I ran into this problem in Safari where it appears that WebRTC is not fully supported. So when I call
navigator.webkitGetuserMedia()
I get an undefined error.
So my question to the community is what is the best way to write a Meteor app that captures Video on a mobile device and saves it on the said device.
If you have done this, I would appreciate it very much if you could share with me and the community how you went about this.
Specific Answer
The modern API is: navigator.mediaDevices.getUserMedia(constraints). See the docs here.
In the past, I've been unsuccessful with getUserMedia on iOS, but according to this post it can be done on iOS 11.
As for saving it, you can write to the browser's file system, but that API is only supported in Chrome. If you want to write to the camera roll, you'd need native code in the mix.
General Advice
I've spent several years of my life dealing with recording, uploading, and processing video using meteor. If you are doing anything more than trivial web recording, these observations may save you some time:
Chrome (on everything but iOS) has the best API for web recording. If you can require chrome for recording, that's ideal. Firefox is a close second, only because it doesn't support the file system API.
If you need to record and upload long videos on iOS, build a native app. Don't consider any kind of hybrid - that's a serious trap. The number of corner cases and things you need to check is pretty astounding, and the only way to get over those hurdles is with native code.
I'd like to stream video from the camera on an iOS device to a receiver via wifi, in effect turning the device into a wireless webcam. Is there a way to build a small app that captures video input on an iOS app and sends it via an RTSP stream or similar?
As this is an ad hoc experiment, I'm not concerned about App Store guidelines and can jailbreak if necessary.
If I interpret your question correctly you more or less need to solve four problems:
Get the camera feed.
Convert/encode this to the right format.
Stream the data.
Prevent the phone from locking itself and going into deep sleep.
The first one is fairly simple and Apple has as always provided good documentation and examples -> API link. Make sure you check out their example in the end as you will get a CMSampleBufferRef data object back.
For the second and third part, you should check out the CFNetwork framework and specially CFFTPStream for streaming using FTP.
If your are only building this for yourself then you can always turn off the Auto-Lock feature in the settings. If you on the other hand would like to distribute this to other users you could use a trick to play a mute sound every 10 seconds. This is more or less how all the alarm clocks work in the App Store. Here's a tutorial. =)
I hope I helped a little bit at least.
Good luck and best regards!
I'm 70% of the way to doing the same thing. Here's how I did it:
Capture content from video input
Chop video into files for use in HTML Live Streaming.
Spin up a web server on the iPhone and make the video files available.
Connect to the IP address of the phone and viola! you've got live streaming video.
Last time I touched the code I was trying to debug my Live Streaming not working. I'll try and get my source code posted on github this weekend, if you'd like to take a look.
I have a guitar diagram app for Android that I am porting to iOS. Android has a embedded midi synthesizer (sonivox), so I can generate midi files and let Android handle the playback.
Is there a way to do this on iOS? Or are there very lightweight embeddable synths for iOS?
Since iOS 5 there's now the AUSampler audio unit for which you can load a sound bank (apple preset and soundfonts) and then control the sampler/synth via MIDI messages.
Seee this example app:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#samplecode/LoadPresetDemo/Listings/ReadMe_txt.html
It works great!
Update: My answer is out-of-dated. #lukebuehler's answer is much appropriate.
If you don't mind non-opensource solution, try FMOD. Being a commercial audio engine for games, fmod equips a simple MIDI synth. I've tried the free evaluation version. It plays GM MIDI files correctly on my iPhone 3G.
If what you want is not just a SMF file player, you want a full function GS/GM softsynth, which can response individual midi events in realtime. You can try the midisynth from CrimsonTech. Its license fee is fair. Crimsontech provides several demo apps in the appstore. Besides, it also provides an evaluation SDK for free. You don't need to pay a penny for the license until you're really going to publish your app.
I don't think MIDI support in iOS 4.2 allows playback of MIDI data from the phone itself. It is merely for sending and receiving MIDI commands to other MIDI devices.
From the recent iOS 4.2 docs, it seems that you can use the MIDI support to send MIDI commands to other devices for playback. You can also receive commands from other devices and make changes to these commands, or to save it in a file. However I can't find any support to actually play MIDI file from the phone directly. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong (I wish I'm wrong!!).
There is MIDI support in iOS 4.2. If it is the same as what OS X provides then trhere will also be a basic synth included. Check it out.
I have run into a bit of a problem. I built an iPhone app that streams my podcasts via the MPMoviePlayerController. Apple will not approve it because it can use too much bandwidth over the Carrier Network. So their workaround is to use a Stream Segmenter. I am unable to install a stream segmenter on my server. Are their ANY other solutions people have come up with that can help me stream my podcast to iPhone devices? Even if I have to make it a Web Application as opposed to a native application.
Thanks,
John
You could use a simple service like Encoding.com to create iphone segmented ondemand versions of your files for multi bitrate adaptive playback. You could also provide a high and low quality and only display the high when the reachability class shows that your using wifi. I had to do the second option to get one of my apps to pass approval. Hope this helps!
Well if you don't want a native app, I think you can just put a video link on a webpage and when the user clicks it Quicktime will take over and play the file. It will play the file as it downloads it.
I don't have any experience streaming large files over the iPhone, so I can't help guide you on alternatives and keeping it a native app.
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I want to be able to capture my iPhone's screen as a video, but I'm not sure the best way to do this.
Can anyone help guide me on how to best do this without jailbreak?
Here's my solution in a nutshell:
In recent years, when needing to produce moving visual content from the interface of an iOS app, I would require the developer provide a compiling of the app designed for the Simulator, (must be separately compiled because the apps are, by default compiled to run on the iPhone's ARM processor, whereas the Simulator runs on the Mac's Intel processor). This would then be screen captured on the Mac with something like Snapz Pro, Screenflow or something similar.
Beyond that, typical solutions required jailbreaking the device and installing a screen capture application sourced from the Cydia Store.
With the introduction of the iPad 2, Apple enabled full interface mirrored video output via either an authorized dock connector to HDMI dongle, or a dock connector to VGA dongle. (Note: Apple's composite and component options do not port mirrored content.) While the typical intent for these output mechanisms are to display the interface content to an external projector or High Definition Television, it is possible to record this mirrored content with a device capable of recording or transcoding content from such an incoming source. This option was also made possible with the introduction of the iPhone 4S. Quite often, recording this video content is done with HDMI capture cards installed on the capturing computer, such as those produced by Black Magic or AJA, among others. This is, or course limited to using computers that are capable of having such a capture card installed. Other options may include some HDMI record-enabled DVR devices (though many detect and disable such options) or firewire-based transcoding devices (like the Grass Valley ADVC-HD50, which I use).
Since getting the iPad 2 earlier this year, I have been using the Grass Valley ADVC HD50 to capture iOS screen motion from dock connected HDMI to a HDV compatible video capture application on my Mac. It has thus far worked flawlessly.
Here is an example from a video I recorded showing such captured content from both the iPHone 4S and the iPad 2.
http://youtu.be/k7jlPx8NAmw
However, now that Apple has enabled wireless iOS mirroring via Airplay in iOS 5, I find it is now much more convenient to connect an Apple TV device to the Grass Vally ADVC HD50, and capture the iOS interface screen recording wirelessly.
Here is a recent short video example in which the iPhone 4S interface was captured wirelessly via Airplay mirroring.
http://youtu.be/UKsixjcCXdI
I hope this helps.
As others have suggested, AirPlay mirroring is the way to go. To mirror directly to your computer use an AirPlay server like http://www.airserverapp.com/. Then, since it's showing up directly on your computer you can capture it using the built-in Quicktime app (File > New Screen Recording). Works great!
You can use Lookback. It records your screen, face, voice and all gestures, and uploads them to your account on the web.
Here's a demo: https://lookback.io/watch/JK354d5jcEpA7CNkE
Loren Brichter the developer of Tweetie2 wrote this little app called SimFinger to make iphone screencasts top notch!
http://blog.atebits.com/2009/03/not-your-average-iphone-screencast/
Love apps that make amateurs look like pros :)
I made a plugin for the simulator that does just this. You can find it at my blog.
It actually records the screen. It does not rely on another screen capture program like iShowU.
It will install icons for the default apps and change the carrier text to look like a real device.
Short of using a video camera, no.
Many youtube videos for demonstrating iPhone applications are made with a screen grabber application (such as iShowU, ScreenFlow, or Snapz Pro) and the simulator. Be aware that the speed of response in the simulator can be dramatically different than a device - so it's possible to get effects (and miss) with the simulator you'll never see on a device. In particular, default animations can flash by in the simulator, where they just look quick on a device.
using ScreenCaptureView class we can capture the iphone screen as video.The source code is available here.The recorded video is saved in a NSUrl,outputURL.Use that NSUrl in a method like below to play the recorded video,
-(void)playvideo
{
MPMoviePlayerController *player = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:outputURL ];
[player.view setFrame:CGRectMake(0,0,320,480)];
[player setMovieControlMode:MPMovieControlModeHidden];
[player setScalingMode:MPMovieScalingModeAspectFit];
[player setBackgroundColor:[UIColor blackColor]];
[player setFullscreen:YES animated:YES];
[player play];
[self addSubview:player.view];
}
call this method before releasing NSUrl in completeRecordingSession method ..it will replay what you did in the iphone screen as a video.
Note: This answer is outdated
www.iphonevideorecorder.com. There's a free trial I think, but after that you'd need to buy it. And you need to jailbreak your iphone.
You could use the video-out and capture that somehow with a firewire or sumthing..
The class MPTVOutWindow can help you out! Here's a nice sample of that!
http://iphone-developers-nc.googlegroups.com/web/UIApplication_TVOut.m
I used ScreenFlow to record the Simulator, and zoomed it and added static images as necessary. I then embedded the movie in an iPhone frame on my website. Turned out okay. See the Tweeps page for the result.
i guess it is so obvious now that no one has posted this but for the noobs.... note: iPhone 4S only
just airplay to an apple tv and video mirror then output the atv to a device that can record - like tivo, dvr etc. you can also use a video out cable on the iPad [1 and 2] now
not sure if the cable works on the iPhone 4S as I havent tested that myself
its clunky but there is no other way i can see atm.
I've continued to research this item myself, and it does appear to remain beyond us at this point.
I even tried buying a Apple Composite AV Cable, but it doesn't capture screen, just video playing like YouTube, etc.
So I decided to go with the iShowU path and that has worked out well so far.
Thanks Guys!
For a nice looking screencast, have a look at SimFinger. You will still need a screen recoder such as Snapz Pro.
Just for anyone who is still looking for solutions:
The RecordMyScreen jailbreak app is opensourced and works fine even on non-jailbreak devices if we have the developer license. You can have a look at the source: https://github.com/coolstar/RecordMyScreen
I dont believe this is possible.
Your best bet is to get something like iShowU and capture from the simulator.