CameraKit is an extraordinarily easy to use utility to work with the infamous Android Camera and Camera2 APIs. Built by Dylan McIntyre.

Try out all the unique features using the CameraKit Demo from the Google Play store!

Table of Contents

• Features
• Setup
• Usage
  • Events
  • Extra Attributes
    • ckCropOutput
    • ckFacing
    • ckFlash
    • ckPictureMode
  • Capturing Images
  • Capturing Video
• Automatic Permissions Behavior
• Dynamic Behavior
• Capture Mode Behavior
• Credits
• License

Features

• Image and video capture seamlessly working with the same preview session.
• Automatic system permission handling.
• Automatic preview scaling.
  • Create a CameraView of any size (not just presets!).
  • Automatic output cropping to match your CameraView bounds.
• Multiple capture modes.
  • PICTURE_MODE_QUALITY: an image captured normally using the camera APIs.
  • PICTURE_MODE_SPEED: a freeze frame of the CameraView preview (similar to SnapChat and Instagram) for devices with slower cameras.
  • Automatic picture mode determination based on measured speed.

Setup

Add CameraKit to the dependencies block in your app level build.gradle:

compile 'com.flurgle:camerakit:1.0.0'

Usage

To use CameraKit, simply add a CameraView to your layout:

<com.flurgle.camerakit.CameraView
    android:id="@+id/camera"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent" />

Make sure you override onResume and onPause in your activity, and make calls respectively to CameraView.start() and CameraView.stop().

@Override
protected void onResume() {
    super.onResume();
    cameraView.start();
}

@Override
protected void onPause() {
    cameraView.stop();
    super.onPause();
}

Events

Make sure you can react to different camera events by setting up a CameraListener instance.

camera.setCameraListener(new CameraListener() {

    @Override
    public void onCameraOpened() {
        super.onCameraOpened();
    }

    @Override
    public void onCameraClosed() {
        super.onCameraClosed();
    }

    @Override
    public void onPictureTaken(byte[] picture) {
        super.onPictureTaken(picture);
    }

    @Override
    public void onVideoTaken(File video) {
        super.onVideoTaken(video);
    }
    
});

Extra Attributes

<com.flurgle.camerakit.CameraView xmlns:camerakit="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
    android:id="@+id/camera"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    camerakit:ckCropOutput="true"  
    camerakit:ckFacing="back"
    camerakit:ckFlash="off"
    camerakit:ckPictureMode="quality" />

ckCropOutput

Value	Description
true	Crop the output image or video to only contain what can be seen on the CameraView preview.
false	Output the full image or video regardless of what is visible on the CameraView preview.

ckFacing

Value	Description
back	Default CameraView preview to back camera.
front	Default CameraView preview to front camera.

ckFlash

Value	Description
off	Default CameraView flash to off.
on	Default CameraView flash to on.
auto	Default CameraView flash to automatic.

ckPictureMode

Value	Description
quality	Use normal Android Camera API image capturing.
speed	Freeze the CameraView preview and grab a Bitmap of the frame.
auto	Default picture mode to quality, but fallback to speed if capturing is determined to be too slow.

Capturing Images

To capture an image just call CameraView.capturePicture(). Make sure you setup a CameraListener to handle the image callback.

camera.setCameraListener(new CameraListener() {
    @Override
    public void onPictureTaken(byte[] picture) {
        super.onPictureTaken(picture);
        
        // Create a bitmap
        Bitmap result = BitmapFactory.decodeByteArray(picture, 0, picture.length);
    }
});

camera.takePicture();

Capturing Video

To capture video just call CameraView.startRecordingVideo() to start, and CameraView.stopRecordingVideo() to finish. Make sure you setup a CameraListener to handle the video callback.

camera.setCameraListener(new CameraListener() {
    @Override
    public void onVideoTaken(File video) {
        super.onVideoTaken(video);
        // The File parameter is an MP4 file. 
    }
});

camera.startRecordingVideo();
camera.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
    @Override
    public void run() {
        camera.stopRecordingVideo();
    }
}, 2500);

Automatic Permissions Behavior

You can handle permissions yourself in whatever way you want, but if you make a call to CameraView.start() without the android.permission.CAMERA permission, an exception would normally be thrown and your app would crash.

With CameraKit, we will automatically prompt for the android.permission.CAMERA permission if it's not available. If you want to handle it yourself, just make sure you dont call CameraView.start() until you acquire the permissions.

[Insert GIF]

Dynamic Sizing Behavior

Dynamic sizing behavior

Capture Mode Behavior

Capture mode behavior

Credits

Dylan McIntyre

License

CameraKit-Android is MIT licensed.