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VideoRecorderActivity.md

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Using VideoRecorderActivity

VideoRecorderActivity works much like CameraActivity gives you the same "API" as you get with the Android SDK's ACTION_VIDEO_CAPTURE, making it fairly easy for you to get existing ACTION_VIDEO_CAPTURE working with your own local video-recording activity.

NOTE: This only works on Android 4.x devices, or on Android 5.x devices where you use forceClassic(). Video recording is very preliminary at the moment; it is recommended that you hold off on it until version 0.3.x of the library.

Getting the Intent

The simplest way to craft the right Intent to use is to create a VideoRecorderActivity.IntentBuilder, call whatever configuration methods that you want on that builder, and have it build() you an Intent. That Intent can be used with startActivityForResult(), just as you might have used it with an ACTION_VIDEO_CAPTURE Intent.

Under the covers, VideoRecorderActivity.IntentBuilder is simply packaging a series of extras on the Intent, so you can always put those extras on yourself if you so choose. The following table lists the available configuration methods on VideoRecorderActivity.IntentBuilder, the corresponding extra names (defined as constants on VideoRecorderActivity), their default values, and what their behavior is:

IntentBuilder Method Extra Key Data Type Purpose
durationLimit() MediaStore.EXTRA_DURATION_LIMIT int Indicate the maximum length of the video in milliseconds
quality() MediaStore.EXTRA_VIDEO_QUALITY VideoRecorderActivity.Quality Indicate the quality, either Quality.LOW or Quality.HIGH (default=high)
sizeLimit() MediaStore.EXTRA_SIZE_LIMIT int Indicate the maximum size of the video in bytes
debug() EXTRA_DEBUG_ENABLED boolean Indicate if extra debugging information should be dumped to LogCat (default is false)
facing() EXTRA_FACING VideoRecorderActivity.Facing Indicate the preferred camera to start with (BACK or FRONT, default is BACK)
forceClassic() EXTRA_FORCE_CLASSIC boolean Indicate if the Camera API should be used on Android 5.0+ devices instead of camera2 (default is false)
skipConfirm() EXTRA_CONFIRM boolean Indicate if the user should be presented with a preview of the image and needs to accept it before proceeding (default is to show the confirmation screen)
to() MediaStore.EXTRA_OUTPUT File Destination for picture to be written
updateMediaStore() EXTRA_UPDATE_MEDIA_STORE boolean Indicate if MediaStore should be notified about newly-captured photo (default is false)
mirrorPreview() EXTRA_MIRROR_PREVIEW boolean Indicate if preview should be horizontally flipped (default is false)
focusMode() EXTRA_FOCUS_MODE AbstractCameraActivity.FocusMode Indicate the desired focus mode for the camera (default is continuous if available, else device default)

Note that to() is required.

Note that if you are going to use quality(), sizeLimit(), or durationLimit(), you need to call those first on the IntentBuilder before any of the others. This limitation will be lifted (hopefully) in the future.

Also note that mirrorPreview() mirrors the preview based on the orientation when the activity instance was created. Since the library will recreate the activity on a configuration change, things look "normal" when the device is not being actively rotated. However, when the device is part-way through the rotation, before the configuration change kicks in, the mirroring effect starts becoming more of a vertical flip rather than a horizontal one. In short: the image will look upside-down briefly.

Example Use of IntentBuilder

  Intent i=new VideoRecorderActivity.IntentBuilder(MainActivity.this)
      .quality(Quality.LOW)
      .facing(VideoRecorderActivity.Facing.FRONT)
      .to(new File(testRoot, "test.mp4"))
      .debug()
      .updateMediaStore()
      .build();

  startActivityForResult(i, MAKIN_MOVIES);

buildChooser()

In addition to build(), IntentBuilder supports buildChooser(). This will return an Intent that will bring up an activity chooser, where the user can choose between this library's video-recording activity or existing ACTION_VIDEO_CAPTURE implementations. This way, the user gets the choice of what should be used to record the video.

buildChooser() takes a CharSequence parameter, for a title to go over the chooser dialog. null means do not use a title.

Output

The video will be written to the File that you supply to to(), and the Uri of the Intent delivered to onActivityResult() will point to that file.

And, of course, the resultCode passed to onActivityResult() will indicate if the user took a picture or abandoned the operation.

Configuring the Manifest Entry

Getting all of the above working requires nothing in your manifest. However, more often than not, you will want to change aspects of the activity, such as its theme.

To do that, add your own <activity> element to the manifest, pointing to the VideoRecorderActivity class, and add in whatever attributes or child elements that you need.

For example, the following manifest entry sets the theme:

<activity
      android:name="com.commonsware.cwac.cam2.VideoRecorderActivity"
      android:theme="@style/AppTheme"/>

Note that VideoRecorderActivity does not support being exported. Do not add an <intent-filter> to this activity or otherwise mark it as being exported.

VideoRecorderActivity supports running in a separate process, via the android:process attribute. This ensures that the heap space consumed in all the camera processing will not affect your main process' heap space. It does mean that you will consume more system RAM while the user is taking a picture, and it does incrementally slow down the launching of the VideoRecorderActivity. You can see this use of android:process demonstrated in the demo-playground/ sample project.

Permissions

This library uses certain permissions. You may wish to review the documentation on permissions to learn more about what they are and how to manage them.