What 3rd party platform support custom camera application? - iphone

I'm making an app with CoronaSDK for custom camera button, frame and layout like "Leme Camera" in app store.
However, they don't support camera buffer so we can't use custom layout to control capturing camera which is not acceptable.
What I found out is PhoneGap also lack that feature. They show native camera window when I tap
Can anyone recommend other cross platform framework for that feature?

With the PhoneGap platform you are able to use a combination of objective C and the PhoneGap standard javascript library.
From what you have described, it sounds like you would want to go native for something like this! Most of all of these third party SDKs do not get very good performance but if you were to write the small computationally intensive camera part in objective C you get all the resources you need and are able to cut back on the amount of code you will need to port when you try to support additional platforms.

Related

Best way to build a camera app on iPhone

I am thinking of building a camera application - with the ability to do image processing (adjust contrast, apply different image filters) while you are taking picture or after the pictures has taken.
The app will also have the ability of drag and drop icons.
At the end you are able to export the edited images either to the camera roll or app memory.
There is already many apps out there like this. (Line Camera) etc...
Just wondering what is the best way to build such app.
Can I build the app purely with Objective C ios sdk? or do i need to build it with C++/cocos2d, etc...
Thanks for your help!
Your question is very broad, so here is a broad answer...
Accessing the camera/photo library
First you'll need to access the camera using UIImagePickerController to either take a new photo or grab one from your photo library. You can read up on how to accomplish this here: Camera Programming Topics for iOS
Image Manipulation
AviarySDK has much of this already built for you. Very easy to set up and use in your apps. You can download their sample app for free in the app store if you want to see what it can do. Check it out here: http://aviary.com/
Alternatively, read up on Core Image if you'd like to avoid third-party libraries. See Core Image Programming Guide for more information.
There is absolutely no need for cocos2d which is a game engine.
You can accomplish everything you mentioned using only Objective-C.
If you want real-time effects you will need to dive into OpenGL. you can use GLKit if you target iOS 5 and above.

Personalized Video / Facebook App - What is the best approach?

I want to build a facebook app featuring a personalized video which imports content assets from the user's facebook profile and their extended social graph and integrates these assets within the timeline. I am thinking of using Flash however a key stipulation is that the app works on mobile - and so I would need to use HTML5. My question is: Can I use Flash to build the application and then compile the app as HTML5 - or is there an alternative solution in the form of a HTML5 video toolkit with a programming layer that would allow me to build a web app / access the Facebook API?
I have done this a few times over the years and yes flash was the easiest however there are a few options which you have available to you that I know of which will be purely HTML5 based, personally I'd stay away from flash here as it will end up just getting int he way:
1- The cleanest method is to use a video compositing tool on the server side which can be programmed to accept variables. Personally I have only ever done this using ffmpeg however there a couple of alternatives which are out there.
The basic process would be to grab the media from FB then to composite them at certain point on top/below/around a base video which is sitting on the server using a shell script which you then pass the media assets to as variables. There are so many options as to how you might want this to be done, probably best id to have a look at some of these examples:
http://broadcasterproject.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/how-to-layerremix-videos-with-free-command-line-tools/
http://graphcomp.com/ffmpeg/
ffmpeg watermark without vhook?
note that last time I did this I used vhooks and custom filters, vhooks are now deprecated
This method will mean a reasonably heavy server load if your app is popular but it's probably the most robust across devices etc.
2- Use Popcorn.js, and let the processing be done on the client side. you could hard code it using css/js/html but popcorn is pretty stable although I havent seen how it runs on devices but in theory it should work (all standardized technologies). Basically the process would be to use javascript to fire the display of images overlayed on the video base file at preset cue points. Popcorn has all of the methods and means for you to do this already.
Hope this helps a bit. Good luck, sounds fun.
we realised some interactive video apps and one recent project was quite like your question describes.
We used adobe flash to track the motion - and published the project via create.js. You could have an image sequence from within create.js or put a video in a layer behind. This video would then control the player head time of the create.js motion tracked sequence via jquery.
worked fine - here a link to a testsetup with an image sequence.
Video Integration would be the next step.
http://www.jungeroemer.net/projekte/testpersvid/elftest01.html
(German text, sorry but it's nothing important to read there.
Just click the images and go for it)
you can download the sources from the link, if you need i can also upload the flash file to show you the motion tracking.

what is the best technology to use for a cross browser intro video (needs to support iphone and ie6)

I need to have an intro video for a site which I need to work on all browsers including safari on the iphone and IE6. I am thinking of trying to do flash with a html5 fallback or vice versa.
Has anyone had any experience of attempting this? I need to try and get a smooth a transition from the video into the content of the website as possible. Am not sure what limitations exist on the iphone?
I know intro videos aren't well liked but this is a requirement for the site.
EDIT -
One thing I would really like to be able to do is play video in page on an iphone automatically, while it is looking like it isn't possible I need to know for sure as I have been told it may be using some combination of canvas and video elements or wrapping the video element in some way. I was sent the following link
http://html5doctor.com/video-canvas-magic/
You need to stop and determine what's more important: Supporting a browser that is over a decade old or supporting a platform that is growing rapidly. That's really it. But if you continue on that line of thought, you'll learn quickly that you can't do HTML5 animations in any stable version of IE currently anyways.
So, you have two options. Develop in HTML5 and place alternative text in it's place for all IE visitors or develop in Flash and place alternative text in it's place for all iOS devices. Honestly, doing the same video twice (Flash and HTML5) seems like wasted effort. (Even with Google's new "Swiffy" SWF -> HTML 5 convertor, it's good, but it's not perfect and it doesn't support audio.)
If it was me in your shoes, I'd go with HTML5. IE10 is right around the corner and it supports animations. HTML5 is the new standard and that's the way everything is going. It seems like the logical choice to me.

iphone learn to design and create own GUI

I want to know what is good start point to work on creating own GUI on iphone/objective-c. I've never done this part before, and I know I'm kinda attracted to make my own slick GUI, something like convertbot, which I really love :)
Any suggestion would be appreciated! Thanks
You might want to check out the Design Then Code tutorials written by Mike Rundle. I've heard good things about them.
Also, Tapworthy is a good read for those wanting to learn about designing interfaces for iPhone.
Interface builder is quite powerful to build UI. However you could start creating custom views in objective-c and that would mean learing how to write code in objective-c.
To be a little more complete, you could have included Fireworks among the apps that can be used to design for iPhone. I hope you won’t mind me plugging it here :)
Adobe Fireworks (http://www.adobe.com/fireworks) is also an excellent application for designing and prototyping for the iPhone. With this vector toolkit from MetaSpark (http://blog.metaspark.com/2009/02/fireworks-toolkit-for-creating-iphone-ui-mockups/), you can use the iPhone interface elements in Fireworks to quickly create prototypes. Fireworks has a nice feature called Pages, that allows designing each of the screens of your iPhone app. Then you can use the Hotspots feature to link buttons to the various Pages/screens in your app. Very quick and easy.
Luke Kilpatrick shows Robert Scoble how this is done in this video: http://www.building43.com/videos/2009/06/23/mockup-iphone-app-adobe-fireworks/
When your design is complete, you have several options for sharing it with clients and other stakeholders:
+ Export to PDF from Fireworks, which you can send to clients to review using the commenting features in the PDF
+ Export to HTML and Images from Fireworks to view your prototype in the Browser
+ Export to AIR from Fireworks to create an AIR prototype
+ Export to HTML and a Dreamweaver Library from Fireworks and use this jQuery trick (http://unitid.nl/2009/04/prototyping-for-the-iphone-using-fireworks-cs3/) to get the app running on your iPhone without learning Objective C. The jQuery hides the Safari Chrome so it looks and feels like a native app, but ti is running in the Safari browser on the iPhone.
+ Use jQTouch (http://www.jqtouch.com/) which uses a similar method to the above
I’m hearing of people using Fireworks to design and prototype for all kinds of mobile devices such as the ,iPhone 4, iPhone 4 Cases, Palm webOS (Pre and Pixi), BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc. In fact, people use it for other screen design too, set-top boxes like the TiVo, PS3, Xbox, interactive kiosks, proprietary medical devices, in car interface screens – really any device with a screen.
Thanks!
Pat Siregar
Read Apple's Human Interface Guidelines:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/Introduction/Introduction.html
There is a lot of useful information there about how to design good UI's.
Once you are familiar and have practiced the things mentioned there, then you can think about designing more complex UI elements.

how would i implement the image processing technology within this iphone application?

Just a quick question on the iphone technology within this business card reader
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8z6pcxdrPo
as we can see this video allows users to take a photo of a business card, i have an idea where i would take a photo of some text , and that photo could then be turned into text on the iphone. how would i be able to implement this using the iOS API ?
cheers guys
The camera stuff is all standard-- use the UIImagePickerController for this.
Text recognition (OCR) is not a built in part of the iOS API, though, so that part really isn't trivial. There are multiple open-source projects that can handle this sort of thing if you want to go after them.
Tesseract is an older but possibly viable one. Check out this post which has info on cross compiling it for iOS.
Other users here might have more current recommendations.