How to record video on Android into Stream

Question

Android MediaRecorder allows to save video to file (file or socket):

setOutputFile(FileDescriptor fd);
setOutputFile(String path)

How to save videodata to OutputStream? It will be used for streaming video recording.

Dionysiac

Answer 1

Using Android-specific LocalServerSocket seems to be the only possible way to get video data as stream. In brief, you have to:

1. create LocalServerSocket instance
2. set it as output file to MediaRecorder instance using file descriptor (mediaRecorder.setOutputFile(FileDescriptor fd);)
3. accept connection
4. read bytes from it (as from InputStream) in separate thread in loop

Another ideas?

Dionysiac

Hint: this is not possible with new Android versions (I guess starting at 5.x) – Bernabernadene

@DenisLukenich why not? – Ballenger

It's quite some time ago. I think it got blocked due to more strict security measures. – Bernabernadene

Answer 2

You can do it using ParcelFileDescriptor.fromSocket():

String hostname = "example.com";
int port = 1234;

Socket socket = new Socket(InetAddress.getByName(hostname), port);

ParcelFileDescriptor pfd = ParcelFileDescriptor.fromSocket(socket);

MediaRecorder recorder = new MediaRecorder();
recorder.setOutputFile(pfd.getFileDescriptor());
recorder.prepare();
recorder.start();

If you prefer UDP, use ParcelFileDescriptor.fromDatagramSocket() instead.

Credit where credit is due.

Meteoritics

I knew it makes sense they would have included a way to specify something other than a file to receive the bytes, in setoutpuFile() – Bowshot

thsi results into java.net.ConnectException: failed to connect to /127.0.0.1 (port 8090): connect failed: ECONNREFUSED (Connection refused) – Dionysiac

Why are you trying to connect to localhost? Do you actually have something running on the phone/emulator that listens on that port? – Meteoritics

I have setup a tcp server, whenever I do this I dont receive anything in the tcp server. I have checked the socket it sends the data fine and giving path also works fine. When I see the logs I see "/MediaRecorder﹕ start failed: -38" – Elver