The Pixel 4 XL's infrared camera, used for face detection, can be accessed through the standard getUserMedia API. A live demo showcasing this can be found at the provided link. Using the IR camera via getUserMedia blocks the phone's face unlock feature. This post invites readers to brainstorm potential applications of user-accessible infrared camera capabilities. An update mentions Francois Beafort's contribution to Blink, adding 'infrared' to the camera name if the device supports it, making camera identification more convenient.
I'm embarking on a project to build a web-based video editor! The goal is to create a tool that simplifies video creation and editing entirely within the browser. Think Screenflow, but accessible to everyone directly on the web. This project is driven by my own needs for creating device demos, screencasts, and other videos. I've already made some progress (check out the demo!), but there's a lot more to do. I'll be exploring existing web technologies to record audio/video, manipulate content (watermarks, filters, overlays), and output in various formats. This isn't about building a massive commercial product, but rather about understanding what's possible and empowering others to create great videos using the open web.
In this post, I share how I used Comlink to simplify the worker logic in my QRSnapper project, which aims to achieve 60fps UI and near-instant QR code detection using getUserMedia. The code now utilizes the Barcode Detection API within a Web Worker for efficient QR code scanning. If the native API is available, the code uses it; otherwise, it falls back to a polyfill. This approach keeps the UI responsive while offloading the processing to a separate thread, significantly improving performance.
