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Recording Videos Simply

This lesson teaches you to

  1. Request Camera Permission
  2. Record a Video with a Camera App
  3. View the Video

You should also read

Try it out

Download the sample

PhotoIntentActivity.zip

This lesson explains how to capture video using existing camera applications.

Your application has a job to do, and integrating videos is only a small part of it. You want to take videos with minimal fuss, and not reinvent the camcorder. Happily, most Android-powered devices already have a camera application that records video. In this lesson, you make it do this for you.

Request Camera Permission

To advertise that your application depends on having a camera, put a <uses-feature> tag in the manifest file:

<manifest ... >
    <uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.camera" />
    ...
</manifest ... >

If your application uses, but does not require a camera in order to function, add android:required="false" to the tag. In doing so, Google Play will allow devices without a camera to download your application. It's then your responsibility to check for the availability of the camera at runtime by calling hasSystemFeature(PackageManager.FEATURE_CAMERA). If a camera is not available, you should then disable your camera features.

Record a Video with a Camera App

The Android way of delegating actions to other applications is to invoke an Intent that describes what you want done. This involves three pieces: the Intent itself, a call to start the external Activity, and some code to handle the video when focus returns to your activity.

Here's a function that invokes an intent to capture video.

private void dispatchTakeVideoIntent() {
    Intent takeVideoIntent = new Intent(MediaStore.ACTION_VIDEO_CAPTURE);
    startActivityForResult(takeVideoIntent, ACTION_TAKE_VIDEO);
}

It's a good idea to make sure an app exists to handle your intent before invoking it. Here's a function that checks for apps that can handle your intent:

public static boolean isIntentAvailable(Context context, String action) {
    final PackageManager packageManager = context.getPackageManager();
    final Intent intent = new Intent(action);
    List<ResolveInfo> list =
        packageManager.queryIntentActivities(intent,
            PackageManager.MATCH_DEFAULT_ONLY);
    return list.size() > 0;
}

View the Video

The Android Camera application returns the video in the Intent delivered to onActivityResult() as a Uri pointing to the video location in storage. The following code retrieves this video and displays it in a VideoView.

private void handleCameraVideo(Intent intent) {
    mVideoUri = intent.getData();
    mVideoView.setVideoURI(mVideoUri);
}