video - How to keep android from inverting the image from the front facing camera?

Question

My video Camera app does record in the landscape mode, but the front facing camera previews the regular image, but the actual recording is mirrored (flipped or inverted) across the axis.

Everything works great on normal rear camera.

Can anybody suggest me a way to avoid it ? Any suggestions or source code would help a lot. Thank you.

Answer 1

The bad news: this mirroring is hardcoded into the camera service, and can not be disabled.

The good news: if you are on a recent API (API level >= 14), you can easily use a TextureView to mirror the preview image back to the original. Take the TextureView Example over at the Android Documentation, then use setTransform to set a mirroring transform. This will revert the preview image back to the non-mirrored original.

Note that a mirror transform is the same as a scaling transform with a -1 scale on the X axis.

If you are on an older API version, you might be able to do the same with a SurfaceView (using setScaleX, API level >= 11).