I've written an Android app that is a simpler version of the stock camera. It only records video.
Despite this being a custom app, I'd like to have the videos recorded by this be easily visible from the Photos and Gallery apps.
I was under the impression that this is what the "MediaScannerConnection" class is for. I've found common advice that shows how to use this in either a "sendBroadcast" mode, or a more manual "scanFile" approach. I've implemented both of these options and found that they appear to have no effect. When I stop the recorder, a valid video is stored (I can play it from a file browser afterwards), but neither Photos or Gallery is made aware of the new video.
I've been storing the videos in files like "/storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera/20151223_150115.mp4". That directory also contains videos taken by the stock camera app. The base path was obtained from "Environment.getExternalStoragePublicDirectory(Environment.DIRECTORY_DCIM)". I originally tried replacing "Camera" with a directory name based on the name of my app, but as that wasn't working (Photos/Gallery not seeing it, despite it being stored properly), I decided to try storing them where the stock videos are stored. That isn't working either.
My test device is a Galaxy Note 3, running Android 5.0.
My first attempt at using MediaScannerConnection was with this:
sendBroadcast(new Intent(Intent.ACTION_MEDIA_SCANNER_SCAN_FILE, Uri.parse("file://" + outputFilePath)));
One of the values of "outputFilePath" is exactly the path shown above.
As this didn't appear to do anything, I then later tried this:
new SingleMediaScanner(getApplicationContext(), new File(outputFilePath));
Where "SingleMediaScanner" is this:
public static class SingleMediaScanner implements MediaScannerConnection.MediaScannerConnectionClient {
private MediaScannerConnection mMs;
private File mFile;
public SingleMediaScanner(Context context, File f) {
mFile = f;
mMs = new MediaScannerConnection(context, this);
mMs.connect();
}
@Override
public void onMediaScannerConnected() {
mMs.scanFile(mFile.getAbsolutePath(), "image/*");
}
@Override
public void onScanCompleted(String path, Uri uri) {
mMs.disconnect();
}
}
I tried running the last implementation in the debugger, and I saw it get to "onScanCompleted", but neither of the aforementioned apps see the new video.
Update:
With the current implementation, the "onScanCompleted" callback method gets called with "path" and "uri" parameters, which have the following values:
path: /storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera/20151223_194434.mp4
uri.toString(): content://media/external/file/106639
Uri.fromFile(new File(Path)): file:///storage/emulated/0/DCIM/Camera/20151223_194434.mp4
