I recently switched from the Z Flip 4 to the Pixel 7 256gb because I wanted the pure Google experience for a change. The one thing that I really miss from Samsung, is the ability to record a video with both the front and rear camera at the same time. I see that there is an app I can sideload to record from both, but Samsung took it a step further in that it took the front camera(selfie) and overlayed it on whatever the back camera was pointing at, and make a single picture in picture video output for you.
That way I don't have to take two different video files and edit them into a separate PiP video in post and have to synch the audio if I edit stuff out or add things in... Saves me time if I am recording an interview or doing a product review and want my face in the corner talking, while the larger main video portion is whomever I am talking to or whatever object I am reviewing or working on, etc...
Can this be done on a Pixel 7 without having to root it or jump through hoops? Samsung has been doing it in their stock camera app for years, and when I switched it never occurred to me that Google wouldn't already have that feature baked in as well.
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So, I really want to be able to attend a seminar with a whiteboard or projected powerpoint... record the video and audio and text on the whiteboard - WHILE using Note to take handwritten and/or typed notes.
My solution - thought I'd share this accessory structure for recording:
1 piece double sided clear 3M stickies;
1 right angle prism (about 5-8mm) with an aluminized hypotenuse (about $5 on ebay).
Then I just apply the prism to the sticky and on to the front facing camera.
Works GREAT for taking pictures/video while the note stays flat on the desk. Also great for traffic black box video with note 2 on the dash for heads up display hud.
Problems to solve:
1) background video/audio recording THAT ALLOWS S-memo or Polaris Office or similar to be on (still looking - advice greatly appreciated).
2) self-portrait camera shows orientation on screen correctly, but it transposes or mirror flips the image when saving such that text on powerpoint is mirror reversed.
3) FFC has no way to zoom in stock app.
willfck4beer said:
Problems to solve:
1) background video/audio recording THAT ALLOWS S-memo or Polaris Office or similar to be on (still looking - advice greatly appreciated).
2) self-portrait camera shows orientation on screen correctly, but it transposes or mirror flips the image when saving such that text on powerpoint is mirror reversed.
3) FFC has no way to zoom in stock app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats pretty creative.
1) You could setup Multi windows to have camera and S-memo running at the same time, then just minimise( drag the divider bar) the window with the camera. (not sure if that would work)
2) Use any video editing program you have (i.e Windows Movie Maker) and use that to flip the video to how it should be
3) stick the prism to the main rear facing camera, and use that to record and be able to zoom. If the video appears mirrored, then use the video editing program to un-mirror it.
Optimistic Pessimist said:
Thats pretty creative.
1) You could setup Multi windows to have camera and S-memo running at the same time, then just minimise( drag the divider bar) the window with the camera. (not sure if that would work)
2) Use any video editing program you have (i.e Windows Movie Maker) and use that to flip the video to how it should be
3) stick the prism to the main rear facing camera, and use that to record and be able to zoom. If the video appears mirrored, then use the video editing program to un-mirror it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your help! I appreciate it.
Unfortunately, I'm on stock because this is a work phone - waiting for the warranty to expire before rooting so can't add camera app to multiwindow yet. This was a great idea though!
The rear camera was a great idea too but it wouldn't let me keep the liveview comfortably on the desk for writing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVuKlVKZgQc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
This background configurable Secret Video Recorder SVR seems almost perfect;
Seems to lack orientation setting in exif metadata though. Would be tits if I could control horizontal and vertical (maybe with orientation lock?) mirroring flipping transpose live on android itself rather than reencoding on desktop pc in post processing.
willfck4beer said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVuKlVKZgQc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
This background configurable Secret Video Recorder SVR seems almost perfect;
Seems to lack orientation setting in exif metadata though. Would be tits if I could control horizontal and vertical (maybe with orientation lock?) mirroring flipping transpose live on android itself rather than reencoding on desktop pc in post processing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seems like a cool app. Might come in handy
willfck4beer said:
Thanks for your help! I appreciate it.
Unfortunately, I'm on stock because this is a work phone - waiting for the warranty to expire before rooting so can't add camera app to multiwindow yet. This was a great idea though!
The rear camera was a great idea too but it wouldn't let me keep the liveview comfortably on the desk for writing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't sweat it man, no one at your work will even know that your phone is rooted. Well, that is unless they're into rooting phones themselves and really dig into your phones information.
1-You shouldn't let your coworkers dig into your phone like that.
2-If they're into rooting phones, then they won't care anyways.
Go ahead and take the plunge man, you'll be glad that you did!!!
SwiftKey'ed from my White Sprint Note 2 using XDA Premium
Look at an app called Arcnote. Does exactly what your want and more
This is a good point. Just haven't had the need yet. And I'm concerned about a hardware failure... warranty not being honored due to root... and having to pay our have firm pay. Maybe this is obviated by insurance though?
Arcnote is awesome but seems to require focus and manual capture of pictures of slides.
Secret video recorder svr from zero noise dev team is exactly what I was looking for for background video and audio recording. This thing is sweet! Five stars. Arc note would be badass if it could post process video... detecting each slide transition, capturing a photo and then doing its auto zoom, keystone magic. Thank you for the recommendation nonetheless!
willfck4beer said:
This is a good point. Just haven't had the need yet. And I'm concerned about a hardware failure... warranty not being honored due to root... and having to pay our have firm pay. Maybe this is obviated by insurance though?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Solutions for your warranty problem :
1. Use a a one click root & unroot program called framaroot v 1.4.1 : See this link for tutorials - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1mQz4n-Z-M
download : http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2130276
3. When ever your sending this phone for any repair just one click unroot.
2. Use Trainagle away app from play store to reset your binary ( this is what your warranty guys check) - Now you are back to factory Cheers !
Thanks good call
I am very confused why the Note 8 cannot do this. My note 4 and other android devices could shoot videos in Instagram with the front camera then you could double tap the screen to shoot the rear.
I spent the last 2 days trying to figure out how to do this and there seems to be no solution. Odd that an Iphone or Note 4 can do this but a Note 8 cannot.
Serious problem for those of us using social media or just want to make a nice video. I would have thought we could technically "pause" the video and then switch. But who wants to shoot a video then turn it on yourself without knowing how it looks.
Any ideas?
I've just bought k20 pro and I noticed the snapchat camera is always zoomed in compared to stock or google camera, is there a way to fix that or am I missing something, because I use snapchat camera way more than stock one and the picture quality in that suffers due to zoom issue
Snapchat does not works well in an android because of lots of other android phones with different screen sizes, chipsets, cameras, etc and the its is not actually zoomed it is stretched due to full screen aspect ratio and quality is **** than stock camera all you can do is use filters or buy an iphone
amar1548 said:
I've just bought k20 pro and I noticed the snapchat camera is always zoomed in compared to stock or google camera, is there a way to fix that or am I missing something, because I use snapchat camera way more than stock one and the picture quality in that suffers due to zoom issue
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's all because external apps in android don't use hardware camera implementation, instead they are using preview from recording view. There is no way for you to fix it, but app developers can just change implementation. Hovewer they won't probably do it, as there are too much different devices running android.
It's not zoomed in. Keep in mind that you're comparing 4:3 to something like 16:9 to 18:9. It cuts off the sides, which makes it look like it's zoomed in, but it's not.
Nothing can be done. Snapchat, Instagram etc uses the screen capture of the view finder,so the quality of the pics will be trash. To get optimized and good results go for iPhone.(any variant)
Hi All I realise the security risk of this, but I want to use the Mi camera app in the background so I can use the UW lens as a dashboard cam. In the foreground will be my satnav program and also in the background will be VLC playing my favourite music.
The problem I have is that the Mi Camera app won't run in the background. If I start it and switch away, when I switch back, it's stopped recording. There are plenty of 3rd party dashcam apps, but camera2 API only reports 2 cameras and typically 3rd party apps haven't caught on to the multiple camera configs of phones these days.
I did find a setting in Settings/Privacy/Protection/Network Interception/Restrict Using camera in the background which I thought might be a clue, but the setting doesn't work and has blue text "Protected" next to it. Am I asking for the impossible? All workarounds gratefully received.... Cheers Steve
ps I'm running Chinese MIUI 12.5.4 Stable
If you can figure out some way to do this, the phone is going to get hot and you will probably need to keep it plugged in... This phone eats battery life using the cameras
Hi @speedtripler thanks for your reply. After much googling and playing with privacy protection settings, I found an app, cunningly called Background Video Recorder here:
Background Video Recorder Pro - Apps on Google Play
motion detection / recording videos / baby monitor / burst image capturing
play.google.com
After a quick play, it seems to work, so I'll go for the 'full monty' later and try it out with Navmii navigating and VLC playing my music. I do use a power supply in the car and I'll take a bucket of water too, in case it catches fire!
My attempts with Mi camera and GCAM 8.1 failed, as both pause video recording as soon as they go into the background.
What I really wanted was the UW lens, as this will cover the most ground, but I may have to stick with plain old Wide as not many apps support multiple lenses.
I'll update later after putting the fire out
Cheers Steve
Ok so I did a quick test last night and ran my satnav (Navmii) in the foreground, VLC playing music in the background and Background Video Recorder in the background and it all worked just dandy.
The only slight issue is the file size was large, 700MB after 15 mins. Now I have 500GB of storage, but that's a little high. There doesn't seem to be an option to set the save location, otherwise I could save it to an SD card so I've emailed the developer with the suggestion and see what he says. Also I've asked if he can support multiple lenses, as UW would be just great.
It does offer various framerates, though and 5fps is probably OK for a dashcam so I'll give that a try and report back.
After a 15 minute drive I didn't notice any overheating problems, but I have 4 hour drive on Wednesday so see how that goes.
Cheers Steve
The nice man at Arbel Solutions replied very quickly and pointed out it is possible to save to other locations in Settings. This was greyed out so I didn't see it, but you have to pay for the software to enable it as it's a premium feature which is fair enough.
On switching lenses, this is also supported, but it just offers Main and Selfie, which ties up with the Camera2 API checkers. I guess I need to root my phone and enable Camera2 API.
That's all for now....
Steve
Just a quick update on this. I ran Background Video Recorder on my trip to see my daughetr and grandkids. It's a 200 mile trek and all worked fine. I used Navmii, VLC and BVR all at once and didn't notice any over heating problems.
However, on the way back, I did the same but this time with BVR recording 8K video. Gosh, that quality is good . Now I want to buy a 4K TV!
After a couple of hours, the phone overheated, popped up a message saying just that, so I switched it off and let it cool down. The phone is working fine again now it's cool phew! I guess @speedtripler was right lol.
The 2 issues with heat are
1) The sun was shining on the phone
2) I'm using a hard plastic backing cover on the phone to mount it on the holder
2) must frustrate heat dissipation quite a bit.
So next up is to buy some gauze on eBay, cut an opening in the backing cover and fit the gauze. If that doesn't work, I'll probably have to make a piped cooling system with a fan.
Oh well, back to reality!
Cheers
Steve
Oh, I forgot there's another workaround for this. If the camera doesn't work in the background, you can run it in the foreground with other apps.
Sound simple? Well it's a bit fiddly, but Android 11 offers split screen, so you can have two apps running in the foreground. The only gotcha is that both apps need to support split screen.
Surprisingly, the stock camera doesn't so that's out. Neither does GCAM 8.1. Good 'ole OpenCamera does and it works well.
I'm still getting the hang of split screen but here's a basic guide:
1) start both apps
2) Go to Task Manager (hamburger icon)
3) long press on the first app and choose split screen ( like 2 oblong boxes, 1 on top of the other)
4) In Task Manager, click on the other app
Now the 1st app will appear in the top of the screen and the second at the bottom.
For my example, I now have OpenCamera recording video and Navmii giving me directions.
Brill!
Below is a screenshot. See the small white horizontal bar in the middle of the pic? You use this to change the size of the window. What's not to like? (sorry about getting my big finger in front of the lens)
The grids arrived yesterday to ventilate my hard plastic case so I set about cutting holes in it to fit them. The case is very hard and difficult to scratch, but was no match for my Dremel.
Hopefully this will promote air flow and cooling when the phone is crying while it's pushed hard.
The grids were stuck on with Gasket Goo which is good up to 230° C at which point I think the phone would be spitting flames!
This needs testing on a long journey on a hot day. If it still overheats, I'll clip on a mini 5V fan which I'm sure will sort it.
A phone with a cooling fan? Lol
Cheers
Steve
Hi everyone, I have got some camera issues in my pixel 7. I bought Pixel 7 few weeks ago and today I noticed weird effect when taking a picture of printed document. The text in the very centre of image is sharp, but in the direction to the edges it is blurred and distorted. You can clearly see a shadows behind a letters. Do you have any idea what is going on with this camera?
Pixel 7 distortion in the camera image
Because of the focus features and the camera software optimization of the photos taken by the Google cam, it is maybe not the right app to scan documents.
Check out MS Office Lens for better results https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.office.officelens
Another suggestion is Adobe Scan if you're having issues with text. It's what I typically use for this. Personally, I've never had any issues with the camera taking shots of text.
I face this same distortion issue while using adobe scan app too. I also noticed that google camera is over processing selfies mainly to an extent that the original photo is way better than the processed photo. How to overcome this? Kindly suggest ideas.