# camerabin

CameraBin is a high-level camera object that encapsulates gstreamer elements, providing an API for controlling a digital camera.

> Note that camerabin is still UNSTABLE and under development.

CameraBin has the following main features:

- Record videos
- Capture pictures
- Display a viewfinder
- Post preview images for each capture (video and image)

## Usage

Camerabin can be created using gst_element_factory_make just like any other element. Video or image capture mode can be selected using the mode property and the file to save the capture is selected using location property.

After creating camerabin, applications might want to do some customization (there's a section about this below), then select the desired mode and start capturing.

In image capture mode, just send a start-capture and a picture will be captured. When the picture is stored on the selected location, a GST_MESSAGE_ELEMENT named 'image-done' will be posted on the GstBus.

In video capture mode, send a start-capture to start recording, then send a stop-capture to stop recording. Note that both signals are asynchronous, so, calling stop-capture doesn't guarantee that the video has been properly finished yet. Applications should wait for the 'video-done' message to be posted on the bus.

In both modes, if post-previews is TRUE, a GstBuffer will be post to the GstBus in a field named 'buffer', in a 'preview-image' message of type GST_MESSAGE_ELEMENT.

## Customization

Camerabin provides various customization properties, allowing the user to set custom filters, selecting the viewfinder sink and formats to use to encode the captured images/videos.

GstEncodingProfiles are used to tell camerabin which formats it should encode the captures to, those should be set to image-profile and video-profile. Default is jpeg for images, and ogg (theora and vorbis) for video. If a profile without an audio stream is set for video, audio will be disabled on recordings.

preview-caps can be used to select which format preview images should be posted on the GstBus. It has to be a raw video format.

Camerabin has a camera-source property so applications can set their source that will provide buffers for the viewfinder and for captures. This camera source is a special type of source that has 3 pads. To use a 'regular' source with a single pad you should use wrappercamerabinsrc, it will adapt your source and provide 3 pads.

Applications can also select the desired viewfinder sink using viewfinder-sink, it is also possible to select the audio source using audio-source.

The viewfinder resolution can be configured using viewfinder-caps, these GstCaps should be a subset of viewfinder-supported-caps.

To select the desired resolution for captures, camerabin provides image-capture-caps and video-capture-caps, these caps must be a subset of what the source can produce. The allowed caps can be probed using image-capture-supported-caps and video-capture-supported-caps. In an analogous way, there are audio-capture-caps and audio-capture-supported-caps.

Camerabin also allows applications to insert custom GstElement on any of its branches: video capture, image capture, viewfinder and preview. Check video-filter, image-filter, viewfinder-filter and preview-filter.

## Example launch line

Unfortunately, camerabin can't be really used from gst-launch-1.0, as you need to send signals to control it. The following pipeline might be able to show the viewfinder using all the default elements.

     gst-launch-1.0 -v -m camerabin

## Hierarchy

    GObject
        ╰──GInitiallyUnowned
            ╰──GstObject
                ╰──GstElement
                    ╰──GstBin
                        ╰──GstPipeline
                            ╰──camerabin

## Implemented interfaces

    GstChildProxy
    GstTagSetter

## Factory details

Authors: – Thiago Santos

Classification: – `Generic/Bin/Camera`

Rank – none

Plugin – camerabin

Package – GStreamer Bad Plug-ins

## Action Signals

### start-capture

    g_signal_emit_by_name (param_0, "start-capture");

    ret = param_0.emit ("start-capture")

    let ret = param_0.emit ("start-capture");

Parameters:

`param_0` (GstElement *) –
No description available

Flags: Run Last / Action

### stop-capture

    g_signal_emit_by_name (param_0, "stop-capture");

    ret = param_0.emit ("stop-capture")

    let ret = param_0.emit ("stop-capture");

Parameters:

`param_0` (GstElement *) –
No description available

Flags: Run Last / Action

## Properties

### audio-capture-caps

    “audio-capture-caps” GstCaps *

Format to capture audio for video recording represented as GstCaps

Flags : Read / Write

Default value :

    ANY

### audio-capture-supported-caps

    “audio-capture-supported-caps” GstCaps *

Formats supported for capturing audio represented as GstCaps

Flags : Read

### audio-filter

    “audio-filter” GstElement *

The element that will process captured audio buffers when recording. (Should be set on NULL state)

Flags : Read / Write

### audio-source

    “audio-source” GstElement *

The audio source element to be used on video recordings. It is only taken into use on the next null to ready transition

Flags : Read / Write

### camera-source

    “camera-source” GstElement *

The camera source element to be used. It is only taken into use on the next null to ready transition

Flags : Read / Write

### flags

    “flags” Cam-flags *

Control the behaviour of encodebin.

Flags : Read / Write

Default value : (none)

### idle

    “idle” gboolean

If camerabin2 is idle (not doing captures).

Flags : Read

Default value : true

### image-capture-caps

    “image-capture-caps” GstCaps *

Caps for image capture

Flags : Read / Write

Default value :

    ANY

### image-capture-supported-caps

    “image-capture-supported-caps” GstCaps *

Formats supported for capturing images represented as GstCaps

Flags : Read

### image-filter

    “image-filter” GstElement *

The element that will process captured image frames. (Should be set on NULL state)

Flags : Read / Write

### image-profile

    “image-profile” GstEncodingProfile *

The GstEncodingProfile to use for image captures.

Flags : Read / Write

### location

    “location” gchararray

Location to save the captured files. A %%d might be used on thefilename as a placeholder for a numeric index of the capture.Default is cap_%%d

Flags : Read / Write

Default value : cap_%%d

### max-zoom

    “max-zoom” gfloat

Digital zoom factor (e.g. 1.5 means 1.5x)

Flags : Read

Default value : 10

### mode

    “mode” GstCameraBin2Mode *

The capture mode (still image capture or video recording)

Flags : Read / Write

Default value : mode-image (1)

### mute

    “mute” gboolean

If the audio recording should be muted. Note that this still saves audio data to the resulting file, but they are silent. Use a video-profile without audio to disable audio completely

Flags : Read / Write

Default value : false

### post-previews

    “post-previews” gboolean

If capture preview images should be posted to the bus

Flags : Read / Write

Default value : false

### preview-caps

    “preview-caps” GstCaps *

The caps of the preview image to be posted

Flags : Read / Write

### preview-filter

    “preview-filter” GstElement *

The element that will process preview buffers. (Should be set on NULL state)

Flags : Read / Write

### video-capture-caps

    “video-capture-caps” GstCaps *

Caps for video capture

Flags : Read / Write

Default value :

    ANY

### video-capture-supported-caps

    “video-capture-supported-caps” GstCaps *

Formats supported for capturing videos represented as GstCaps

Flags : Read

### video-filter

    “video-filter” GstElement *

The element that will process captured video frames. (Should be set on NULL state)

Flags : Read / Write

### video-profile

    “video-profile” GstEncodingProfile *

The GstEncodingProfile to use for video recording. Audio is enabled when this profile supports audio.

Flags : Read / Write

### viewfinder-caps

    “viewfinder-caps” GstCaps *

Restricts the caps that can be used on the viewfinder

Flags : Read / Write

Default value :

    ANY

### viewfinder-filter

    “viewfinder-filter” GstElement *

The element that will process frames going to the viewfinder. (Should be set on NULL state)

Flags : Read / Write

### viewfinder-sink

    “viewfinder-sink” GstElement *

The video sink of the viewfinder. It is only taken into use on the next null to ready transition

Flags : Read / Write

### viewfinder-supported-caps

    “viewfinder-supported-caps” GstCaps *

The caps that the camera source can produce on the viewfinder pad

Flags : Read

### zoom

    “zoom” gfloat

Digital zoom factor (e.g. 1.5 means 1.5x)

Flags : Read / Write

Default value : 1

## Named constants

### Cam-flags

#### Members

`no-audio-conversion` (0x00000001) – Do not use audio conversion elements
`no-video-conversion` (0x00000002) – Do not use video conversion elements
`no-viewfinder-conversion` (0x00000004) – Do not use viewfinder conversion elements
`no-image-conversion` (0x00000008) – Do not use image conversion elements

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