How to make a rounded surfaceview

Question

I'm trying to make a rounded shaped surfaceview. I've searched a lot but i couldn't find a good solution. what i'm doing right now is that, I've put the SurfaceView into a FrameLayout, then another View on top of it, either with a PNG mask, or a shape xml drawable. here it is

<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:id="@+id/LinearLayout1"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent" >

    <LinearLayout
        android:layout_width="140dp"
        android:layout_height="140dp"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true"
        android:background="#000"
        android:orientation="vertical"
        android:visibility="visible" >

        <FrameLayout
            android:id="@+id/videorecordview"
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="fill_parent"
            android:layout_marginLeft="20dp"
            android:layout_marginRight="20dp"
            android:layout_weight=".2" >

            <SurfaceView
            android:id="@+id/surfaceView1"
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="fill_parent" />
        </FrameLayout>
    </LinearLayout>

    <LinearLayout
        android:layout_width="200dp"
        android:layout_height="200dp"
        android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
        android:layout_centerVertical="true"
        android:background="@drawable/rounded"
        android:orientation="vertical" >
    </LinearLayout>

</RelativeLayout>

But this is not a good solution and it is also not working perfectly. I want to customize surfaceview to a rounded shape. any help would be much appreciated. Thank you :)

Answer 1

You can't change the shape of the SurfaceView's Surface.

A SurfaceView has two parts, the Surface and the View. The View part works like any other View. By default, it just acts as a transparent "hole", creating a window in the layout. All Views are rendered by the app onto a single layer.

The Surface part is a separate layer that sits behind the View layer (unless you explicitly change the Surface's Z order), so you only see it where it "shows through" transparent areas of the View layer. You can draw on the View layer to mask portions of the Surface, but you can't change the shape of the Surface layer itself. Layers are rectangular.

In many situations a TextureView can be used in place of a SurfaceView. TextureView offers greater flexibility because it's rendered by the app onto the View layer, but can be less efficient than SurfaceView.

More information can be found in the Android graphics architecture doc.

Answer 2

A little hack. Put your surface view inside card view.

<android.support.v7.widget.CardView
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_margin="@dimen/margin_normal" 
        app:cardCornerRadius="10dp"     
        app:cardPreventCornerOverlap="false">

        <SurfaceView
            android:id="@+id/surfaceView"
            android:layout_width="match_parent"
            android:layout_height="match_parent"
            android:padding="@dimen/margin_normal" />

    </android.support.v7.widget.CardView>

Don't forget to add this to your gradle file to use CardView

compile 'com.android.support:cardview-v7:25.0.1'

Also this two line inside card view

app:cardCornerRadius="10dp"     
app:cardPreventCornerOverlap="false"

Cheers happy coding

Answer 3

try this

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<shape xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:shape="oval" >
    <gradient android:startColor="#FFFF0000" android:endColor="#80FF00FF"
        android:angle="270"/>
</shape>



<SurfaceView
       android:background="@drawable/circle"
        android:id="@+id/surfaceView1"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent" />