Android mediarecorder only recording terrible quality video

Question

So I have the following code to do my recording and the quality is absolutely terrible. I think I must have a setting wrong but I have tried it both ways. The "CamcorderProfile" way and then "Manual" way, you can see the camcorder code is commented out. Both give the exact same results.

    Camera _camera = Camera.Open (1);
    _camera.Unlock ();

    recorder = new MediaRecorder ();

    recorder.SetCamera (_camera);

    recorder.SetAudioSource (AudioSource.Mic);    
    recorder.SetVideoSource (VideoSource.Camera); 

    recorder.SetOutputFormat (OutputFormat.Default);

    recorder.SetAudioEncoder (AudioEncoder.Default);
    recorder.SetVideoEncoder (VideoEncoder.Default);

    //CamcorderProfile p = CamcorderProfile.Get(0, CamcorderQuality.High);
    //recorder.SetProfile(p);

    recorder.SetOutputFile (path);       

    recorder.SetPreviewDisplay(video.Holder.Surface);

    recorder.Prepare ();
    recorder.Start ();

And this works just fine, but here is the issue. This is a picture of the preview window when I am recording, and this is picture of the video when I play it back. You cant actually tell because the screenshot is so terrible, but none of the colors are right either (it has almost no color) I think there must be some sort of issue with the color channels. For example here is another comparison with the genymotion "dummy camera" . Here is the correct version. And here is the weird playback version.

Answer 1

This is a working example using the following configuration:

    myCamera = getCameraInstance();
    mediaRecorder = new MediaRecorder();

    myCamera.unlock();
    mediaRecorder.setCamera(myCamera);

    mediaRecorder.setAudioSource(MediaRecorder.AudioSource.CAMCORDER);
    mediaRecorder.setVideoSource(MediaRecorder.VideoSource.CAMERA);

    mediaRecorder.setProfile(CamcorderProfile.get(CamcorderProfile.QUALITY_HIGH));

    mediaRecorder.setOutputFile(getExternalStorageDirectory() + "myvideo.mp4");
    mediaRecorder.setMaxDuration(60000); // Set max duration 60 sec.
    mediaRecorder.setMaxFileSize(5000000); // Set max file size 5M

    mediaRecorder.setPreviewDisplay(myCameraSurfaceView.getHolder().getSurface());

However if you use Android 5 you should use the new camera API.

Answer 2

This property helps in improving video quality:

mediaRecorder.setVideoEncodingBitRate(3000000);  //you may try varying the argument value

and ofcourse call this method before prepare() :)