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 no picture is saved. What I saw in stack trace is as follows (partial)

03-17 14:19:54.804: INFO/QualcommCameraHardware(19268): deinitPreview E 03-17 14:19:54.804: INFO/QualcommCameraHardware(19268): deinitPreview X 03-17 14:19:54.804: DEBUG/QualcommCameraHardware(19268): frame_thread X 03-17 14:19:54.834: DEBUG/QualcommCameraHardware(19268): snapshot_thread E 03-17 14:19:54.854: DEBUG/CameraService(19268): takePicture (pid 20509) 03-17 14:19:54.884: WARN/AudioFlinger(19268): write blocked for 85 msecs 03-17 14:19:55.154: DEBUG/CameraService(19268): postShutter 03-17 14:19:55.284: DEBUG/CameraService(19268): postRaw 03-17 14:19:55.314: DEBUG/QualcommCameraHardware(19268): snapshot_thread X 03-17 14:19:55.344: DEBUG/QualcommCameraHardware(19268): snapshot_thread E 03-17 14:19:55.364: DEBUG/CameraService(19268): takePicture (pid 20509) 03-17 14:19:55.984: DEBUG/CameraService(19268): postShutter 03-17 14:19:56.064: DEBUG/CameraService(19268): postRaw 03-17 14:19:56.074: ERROR/QualcommCameraHardware(19268): native_jpeg_encode: jpeg_encoder_encode failed. 03-17 14:19:56.074: ERROR/QualcommCameraHardware(19268): jpeg encoding failed 03-17 14:19:56.084: DEBUG/QualcommCameraHardware(19268): snapshot_thread X 03-17 14:19:56.154: INFO/DEBUG(19267): * ** * ** * ** * ** * ** * 03-17 14:19:56.164: INFO/DEBUG(19267): Build fingerprint: 'google_ion/google_ion/sapphire/sapphire:1.6/DRC83/14721:user/adp,test-keys' 03-17 14:19:56.164: INFO/DEBUG(19267): pid: 19268, tid: 20813 >>> /system/bin/mediaserver ... ... ... 14:19:59.894: INFO/ServiceManager(46): service 'media.camera' died 03-17 14:19:59.894: WARN/Camera(20509): Camera server died! 03-17 14:19:59.894: WARN/Camera(20509): ICamera died 03-17 14:19:59.894: ERROR/Camera(20509): Error 100 03-17 14:19:59.915: WARN/AudioSystem(71): AudioFlinger server died! 03-17 14:20:00.014: INFO/Process(71): Sending signal. PID: 18636 SIG: 3 03-17 14:20:00.054: INFO/dalvikvm(18636): threadid=7: reacting to signal 3

I am calling the takePicture method in a loop to capture multiple photos;

for(int m = 0 ; m < 6; m++) {

    mPrimCamera.takePicture(null, mPictureCallbackMet, mPictureCallbackMet);
}

I am doing this on HTC Magic running Android 1.6. I think, I am using the wrong way to take multiple photos. What is the correct way to capture multiple photos using Android Camera API?

Answer 1

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