Video thumbnails in PhoneGap?

Question

I want to display thumbnails for a list of video files stored on external storage in my PhoneGap/Cordova application. Here's what I have so far:

• PhoneGap does not have an API for this at present (May '12, PhoneGap 1.6.1). Correct?
• I can get a video thumbnail from the local file path on Android 2.2+ (which I am already targeting) with ThumbnailUtils.createVideoTHumbnail()
• I can temporarily save that thumbnail to internal storage (preferable in my mind) with a combination of Bitmap.compress() and Context.openFileOutput()

Simple enough, but then how do I access that file with PhoneGap? I can't seem to find where in the API docs it explains accessing the internal storage system for your app's data. Furthermore, is there a better way to do this entirely in memory without writing to the file system? I wouldn't mind discarding the thumbnail after I'm finished with it. I don't expect them to be accessed often.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Update:

Apparently Android generates thumbnail files for the gallery already, but the file names are just IDs. I keep seeing references to a "thumbnail database" that links these IDs to the respective file, but I can't find information on how to access it. Can someone please help me with an example or some documentation?

Answer 1

If anyone is looking for an answer to a similar question, what I did in the end was this:

function pickFile(callback) {
    var options = {
        quality: 100,
        destinationType: navigator.camera.DestinationType.FILE_URI,
        sourceType: navigator.camera.PictureSourceType.PHOTOLIBRARY,
        mediaType: navigator.camera.MediaType.VIDEO
    }
    function fail(error) {
        alert(error);
    }
    navigator.camera.getPicture(callback, fail, options);
}

This is an option that was apparently added in PhoneGap 1.1.0, which allows you to request a file from the user's gallery in a platform independent way. It's not very intuitive to find in the documentation, and you can't dictate anything about the user interface, but it's better then nothing! I hope that helps someone coming here from Google.

Cheers!

Answer 2

if anyone will find this helpful, i have written a little plugin for Phonegap on Andriod to create thumbnails of captured images and video: https://github.com/maxbasmanov/phonegap_thumbnailer