Android camera preview look strange

Question

I am implementing a camera app and when I look at the preview (especially with front camera), the image is very fat. It looks like the image get stretched horizontally. I fo

Answer 1

The camera preview always fills up the SurfaceView showing it. If the aspect ratio of m_surfaceView doesn't match with the camera's aspect ratio, the preview will be stretched.

You'll need to create m_surfaceView matching the aspect ratio. That means, you'll need to create it from code, not from layout XML file.

There is a sample project APIDemos that you'll find in android sample projects. In the project there is a thing named CameraPreview. This one has a good demonstration for setting up camera preview in a SurfaceView. It has a class that extends ViewGroup, and adds the SurfaceView as its child from the code. The onMeasure() method has been overridden to determine the height and width of the SurfaceView, so the aspect ratio is preserved. Take a look on the project, and I hope it will be clear.

[Sorry I couldn't post the link here - this is supposed to be the link, but I found it broken. But if you have installed the sample projects with the Android SDK, you can find the project in the samples. Open a new Android Sample Project, select APIDemos, then look for a class named CameraPreview. It should be in the package com.example.android.apis.graphics, as far as I remember.]