Android global camera filters

Question

I am researching a way to do raw camera feed manipulations via OpenCL (or other HW assisted methods). The important part here is that I need to do that at global level, so all apps that will ever use the camera, they will benefit from this "global filter". For example, if we have a device with a fish eye camera, is there a documented way to dewarp the feed before any target apps gets that feed?

In other words, is there a documented way to install global space filters on the camera feed that will pre-process the raw feed before being delivered to any app wanting access to the camera (the camera app, periscope, ustream, etc)?

If there are no such user-space installable filters, is there a documented way to do them as part of a custom Android OS distribution (like kernel-side drivers?? Are any interfaces of this kind even available?

I have done some extensive googling regarding this, but I've failed to find anything. Any pointers are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Answer 1

I don't think there is an easy way to directly manipulate the raw camera stream using the GPU from the end-user (or developer)'s perspective. The chip vendor does have the interface between the camera pipeline and the GPU. Some of the interface might be open for the phone vendors as well. But those interface are definitely for internal-usage only. They will be used either in the driver or the system-level application, I don't see how a developer can directly access those kind of interface.