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.
XML is not the factor in this case. I'm overriding the canvas with the onDraw function and providing the entire screen as a canvas.
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
canvas.drawColor(Color.BLACK);
int gemID=0;
for(int c=0;c<5;c++){
for(int r=0;r<5;r++){
gemID= GemField[c][r];
canvas.drawBitmap(bmps.get(gemID),c,r,null);
}
}
Upon creating the canvas to draw on I create the matrix, and then I fill the matrix as seen in the following bits of code.
private void createGemField() {
Random rnd= new Random();
for(int col=0;col<5;col++){
for(int row=0;row<5;row++){
int gemNum = rnd.nextInt(4-0);
GemField[col][row]=gemNum;
}
}
}
private void drawGems(){
int gemID=0;
for(int col=0;col<5;col++){
for(int row=0;row<5;row++){
gemID=GemField[col][row];
canvas.drawBitmap(bmps.get(gemID),col,row,null);
}
}
}
Unfortunately the image I get is square in the top left of the screen with multiple objects that seem like they're scaled over each other. More like a snakes scale or shingles, the objects overlap but not completely. The further from the starting place holder in the matrix the less they overlap. Any idea why this may be happening?
canvas.drawBitmap(bmps.get(gemID),c,r,null);
Here, c and r are the x and y components of the point on the canvas where the bitmap is drawn. I assume your bitmaps are larger than 1px, so you should change this into:
canvas.drawBitmap(bmps.get(gemID), 50 * c, 50 * r, null); or something like this; between the bitmaps is now 50px space.
I.m trying to draw an array of objects, each object has its matrix:
public void draw(Canvas canvas)
{
for (int i = 0; i < obj.length; i++)
{
MyObject o = obj[i];
canvas.drawBitmap(w.image, o.matrix, null);
}
}
These are real world matrices and they need to scaled before drawing. For this reason I have another scale_matrix.
How if I concat o.matrix with scale_matrix the objects are properly repositioned, but the problem is that the images are also scaled and the quality is lost.
I don't want that because the images are already scaled to the right size for drawing.
One way to draw them at the right position is:
float pts[] = {0, 0};
o.matrix.mapPoints(pts);
scale_matrix.mapPoints(pts);
canvas.drawBitmap(o.image, pts[0], pts[1], null);
but in this case they will be aligned and o.matrix transform will not be applied.
The question is how to use the scale_matrix to place the images at the right pixel positions and then apply o.matrix transform?
I want to use the scale_matrix to scale the space properly before drawing.
Here I need to remove paints.I did paints using surfaceview.inside erase button I use below code. Now when I click erase button the drawn paints all erased.But now again draw means paints not visible.please any one help me.
public void onClick(View view){
if(view==erasebtn)
{
if (!currentDrawingPath.isEmpty()) {
currentPaint .setXfermode(new PorterDuffXfermode(PorterDuff.Mode.CLEAR));
action=true;
}
}
}
If you want to completely erase all drawing you have to fill it with the "empty" color.
Assuming you have a canvas in which you draw:
canvas.drawColor(Color.WHITE);
If you have drawn lines etc in a Canvas where you just add your drawings all the time then you need to create a way to restore an older version of that. Changing the Paint you have used to draw things will not change the things you have already drawn. It just affects how any future drawing is done.
There are several possibilities to do that e.g. the following should work:
Bitmap bitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(400, 400, null);
Canvas canvas = new Canvas(bitmap);
ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(bitmap.getByteCount());
//save the state
bitmap.copyPixelsToBuffer(buffer);
// draw something
canvas.drawLine();
// restore the state
bitmap.copyPixelsFromBuffer(buffer):
That way you could go back 1 state. If you need to undo more steps think about saving Bitmaps to disk since it will consume quite a lot of memory otherwise.
Another possibility is to save all those steps you have drawn numerically in a list (like a vector graphic) in a way that you can redraw the full image up to a certain point - then you can just undo drawing by drawing just the first part of your list to a fresh image.
Edit: Would it work if you add this to the code and use it instead of undo()?
// add me to the code that has undo()
public void undoAll (){
final int length = currentStackLength();
for (int i = lenght - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
final DrawingPath undoCommand = currentStack.get( i );
currentStack.remove( i );
undoCommand.undo();
redoStack.add( undoCommand );
}
}
I had a small question.If i want to make a man run in android one way of doing this is to get images of the man in different position and display them at different positions.But often,this does not work very well and it appears as two different images are being drawn.Is there any other way through which i can implement custom animation.(Like create a custom image and telling one of the parts of this image to move).
The way i do it is to use sprite sheets for example (Not my graphics!):
You can then use a class like this to handle your animation:
public class AnimSpriteClass {
private Bitmap mAnimation;
private int mXPos;
private int mYPos;
private Rect mSRectangle;
private int mFPS;
private int mNoOfFrames;
private int mCurrentFrame;
private long mFrameTimer;
private int mSpriteHeight;
private int mSpriteWidth;
public AnimSpriteClass() {
mSRectangle = new Rect(0,0,0,0);
mFrameTimer =0;
mCurrentFrame =0;
mXPos = 80;
mYPos = 200;
}
public void Initalise(Bitmap theBitmap, int Height, int Width, int theFPS, int theFrameCount) {
mAnimation = theBitmap;
mSpriteHeight = Height;
mSpriteWidth = Width;
mSRectangle.top = 0;
mSRectangle.bottom = mSpriteHeight;
mSRectangle.left = 0;
mSRectangle.right = mSpriteWidth;
mFPS = 1000 /theFPS;
mNoOfFrames = theFrameCount;
}
public void Update(long GameTime) {
if(GameTime > mFrameTimer + mFPS ) {
mFrameTimer = GameTime;
mCurrentFrame +=1;
if(mCurrentFrame >= mNoOfFrames) {
mCurrentFrame = 0;
}
}
mSRectangle.left = mCurrentFrame * mSpriteWidth;
mSRectangle.right = mSRectangle.left + mSpriteWidth;
}
public void draw(Canvas canvas) {
Rect dest = new Rect(getXPos(), getYPos(), getXPos() + mSpriteWidth,
getYPos() + mSpriteHeight);
canvas.drawBitmap(mAnimation, mSRectangle, dest, null);
}
mAnimation - This is will hold the actual bitmap containing the animation.
mXPos/mYPos - These hold the X and Y screen coordinates for where we want the sprite to be on the screen. These refer to the top left hand corner of the image.
mSRectangle - This is the source rectangle variable and controls which part of the image we are rendering for each frame.
mFPS - This is the number of frames we wish to show per second. 15-20 FPS is enough to fool the human eye into thinking that a still image is moving. However on a mobile platform it’s unlikely you will have enough memory 3 – 10 FPS which is fine for most needs.
mNoOfFrames -This is simply the number of frames in the sprite sheet we are animating.
mCurrentFrame - We need to keep track of the current frame we are rendering so we can move to the next one in order.~
mFrameTimer - This controls how long between frames.
mSpriteHeight/mSpriteWidth -These contain the height and width of an Individual Frame not the entire bitmap and are used to calculate the size of the source rectangle.
Now in order to use this class you have to add a few things to your graphics thread. First declare a new variable of your class and then it can be initialised in the constructor as below.
Animation = new OurAnimatedSpriteClass();
Animation.Initalise(Bitmap.decodeResource(res, R.drawable.stick_man), 62, 39, 20, 20);
In order to pass the value of the bitmap you first have to use the Bitmap Factory class to decode the resource. It decodes a bitmap from your resources folder and allows it to be passed as a variable. The rest of the values depend on your bitmap image.
In order to be able to time the frames correctly you first need to add a Game timer to the game code. You do this by first adding a variable to store the time as show below.
private long mTimer;
We now need this timer to be updated with the correct time every frame so we need to add a line to the run function to do this.
public void run() {
while (mRun) {
Canvas c = null;
mTimer = System.currentTimeMillis(); /////This line updates timer
try {
c = mSurfaceHolder.lockCanvas(null);
synchronized (mSurfaceHolder) {
Animation.update(mTimer);
doDraw(c);
}....
then you just have to add Animation.draw(canvas); your Draw function and the animation will draw the current frame in the right place.
When you describe : " one way of doing this is to get images of the man in different position and display them at different positions", this is indeed not only a programming technique to render animation but a general principle that is applied in every form of animation : it applies to making movies, making comics, computer gaming, etc, etc.
Our eyes see at the frequency of 24 images per second. Above 12 frames per second, your brain gets the feeling of real, fluid, movement.
So, yes, this is the way, if you got the feeling movement is not fuild, then you have to increase frame rate. But that works.
Moving only one part of an image is not appropriate for a small sprite representing a man running. Nevertheless, keep this idea in mind for later, when you will be more at ease with animation programming, you will see that this applies to bigger areas that are not entirely drawn at every frame in order to decresase the number of computations needed to "make a frame". Some parts of a whole screen are not "recomputed" every time, this technique is called double buffer and you should soon be introduced to it when making games.
But for now, you should start by making your man run, replacing quickly one picture by another. If movement is not fuild either increase frame rate (optimize your program) or choose images that are closer to each other.
Regards,
Stéphane