Is it possible to process the video (preview) stream without displaying it on the screen in android?
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I have doing a basic object detection on the camera preview screen in Android (greater than 3.2). For the devices which do not support processing on preview screen, I am buffering the preview screen, processing it and clearing the buffer. This part is working as desired. 

What I now want is this app to run in the background while any other app is running in the foreground. I am using android service and am able to run a small test app in the background. However my concern is with the camera preview app. 

I don't want to display the preview screen but use the preview screen information for processing. This might be too much to ask, but I wanted to know if this is even possible. I came across [this link][1] which shows some hope. Basically I want to process the video (preview) stream without displaying it on the screen. If this is doable, then I can think of putting this app in the background and some other app in the foreground.

Unfortunately I won't be able to share the code, however it is the standard logic of creating a surface view and starting the preview.

I would really appreciate any insight into this.


  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2386025/android-camera-without-preview