Android: How to initialize MediaRecorder without a valid surface for video preview?

Question

I am building a camera app, where videos are continuously being captured and saved to the SD card. The videos are short (few minutes), and their length are preset with setMa

Answer 1

Are you implementing Surface callbacks?

Why do you need to initialize MediaRecorder without a valid surface?

Are you supposed to be recording even when you leave the main activity? or does recording stop before the other acitivty is spawned?

Answer 2

I think the IP Webcam app can do this, though I don't know how. Maybe it only works on >=2.3. I'm not sure what version I saw it running on. I asked a question to find how how it's working.

Answer 3

Unfortunately it is still a requirement for you to preview onto a valid surface in order to record video (Android SDK 1.6 thru 2.2). There is an enhancement request logged to remove this restriction http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9570

Answer 4

You just have to create a surface with MediaCodec by adding the following line:

Surface  mySurface = MediaCodec.createPersistentInputSurface();
mMediaRecorder.setPreviewDisplay(mySurface);

...

mMediaRecorder.prepare();