Record videos

Note: This page refers to the Camera class, which is deprecated. We recommend using CameraX or, for specific use cases, Camera2. Both CameraX and Camera2 support Android 5.0 (API level 21) and higher.

This lesson explains how to capture video using existing camera applications.

Your application has a job to do, and integrating videos is only a small part of it. You want to take videos with minimal fuss, and not reinvent the camcorder. Happily, most Android-powered devices already have a camera application that records video. In this lesson, you make it do this for you.

Request the camera feature

To advertise that your application depends on having a camera, put a <uses-feature> tag in the manifest file:

<manifest ... >
    <uses-feature android:name="android.hardware.camera"
                  android:required="true" />
    ...
</manifest>

If your application uses, but does not require a camera in order to function, set android:required to false. In doing so, Google Play will allow devices without a camera to download your application. It's then your responsibility to check for the availability of the camera at runtime by calling hasSystemFeature(PackageManager.FEATURE_CAMERA). If a camera is not available, you should then disable your camera features.

View the video

The Android Camera application returns the video in the Intent delivered to onActivityResult() as a Uri pointing to the video location in storage. The following code retrieves this video and displays it in a VideoView.

override fun onActivityResult(requestCode: Int, resultCode: Int, intent: Intent) {
    if (requestCode == REQUEST_VIDEO_CAPTURE && resultCode == RESULT_OK) {
        val videoUri: Uri = intent.data
        videoView.setVideoURI(videoUri)
    }
}

@Override
protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent intent) {
    if (requestCode == REQUEST_VIDEO_CAPTURE && resultCode == RESULT_OK) {
        Uri videoUri = intent.getData();
        videoView.setVideoURI(videoUri);
    }
}