Enabling Camera Flash While Recording Video

Question

I need a way to control the camera flash on an Android device while it is recording video. I\'m making a strobe light app, and taking videos with a flashing strobe light would r

Answer 1

To access the device camera, you must declare the CAMERA permission in your Android Manifest. Also be sure to include the manifest element to declare camera features used by your application. For example, if you use the camera and auto-focus feature, your Manifest should include the following:

A sample that checks for torch support might look something like this:

//Create camera and parameter objects
private Camera mCamera;
private Camera.Parameters mParameters;
private boolean mbTorchEnabled = false;

//... later in a click handler or other location, assuming that the mCamera object has already been instantiated with Camera.open()
mParameters = mCamera.getParameters();

//Get supported flash modes
List flashModes = mParameters.getSupportedFlashModes ();

//Make sure that torch mode is supported
//EDIT - wrong and dangerous to check for torch support this way
//if(flashModes != null && flashModes.contains("torch")){
if(flashModes != null && flashModes.contains(Camera.Parameters.FLASH_MODE_TORCH)){
    if(mbTorchEnabled){
        //Set the flash parameter to off
        mParameters.setFlashMode(Camera.Parameters.FLASH_MODE_OFF);
    }
    else{
        //Set the flash parameter to use the torch
        mParameters.setFlashMode(Camera.Parameters.FLASH_MODE_TORCH);
    }

    //Commit the camera parameters
    mCamera.setParameters(mParameters);

    mbTorchEnabled = !mbTorchEnabled;
}

To turn the torch on, you simply set the camera parameter Camera.Parameters.FLASH_MODE_TORCH

Camera mCamera;
Camera.Parameters mParameters;

//Get a reference to the camera/parameters
mCamera = Camera.open();
mParameters = mCamera.getParameters();

//Set the torch parameter
mParameters.setFlashMode(Camera.Parameters.FLASH_MODE_TORCH);

//Comit camera parameters
mCamera.setParameters(mParameters);

To turn the torch off, set Camera.Parameters.FLASH_MODE_OFF