Issues when capturing Multiple Photos: app stops responding, camera preview turns to green and no picture is saved

Question

I have successfully captured the single photo using camera in Android. But when I tried to capture 5 photos at once, app stops responding, camera preview turns to green and

Answer 1

I didn't find any API support for this. And repeatedly calling the takePicture method from the loop is not working. So, I get a workaround. The code is still in loop but I'm now using Thread;

private class CaptureThread extends Thread {

        @Override
        public void run() {

            int count = 0;

            while(count < mNo) {
                mFileName = mLocation + "/pic" + count + ".jpg";

                mCamera.takePicture(null, mPictureCallback, mPictureCallback);

                count++;

                try {
                    Thread.sleep(3000);
                } catch (InterruptedException exception) {
                    exception.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        }
}

Answer 2

I'm not sure the android api even supports a burst mode. One thing's for sure, you can't just call takePicture() in a loop like that. That is just abusing those poor api's.

How about taking the next picture in onPictureTaken() ? (Obviously you have to keep a track of the number of pictures taken etc ..)

Also like the documentation says, don't assume it will work on every device.

I wrote the above answer in 2011, since then Camera has evolved

EDIT : Burst mode is now supported in Camera2 : https://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/camera2/package-summary.html

See https://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/camera2/CameraCaptureSession.html

Answer 3

You can take next photo only after callback method Camera.PictureCallback.onPictureTaken is called and camera preview is restarted.

private void takePhoto() {
    if (!(cameraPreview.isRunning())) {
        Log.i(LOG_TAG, "Camera is not ready. Skip frame");
        return;
    }

    camera.takePicture(null, null, this);
    cameraPreview.onPictureTook();
}

public void onPictureTaken(byte[] data, Camera camera) {
    // save photo
    cameraPreview.start();
}


public class CameraPreview extends SurfaceView {

    private boolean previewRunning = false;

    /**
     * Should be called after calling camera.takePicture
     */
    public void onPictureTook() {
        previewRunning = false;
    }

    public boolean isRunning() {
        return previewRunning;
    }

    public void start() {
        try {
            camera.setPreviewDisplay(surfaceHolder);
            camera.startPreview();
            previewRunning = true;
        } catch (Exception ignored) {
            Log.e(LOG_TAG, "Error starting camera preview", ignored);
        }
    }
}