🎥 Use Simple Camera

🛠️ Use Simple Camera is a lightweight React hook that simplifies interacting with browser APIs for capturing audio and video from media devices. It abstracts the complexities of managing permissions, media streams, and recording operations, providing a seamless developer experience for building camera-enabled applications.

Whether you're creating a video conferencing app, a custom video recording tool, or an image capture utility, Use Simple Camera equips you with all the essential functionalities in one easy-to-use package.

Well life's too short for clunky APIs! Whether you’re building a photo booth, a live streamer, or a casual media app, Use Simple Camera is your new BFF.

Find it on NPM https://www.npmjs.com/package/use-simple-camera

Find it on Github https://github.com/ketanip/use-simple-camera

Demo Project Live: https://use-simple-camera-demo.vercel.app/

Demo Project Source Code: https://github.com/ketanip/use-simple-camera-demo

🚀 Features

That'll Make You Go WOW

1. 🛂 Ask for Permissions - No awkward surprises; we ensure users are in the loop.
2. 📸 Capture Images - Snap stunning photos like a pro.
3. 🎥 Record Multiple Videos - Be Spielberg, minus the camera crew.
4. 💾 Blob It, Download It, Name It - Recorded videos come as blobs, URLs, or downloads with custom names. They are stored hassle free in browser memory without you needing to handle all that stuff manually.

🤷‍♂️ Why I Created It?

I was working extensively once with these APIs for a project and that experience annoyed me a lot, so I decided to write custom code that time.

I was planning once again to work with same APIs so not to feel that same unpleasant experience again I decided to create this library (hook).

Basic Example

1import { useSimpleCamera } from "use-simple-camera";
2import { useState, useRef } from "react";
3
4const MyComponent = () => {
5  const [imageURL, setImageURL] = useState("");
6  const videoRef = useRef<HTMLVideoElement>(null);
7  const {
8    acquirePermissions,
9    captureImage,
10    startCamera,
11    stopCamera,
12    recordVideo,
13    stopVideoRecording,
14    downloadRecordedVideo,
15  } = useSimpleCamera();
16
17  return (
18    <div>
19      <button onClick={acquirePermissions}>Permissions</button>
20      <button onClick={startCamera}>Start</button>
21      <button onClick={stopCamera}>Stop</button>
22      <button onClick={() => captureImage().then(setImageURL)}>Capture</button>
23      <button onClick={() => recordVideo("vid1")}>Record</button>
24      <button onClick={stopVideoRecording}>Stop Recording</button>
25      <button onClick={() => downloadRecordedVideo("vid1")}>Download</button>
26
27      {imageURL && <img src={imageURL} alt="Captured" />}
28      {videoRef && <video ref={videoRef} controls />}
29    </div>
30  );
31};

🧩 How It Works

This hook packs a punch with intuitive, flexible functions. Here’s the action-packed lineup:

• acquirePermissions – Requests user permissions to access camera and microphone.
• startCamera – Starts the camera, enabling media streaming.
• stopCamera – Stops the camera and releases media resources.
• captureImage – Captures an image from the video feed.
• recordVideo – Starts recording a video.
• stopVideoRecording – Stops video recording.
• getRecordedVideoURL – Retrieves the recorded video as a URL.
• getRecordedVideoBlob – Retrieves the recorded video as a Blob.
• downloadRecordedVideo – Downloads the recorded video.
• getMediaStream – Returns a custom media stream based on video/audio tracks.

🪄 Hook Returns

Here’s the magic you'll have at your fingertips:

🟢 Stateful Goodies

• permissionAcquired – Do we have the green light?
• isCameraActive – Is the camera rolling?
• videoDevices – All available video sources.
• audioDevices – All available audio sources.
• videoRecordingInProgress – Are we filming?
• videoProcessingStatus - Are we done processing videos yet?

🔧 Actions

• Core: acquirePermissions, startCamera, stopCamera, getMediaStream
• Image: captureImage
• Video: recordVideo, stopVideoRecording, getRecordedVideoURL, getRecordedVideoBlob, downloadRecordedVideo

🧙 Pro Tips

1. 💡 Permissions First: Always call acquirePermissions before anything else.
2. 🛑 Stop Camera Gracefully: Use stopCamera to release media devices and avoid leaving them active.
3. 🖼️ Capture Image: captureImage gives you a Base64 blob of your snapshot.
4. 🎥 Manage Recorded Videos:
   • getRecordedVideoURL: Get a URL to the video.
   • getRecordedVideoBlob: Get the raw blob of the video.
   • downloadRecordedVideo: Save the video locally.
5. 🎛️ Custom Streaming: Combine getMediaStream with React refs for custom video streaming, audio-only and video-only streaming.
6. ✅ Check video processing status: Check videoProcessingStatus status for any video before downloading/reading it as blob or as base64 format string.

⚙️ API Reference

1. acquirePermissions()

• Description: Asks the user for permission to access the camera and microphone.

• Returns: Promise<void>

• Example:

  1await acquirePermissions();

2. startCamera(config: object)

• Description: Starts the camera to capture video and audio.

• Parameters:

  • config: Provide MediaStreamConstraints for the media input. (optional)
  • Read more at MDN Docs about it.

• Returns: Promise<void>

• Example:

  1await startCamera();

3. stopCamera()

• Description: Stops the camera and releases all media devices.

• Returns: Promise<void>

• Example:

  1await stopCamera();

4. captureImage(videoTrackID?: string)

• Description: Captures an image from the specified video track. If no videoTrackID is provided, it uses the first available video device.

• Returns: Promise<string> – A Base64-encoded string representing the captured image.

• Example:

  1const imageURL = await captureImage();
  2<img src={imageURL} alt="Captured" />;

5. recordVideo(id: string, config?: RecordVideoConfig)

• Description: Starts recording a video.

• Parameters:

  • id: Unique identifier for the recorded video.
  • config: Optional configuration object for custom video settings.
    • videoStreamID: The ID of the video stream to record.
    • audioStreamID: The ID of the audio stream to record.
    • customMimeType: Optional MIME type for the video recording (e.g., 'video/webm').

• Returns: Promise<void>

• Example:

  1 await recordVideo("submission-1234", {
  2  videoStreamID: "video-stream-1",
  3  audioStreamID: "audio-stream-1",
  4  customMimeType: "video/codec=vp9".
  5 })

6. stopVideoRecording()

• Description: Stops the ongoing video recording.

• Returns: Promise<void>

• Example:

  1await stopVideoRecording();

7. getRecordedVideoURL(videoID: string)

• Description: Retrieves the blob URL of the recorded video by its videoID.

• Returns: string – The blob URL of the recorded video.

• Example:

  1const videoURL = getRecordedVideoURL("video1");
  2<video src={videoURL} controls />;

8. getRecordedVideoBlob(videoID: string)

• Description: Retrieves the recorded video as a Blob by its videoID.

• Returns: Blob – The raw Blob of the recorded video.

• Example:

  1const videoBlob = getRecordedVideoBlob("video1");
  2const url = URL.createObjectURL(videoBlob);

9. downloadRecordedVideo(videoID: string, filename?: string)

• Description: Downloads the recorded video by its videoID, with an optional custom filename. Include file extension. If you haven't changed codec use webm as file extension.

• Returns: void

• Example:

  1downloadRecordedVideo("video1", "my-video.webm");

10. getMediaStream(config: GetMediaStreamConfig)

• Description: Retrieves a media stream based on the provided video and audio track IDs.

• Parameters:

  • config: The configuration for selecting the media stream, which includes videoID and audioID.

• Returns: Promise<MediaStream> – The media stream for custom use.

• Example:

  1const mediaStream = await getMediaStream({
  2  videoID: "camera1",
  3  audioID: "microphone1",
  4});
  5videoRef.current.srcObject = mediaStream;

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! If you'd like to help improve this project, here’s how you can contribute:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a feature branch.
3. Make your changes and write tests.
4. Open a pull request with a detailed description of your changes.
5. Ensure that all tests pass before submitting.

🛡️ License

The License for this project is located in License file. This project is licensed under MIT License.

❓ Face some Issues ?

If you encounter any issues or have questions, please open a GitHub issue, and I'll be happy to assist you!

This is still first version of this library so please be careful while using it your application, test it extensively for your application.

✨ Ready to simplify your media game? Let’s roll!