OpenCineCam

OpenCineCam is a native, open-source cinema camera for Android. It keeps four things apart: what the hardware advertises, what the app requests, what Camera2 reports, and what a recorded file or a controlled test proves. Nothing is presented as supported until the evidence says so.

• Version: 0.2.0-beta (public beta)
• Package: com.librestatic.opencinecam
• Requires: Android 10 (API 29) or later, ARM64
• License: Apache-2.0
• Languages: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and German

Screenshots

Capture	Zebra, peaking, false color	Scopes	Media

Real app screens captured on an emulator, whose camera feed is a flat frame, so the viewfinder photos (CC0 / public domain, see store/play/raw/MEDIA_LICENSES.md) and the overlays computed from them were composited in afterwards.

Features

Capture

• Photo, burst, bracket, light trail, video, slow motion (real 120/240 fps high-speed takes where the device offers them) and time-lapse.
• Gated experimental modes: RAW photo (DNG), OCLog2 LOG (HEVC Main10), APV and RAW video. They stay hidden unless the device qualifies; APV and RAW video currently take their documented unsupported branch.
• Hardware AVC/HEVC video (software AVC only for time-lapse), HLG10/Main10 where qualified.
• Audio as an AAC MP4 track or as separate lossless WAV/FLAC sidecars, with live level meters.
• Shared VIDEO/LOG pause, SMPTE timecode (JSON sidecar) and production slate metadata.

Monitoring and operation

• Full-screen viewfinder with translucent, compact chrome and side rails for short landscape windows; works in both orientations, on phones, tablets and foldables (including exterior-display subject preview).
• Focus peaking, zebra, false color, histogram, waveform and vectorscope (with quick toggles in the capture row), grid and horizon level.
• Operator, subject and recording LUTs, LOG view assist, and an always-on thermal load indicator.
• Assignable operator buttons, persistent settings and portable presets.
• First-run wizard with permission rationale; Cine and Material You themes.

Media

• On-device catalog with playback, rename, share and delete.
• Durable queue for on-device editing proxies.
• Optional, off by default: WebDAV transfers of finalized takes (explicit per-bundle action, HTTPS only, Wi-Fi unless cellular is allowed) and photo/take geotagging.

Principles

• Public Android APIs and Camera2 only in the portable capture path.
• No accounts, ads, analytics, telemetry, crash reporting, cloud dependency or automatic upload. Network access exists only for the opt-in WebDAV transfers.
• No silent downgrade of camera, codec, frame rate, RAW, HLG, bit depth or audio state.
• Unknown hardware behavior stays Unknown, never false or verified.
• An active recording survives UI recreation through a properly declared foreground service.

See security and privacy for details.

Permissions

Permission	Used for
CAMERA	Capture and preview.
RECORD_AUDIO	Optional audio tracks, sidecars and meters; video still records without it.
POST_NOTIFICATIONS, FOREGROUND_SERVICE, FOREGROUND_SERVICE_CAMERA, FOREGROUND_SERVICE_MICROPHONE	The visible foreground service that keeps a take alive across UI recreation.
INTERNET, ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE	Opt-in WebDAV transfers only (PLAN-067 / ADR-0034). Off by default; presets never enable networking; nothing is uploaded without an explicit action.
ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION, ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION	Opt-in geotagging only, requested at runtime while the camera screen is open. Off by default.

No broad storage permission is requested: MediaStore and the Storage Access Framework own destinations.

Project status

Most of the implementation plans are done: the capability/evidence model, Strict/Adaptive policy, Camera2 graph negotiation and lifecycle recovery, encoder selection, muxing and finalization, audio negotiation, the native AHardwareBuffer/OpenGL ES pipeline, thermal hardening, HLG/Main10 qualification, RAW still and RAW10 contracts, crash-safe RAW journaling, desktop recovery tooling, and signed releases.

Still open:

• OCLog2 is reachable from the launcher and has passed a physical GLES numeric check and cadence-gated 32-second 1080p30 Main10 takes with no dropped frames on the reference device, but stays experimental until ISP-derived, OCIO/DCTL/LUT, clipping/range and independent-editor evidence is in (PLAN-061).
  • Experimental Lightforge Studio downloads turn OCLog2 into a stock-camera Rec.709 look: regular takes (HLG) and 120/240 fps takes (HFR). Set Lightforge's input profile to Standard Rec.709 before applying them.
• RAW video stays disabled after failing the 60-second RAW10 throughput gate.
• F-Droid and Google Play activation is tracked in PLAN-062.

Repository layout

Path	Contents
app/	Compose UI, capture service, settings, presets, media catalog.
camera/	Camera2 identity, graph negotiation, lifecycle and high-speed sessions.
media/	Encoders, muxer, audio and file finalization.
core/model/	Pure-JVM capability/evidence model and schemas.
native-pipeline/	NDK AHardwareBuffer and OpenGL ES processing.
desktop-tools/	Dependency-free desktop RAW recovery tooling.
tools/	Qualification, release, SBOM and validation scripts.
docs/	Requirements, ADRs, architecture, plans, formats and release docs.
store/play/	Google Play listings, declarations and store image scripts.

Documentation hierarchy: accepted requirements → accepted ADRs → architecture and schemas → implementation plans → code and evidence. Start with the technical closure, the architecture and the plan index.

Building and testing

Use JDK 17 and the checked-in Gradle wrapper:

JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-17-openjdk ./gradlew --no-daemon --dependency-verification=strict lint test assembleDebug

Instrumented tests (local only, need a device or emulator):

JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-17-openjdk ./gradlew --no-daemon --dependency-verification=strict connectedDebugAndroidTest

Formatting, Python tooling and the plan graph:

./tools/check_format.sh
python3 -m unittest discover -s tools/tests -p 'test_*.py'
python3 tools/validate_plan_system.py

Add --require-evidence to the plan validator for release certification (evidence/ is not part of a clean checkout). python3 tools/device_gate.py --output evidence/plan-034/device-gate.json records non-promotional device identity evidence for conditional gates.

Releases

The same source ships through three channels (release contract):

• GitHub: every push to main builds a prerelease tagged v<versionName>+<versionCode> with an ARM64 APK and a Play App Bundle; tags build signed ARM64 APKs with checksums.
• Google Play: the bundle is signed with a separate upload key (tools/build-play-bundle.sh); uploading it to Play stays manual.
• F-Droid: reproducible build from the tagged source and lockfiles.

versionCode comes from the CI run number plus an offset, so it always increases. Signing keys never enter the repository.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at LibreStatic/opencinecam. Run the checks above before opening a pull request, and keep device claims backed by evidence.