(05-31-2021, 07:53 AM)MirceaKitsune Wrote:Nothing to be scared of : ) A lot of software for mobile Linux has yet to be developed and improved, but thanks to the community this is happening and everybody can be part of it.(05-31-2021, 02:09 AM)kqlnut Wrote: As far as I know there is no app for taking videos on the Pinephone so far. The feature is on the to do list for Megapixels, but I have no idea how far away that is. I've read somewhere here of using a screen recorder (wf-recorder probably?) to capture the preview footage from Megapixels. It's an ugly workaround with bad image quality, but maybe the easiest way for now to record at least some kind of video if it actually works.
That's scary to hear. Filming is a core component of every such device, if that doesn't work OOTB I literally can't use it as a main phone then. I'm still going to buy it given it's a software thing that can be patched up, but this is such a deal-breaker I may have to keep it in the closet and only play with it occasionally until it's fixed.
One option that seems viable in this scenario is creating a desktop shortcut with the film command, which starts capturing at my desired resolution once clicked. The problem then is how to tell the device to pause or stop filming, as without a GUI there's no way to do that in realtime! Unless there's an equivalent to sending the kill signal in bash (control + c on PC) which tells the recorder to stop the video without corrupting it? Or if the command allows for a timer, I could create a shortcut that says "film for 30 seconds then stop" and adjust my shooting to that length; This seems like the best I'm getting with the current limitations.
If anyone knows the answer, please explain the command I'd have to use in more detail so I can note it down. Thank you. I'm assuming it would be something in the following format: "ffmpeg -i /dev/back_camera -o /videos/${date}.mp4 -res 1920x1080 -fps 30 -time 45".
You can script something together for sure, e. g. a simple bash script making use of wf-recorder (check out this page for more details that could be useful for you, maybe you could even have wf-recorder access the camera directly <- that doesn't seem to be possible) and tie this to a .desktop file to make it appear as an app. I would start by making the script start Megapixels, wait for some seconds for the preview to come up (since that takes a while), then start wf-recorder with the settings you want and the microphone as audio input (check the man page or documentation for specifics). In the beginning of the script have it check for a running process from wf-recorder (pgrep wf-recorder) and if that's the case, kill that process (and Megapixels if you want) and exit to stop the recording. That way the .desktop file/app entry will behave like a toggle to start and stop video recording. I haven't actually tried any of this, so you probably would have to do a little experimenting.
Edit: I just tried recording the Megapixels preview with wf-recorder ("alsa_input.platform-sound.HiFi__hw_PinePhone_0__source" as audio to have the mic input) and it worked. Of course you will have the rather bad raw preview image quality (no post processing applied as when taking pictures) and you have to choose between recording the full picture with GUI elements visible or cropping the picture to have a clean recording space. And the video was choppy, but that could also have to do with playback (I used mpv) or with the recording settings (I didn't set any parameters except mp4 as the video format).