing the desired result. After realising this and some more experimenting the above order seemed to work on both my HTC Desire and Acer Iconia A500 and I was quite happy with it.
However I have just received a comment for my application saying it produces corrupted images on the HTC Desire HD so I would recommend not using this order of camera initialization as a default but rather as a fix for the HTC Desire.

After setting new parameters to camera and starting preview invalidate() are calling on your SurfaceView . But it only Invalidate the whole view. If the view is visible, onDraw(android.graphics.Canvas) will be called at some point in the future. So there is no guarantees that onDraw() will be called immediately. But onDraw() are always invoking after calling onMeasure() with size differs from current. So it can be a reason of this odd behavior.

Simple answers use following type :
Camera camera = null;
camera = Camera.open();
if (camera != null) {
try {
Camera.Parameters parameters = camera.getParameters();
// Set all kind of stuffs here..
parameters.setSceneMode(Camera.Parameters.FLASH_MODE_AUTO);
parameters.setColorEffect(Camera.Parameters.EFFECT_SEPIA); // whatever effect you want
camera.setParameters(parameters);
camera.setPreviewDisplay(surface_holder);
camera.startPreview();
} catch (IOException exception) {
camera.release();
camera = null;
}
}

Related

How to disable/modify AutoFocus and AutoWhiteBalance on Android Camera using OpenCV

I'm using Android + Opencv(new to opencv) and I'm currently working with real time object detection (the object stays really close to the android device Camera) , and I noticed that the Android camera's autoFocus keeps modifying my frames (kind of 'zoom in' and 'zoom out' effect) which make it harder for me to keep tracking the object.
I need to turn the "AUTO FOCUS" off because in my case the more blurred image input I have, the better, and I also need to turn the AutoWhiteBalance off as well, or maybe set to a different value.
I would like to know how to do it through my OpenCV CameraBridgeViewBase so I could modify the camera's Focus/WhiteBalance settings.
I've trying to find a way to solve it, and I noticed that many people face the same problems.
Here, at Stack Overflow, would be a great place to find someone who have worked with that and found a good way to overcome these problems.
create your own subclass of javacameraview
public class MyJavaCameraView extends JavaCameraView {
where you can have access to mCamera;
add whatever camera access using method you are interested in
for example
// Setup the camera
public void setFlashMode(boolean flashLightON) {
Camera camera = mCamera;
if (camera != null) {
Camera.Parameters params = camera.getParameters();
params.setFlashMode(Camera.Parameters.FLASH_MODE_TORCH);
camera.setParameters(params);
and use this new class as part of the main activity
//force java camera
mOpenCvCameraView = (MyJavaCameraView) findViewById(R.id.activity_surface_view);
mOpenCvCameraView.setVisibility(SurfaceView.VISIBLE);
mOpenCvCameraView.setCvCameraViewListener(this);
mOpenCvCameraView.enableView();

Does Face Detection require a SurfaceView to work?

Using API 14 I have created an Activity which uses face detection successfully (I'm a bit of a newb at this Face Detection stuff).
I don't want to show the preview of the Camera however; I just want to know when the user's face is in front of the camera. I added a few buttons to make the SurfaceView Visible/Invisible and I found that the face detection stops working when it is INVISIBLE or GONE.
Is there a way to enable the face detection without requiring the SurfaceView in the layout?
Here is how I have coded it:
mCamera.setPreviewDisplay(mSurfaceHolder);
mCamera.startPreview();
if(mCamera.getParameters().getMaxNumDetectedFaces() >0) {
mCamera.setFaceDetectionListener(new Camera.FaceDetectionListener() {
#Override public void onFaceDetection(Face[] faces, Camera camera) {
if(faces.length > 0) {
System.out.println("Found someone");
}
}
});
mCamera.startFaceDetection();
}
To hide the surfaceview I have added a black View. :-)
<View android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:background="#000"/>
I've had a reasonable look around and I haven't found much code using startFaceDetection() yet.
Thanks for any ideas / help.
You should rather use a dummy SurfaceTexture for your purposes.
Just create a SurfaceTexture object by passing any integer such as
mSurfaceTexture = new SurfaceTexture(1);
Now, open your camera and do the following:
mCamera = Camera.open(Camera.CameraInfo.CAMERA_FACING_FRONT);
try{
mCamera.setPreviewTexture(mSurfaceTexture);
}
catch (IOException t) {
//Do Something here
}
3) You can do everything else just the same way i.e. using face detection.
The Camera Preview doesn't get displayed if you omit
setType(SurfaceHolder.SURFACE_TYPE_PUSH_BUFFERS);
I have not yet tested this with Face Detection (no 4.0 device and the emulator doesn't yet support it). But it should work.
Reference: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/android-developers/EzBgJRetaCo
You could also attempt to use setPreviewTexture(SurfaceTexture st) instead of setPreviewDisplay and use a SurfaceTexture that you can control.

LED flashlight on Galaxy Nexus controllable by what API?

So many LED flashlight API questions for Android. I'm afraid to ask yet another, but here goes..
Using the tried and true FLASH_MODE_TORCH I am able to achieve satisfaction with my Samsung Galaxy SII and get the LED flash turned on. On my friend's Galaxy Nexus, no such luck. Nor on my other friend's Droid X.
I'm noticing for a not insignificant number of devices specific native IOCTL calls seem to be required. Is this the case for the Galaxy Nexus? How do I find a reference to program it?
I am doing the standard FLASH_MODE_TORCH/"flash-mode"="torch", startPreview() chain.
Kind of disappointing that this seemingly standard API doesn't appear to be so universal after all.
What I found out is that some devices need a SurfaceView to turn on the LED.
SurfaceView preview = (SurfaceView) findViewById(R.id.PREVIEW);
SurfaceHolder mHolder = preview.getHolder();
mHolder.addCallback(this);
Camera mCamera = Camera.open();
mCamera.setPreviewDisplay(mHolder);
// Turn on LED
Parameters params = mCamera.getParameters();
params.setFlashMode(Parameters.FLASH_MODE_TORCH);
mCamera.setParameters(params);
mCamera.startPreview();
...
// Turn off LED
Parameters params = mCamera.getParameters();
params.setFlashMode(Parameters.FLASH_MODE_OFF);
mCamera.setParameters(params);
mCamera.stopPreview();
mCamera.release();
Your activity needs to implement SurfaceHolder.Callback:
public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder holder, int format, int width,
int height) {}
public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder holder) {
mHolder = holder;
mCamera.setPreviewDisplay(mHolder);
}
public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) {
mCamera.stopPreview();
mHolder = null;
}
The surfaceview has to be visible, android:visibility="invisible" or a height and width of 0 won't work. Unfortunately I didn't find a good solution to hide it, so I
just gave it a size of 1x1dip and positioned it underneath a button..
**(To expand on above paragraph [Don't have enough rep to reply, but felt it was useful]) Somewhere in the XML of your current Content View, you want:
<SurfaceView
android:id="#+id/PREVIEW"
android:layout_width="1dip"
android:layout_height="1dip"/>
If you have it inside a RelativeLayout (preferred), you can also do alignParentLeft/Bottom to tuck it in a corner. This method works for my Galaxy Nexus, but it's a known problem (phone-side) for Droid X (with the .621 update, anyway), and doesn't work on mine. Great answer, timosch!

Camera display doesn't maintain aspect ratio/seems skewed

I'm running into an issue with camera input in Android. After searching over the internet for half a day I'm not getting any further.
Wat I want to achieve at this stage is correctly displaying the current camera input. Nothing more and nothing less for now. When holding the device in landscape mode, all seems fine. However as soon as I switch the device to portrait the display seems to be horizontally scaled in order to match the width of the screen on the device.
In order to clarify this issue a bit more, I've attached two photographs:
Landscape (looks correct)
Portrait (looks incorrect)
It seems like this issue also occurs with the camera example from the API examples, but it doesn't seem to occur when I use the camera application from my device. So clearly something else is happening there.
The code that I'm using is based on examples that can be found over the internet and has no modifications:
class Preview extends SurfaceView implements SurfaceHolder.Callback {
SurfaceHolder mHolder;
Camera mCamera;
Preview(Context context) {
super(context);
mHolder = getHolder();
mHolder.addCallback(this);
mHolder.setType(SurfaceHolder.SURFACE_TYPE_PUSH_BUFFERS);
}
public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder holder) {
mCamera = Camera.open();
try {
mCamera.setPreviewDisplay(holder);
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) {
mCamera.stopPreview();
mCamera = null;
}
public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder holder, int format, int w, int h) {
Camera.Parameters parameters = mCamera.getParameters();
parameters.setPreviewSize(w, h);
mCamera.setParameters(parameters);
mCamera.startPreview();
}
}
The API examples make use of a method "getOptimalPreviewSize(...)" which sounds like the method I need, but that does not change anything. I left it out here in order to be as brief as possible.
Am I missing something obvious or is this the expected behavior?
Hopefully someone can point me in the correct direction.
Thanks in advance!
Paul
Okay, I just found the answer to my own question.
The way I solved it was by going fullscreen with my application:
requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
This makes a little bit of sense, as I guess we can not use just any resolution as the preview size on the camera. I guess it will internally snap to the closest allowed resolution/aspect ratio and it doesn't do any smart things like cropping the image to match the requested resolution while maintaining aspect ratio. In my case I was displaying a title bar while the source image was fullscreen and then downsized to fit on the screen.
I think it is kind of stupid that the aspect ratio is not maintained and images are not cropped by default,

Camera.setPreviewDisplay() throws Exception [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 11 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Android Camera will not work. startPreview fails
I am trying to set a camera preview in a custom SurfaceView but I get an exception each time I execute the initialization method.
Below is the code for camera preview initialization:
private void init(Context context)
{
setFocusable(true);
mRecording = false;
fileRW = new FileReaderWriter();
frameCount = 0;
if(mCamera == null)
{
mCamera = Camera.open();
}
Parameters parameters = mCamera.getParameters();
parameters.setPictureFormat(PixelFormat.JPEG);
mCamera.setParameters(parameters);
try {
mCamera.setPreviewDisplay(surfaceHolder);
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
mCamera.startPreview();
}
the line mCamera.setPreviewDisplay(surfaceHolder); throws an exception (setPreviewDisplay failed) each time I try to execute the method.
Does anyone know what could be wrong? I would really appreciate any of your help.
Thanks!`
I completely agree with Jon Bright
I couldn't figure out what was going on for a week, I ignored the setType on the surface holder because the SDK said it was deprecated, ie.
"This method is deprecated. this is ignored, this value is set automatically when needed."
But if you don't do that, it will crash on setPreview. This is running 1.5 SDK (I need it to be backwards compatible to that) on a Galaxy S with 2.1. So make sure you set the type. Not quite as automatic as the documentation makes it sound.
The best place to call setPreviewDisplay() is in surfaceChanged() If the surface is just created, surfaceChanged will be called at least once and you can startPreview() and setPreviewDisplay there. If the surface changes and the preview already starts, you can stopPreview/setPreviewDisplay/startPreview there. Even if your app does not change the size of the surface, the framework may still unexpectedly call surfaceChanged() when the app starts or exits due to orientation changes. So your app really needs to handle surfaceChanged properly. You can trace the source code of camera application in Android for reference.
The code snippet in another answer works if surfaceChanged() is only called once in the app lifecycle.

Categories

Resources