camera-ui2
 

Hi,
I made a clone of the builtin camera application and need some testers.
This is for testing only at the moment. Thats why I put the binary here,
insted of uploading a packege. You should at least know how to disable
the builtin camera app, otherwise both stand in the way each other.
Most things are working. What's left:
1. No "edit tag" dialog from the image preview window, as this dialog is closed
source. (For whatever reason - not even the devel files are accessible)
2. The remaining image and recording label is only a dummy. I know how to
compute the available memory, but I need a way to guess or compute the remainig recording time. I could need some help here.

Some of the extra features are experimental, and there settings
aren't stored (all settings from the builtin app are stored as gconf setting)

Most important:
-you can choose if you want the camera app to open
when the lenscover is opened or the camera button is
pressed.
-enable focus while video recording
-enable/disable audio recording
-an extra button to start/stop recording
In theory pause and resume recording is possible.
(not included in this version, I have to make more tests.

Geotagging is seperated in two options:
- tag GPS position
- tag location (country, city...)
That way you can tag gps position without an internet connection.

The camera api has some colorfilter. They are working, but
sometimes (the negatve colorfiler for example) the viewfinder image
doesnt look like the captured image.

Keyboard control:

Scene mode selection:
a automatic image capture
p portrait
m macro
l landscape
n night
v video
V night video

i toggle through iso level modes
w toggle through white balance modes
c capture image

r start/stop recording
p pause recording

z/Z decrease/increase zoom
f/F decrease/increase focus (step 1)
g/G drecrease/increase focus (step 50)
1 set min focus
0 set max focus

R/r enable/disable raw image mode (raw files have the
normal image name with .dng extension)
t toggle light (focus torch mode)

h toggle indicator light

regards
Nicolai

edit:
source removed, as it is a part of CSSU now
(https://gitorious.org/community-ssu/camera-ui)
new binary uses some extra icons. You have to put them
in
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/hildon/camera_isoAuto.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/hildon/camera_iso1600.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/hildon/camera_iso800.png

/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/hildon/camera_isoAuto_pressed.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/hildon/camera_isoAuto.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/hildon/camera_iso800_pressed.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/hildon/camera_iso1600_pressed.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/hildon/camera_iso1600.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/hildon/camera_iso800.png

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

you forgot the binary...

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

u using the default drivers or fcam drivers?

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

More great stuff Nicolai, I suppose once tested and fully working you will push it to the CSSU, won't you?

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

awesome stuff, gonna check it out in a sec. just a suggestion, how would a dedicated button to switch between Video and Camera mode sound? right now you need to click the button on the side then click another button, takes too long. The button I suggested would just switch between automatic video and automatic camera, if you wanted the dedicated modes, you'd need to click the button on the right.

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

how to install untar and just got camera-ui2

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

This is truly awesome :D
I had a quick go at the app and most (if not all?) its features.
Is Night Video working? I'd expect the ISO to be very low there and so the frame rate of the viewfinder would be low, but it seems to be the same as normal video.

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

remaining pics and video recording time is just guesswork also in Nokia's cam. Use a reasonable hardcoded set of constants to divide free storage. There's actually no better way I know of. (well, make that gconf-consts ;-D)

Given the fact there seems to be no usable video cutting/editing app on maemo, a video-rec pause function would be mad useful :)
\o/ for focus on video

/j

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

any chances we can use front camera to take picture to with this???

hopefully you can mod you new apps so we can use front camera (take picture) aswell...

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

^- that would be great, though the camera quality of the front camera is horrible.

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

Great idea once this application is stable can try out for using front camera also !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Love u all and thanks for all sort of information and knowledge i am gaining from TMO

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

change to use arbitrary camera devices shall be trivial - just don't complain about "lens slider closed" when using /dev/video0 instead of /dev/video1 ;-D ...and forget about focus.

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

I'd like a button to easily change between camera and video modes because It takes too long after accidentally recording a video when I was supposed to take a photo or vice versa.

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

i dont mind if the picture quality for the front camera is horrible....
i just want n900 front camera had a function for taking picture....
apart using skype, our front camera is totally useless at this moment....

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

one very important (IMHO) request: get a decent API (dbus or whatever) to integrate functions to camera and to integrate camera into other apps. Along same line: make sure you can *invoke* camera in arbitrary modes, I.E. have a desktop shortcut / shell cmd to start in video mode, and another to start in still pict mode.

It's been discussed ad nauseum to make flashlight switch on immediately on opening cam slider (and popping up a menu with "start photo cam" / "start video cam" / "config this menu, and flashlight brightness" buttons - maybe also dependent on accelerometer and/or ALS)
Paparazzi mode: Start video immediately on opening slider.

/j

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

Actually there's mirror app, and Video calls seem to work for SIP as well
/j

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

nice. can you fix the camera flash from flashing 2 times, making everyone blink and close thier eyes...to only once, when it takes the picture?

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

camera-ui2 seems to not only be using 10% of my memory but 40-50% CPU constantly

nohup ~/bin/camera-ui2 > /dev/null&

i know im doing it wrong but not nohupping it doesnt let it continue running after i quit the terminal

what exactly do I have to do to get this running normally?

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

Would be awesome to have 720p video record or possibility to change video resolutions to save space or higher res. And 30fps is needed. =)

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

Using the front camera is difficult (impossible).
The camera api I use (gdigicam) doesnt
work with the front camera AFAIK.

nicolai

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

It doesn't seem to work properly with cl-launcher. I replaced the original camera-ui with your new version and when I opened the lens cover and cl-launcher popped up and I selected "camera" it didn't load, further it didn't hide when I closed the lens cover, I had to press the camera button to get it to show, further it wouldn't remember when I changed any of the settings in the "general settings" menu (they would all be selected when I restarted it). After removing cl-launcher it seems to work as expected, but after killing the camera-ui process it still forgets changes to the settings in the "general settings" menu.

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

Any plans for portrait mode?

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

I can't see how gdigicam would refuse to use /dev/videoX. Well maybe it does certain assumptions about video device properties, then that's clearly sth gdigicam should learn how to do right.

/j

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

I can confirm the need to press the camera button for the app to display with cl-launcher installed. Performs properly thereafter, appearing promptly upon lens cover open or button press.

Goodstuff... really!

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

GDigicam needs a special gstreamerplugin (gstcamerabin)
and this gstreamerplugin refuses to work with the frontcamera.
(/dev/video1). Maybe there is some way to get it to work.

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

Yes, this is not suprising. My camera-ui has a different name(binary
and dbus-service name).
That is what I wrote, the additional settings aren't saved. I am
not sure which extra functions are actually useful, and so I
don't want to make them persistent.

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

The default driver.
In theory the default driver is capable to deliver
the raw-image buffer. I wrote a version which catches the
raw-image buffer and I wrote a simple DNG-File export.
Sadly there is a bug in a gstreamer-component. Even if
the buffer has the full 2592x1968 pixel data (this is the
raw resolution of the camera chip), the gstreamer plugin
only copies at image capture resolution (2576x1960).
That means there are some missing lines at the bottom of the
raw-image.
But the gstreamer plugin (gstv4l2camsrc) is open as well, so it could be fixed.

Nicolai

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

This is a bug, I used the wrong exposure mode for night video :-)

Nicolai

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

Tests: set iso to 100, 200 or 400 (ie not auto). Set exposure compensation to +1.5, 2.0 or...

Result: incorrect (very dark) viewfinder and image.

Exposure compensation with Auto iso works well.

Nicolai: anything in particular you want tested? Want anything noted?

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

Yes, this is a bug in the builtin app as well :(
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10384
Sadly, I don't think I can fix this. From my observations this
bug is in ibomap3cam or in omap3camd - both are
closed components.

The user interface, compared with the builtin camera. Anything
that is missed.

Nicolai

Re: camera-ui2 testers needed
 

Ah, that bug. I remember the reporter got ... well, shall we say irate, when Nokia, bless 'em marked it "won't fix" - that after releasing pr1.2 and 1.3 since the report...

Out of interest, why an enhancement of the camera app (with the kinds of problems noted above) and not say something built around OSS fcam? It too has some deficiencies..

Whatever, thanks for your productivity...

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

Oh, for some odd reason it works, but only with video mode.
I can not capture images but videos with the front camera.

Nicolai

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

It should not do that. My tests show that camera-ui2 runs much the same cpu/mem wise as does camera-ui. It peaks at ca. 30/40% cpu after taking a picture and idles around 10%. How do you run it?

I do

Re: camera-ui2 testers needed
 

The reason is, nokia provides a good camera-api, all the work
they have done for an open source gstreamer based digicam
api is great and it makes it possible to create any third party
camera applications. BUT at the same time they put a closed
source camera-ui on this device which always pops up when
you open the lenscover, and no simple way to reconfigure
this behavior. I just want to remove this camera-ui and replace
it with an open source clone.

Nicolai

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

I replaced the original camera-ui with your version so the binary would have the same name, but if cl-launcher is using dbus to launch the camera, that would explain it

Sorry, I guess I missed that part of your post.

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

Yes this may work for images, but don't know how to do it for
video recording. I made some test videos with different recording
time, but the file size doesn't grow linear.

Pausing and resuming works but I get
some warnings on the console:
dsp_thread: failed waiting for events
I don't know where they come from, and the recorded video
is playable.

Re: camera-ui2 testers neede
 

After a reboot (my run time was ca. a week), matters appeared a little different. As invoked, camera-ui2 idles a few cpu%s richer than camera-ui (ca. 8/9% vs 5/6%) but when filming the difference is more marked with camera-ui2 at ca. 30/40% whilst camera-ui is around 25%. omap3camd seems also run a tad hotter in harness with camera-ui2 than it does with camera-ui.

Keep in mind that my tests are not science....

Re: camera-ui2 testers needed
 

Trivial difference noted: films taken under camera-ui get categorised in media player as "recorded by device camera". Those done by camera-ui2 are placed under "Films".

A matter of how the interfaces are invoked perhaps - have not investigated.

Re: camera-ui2 testers needed
 

Yes, noticed this as well. I have not looked further, what
the reason could be.

nicolai

Re: camera-ui2 testers needed
 

Is it possible to add functionality to allow the LED to be enabled during recording or would this require a patched driver?