How can I save taken photos and recorded videos out of DCIM folder?

Question

How to save taken photos and recorded videos out of DCIM folder, in custom locations? Or, is it ever possible to DCIM separate photos and videos into different subfolders?

In my phone, a Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman, there's a folder 100ANDRO within DCIM storing all of videos and pictures together. I would like, for example, for videos to go to /sdcard/Videos, and photos to /sdcard/Pictures/Photos. I would like to at least save the videos somewhere else.

Applications such as SugarSync get confused and think everything in DCIM is a picture. Regardless, I want to know how the path is determined and ideas on how to achieve this, either by some hidden configuration or modification of source code.

The DCIM folder is mounted on a FAT filesystem, so symlinks are not supported. I have heard about using mount --bind /old/dir /new/dir, so is it possible to do this without rooting and on system initialization? That would allow me to a least make DCIM point somewhere else, or make other folders like Pictures and Videos point to DCIM. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You say "Tasker doesn't seem a solution". If you already have Tasker installed you can do the following:

Create a task with 6 actions that puts the names of the files in the camera folder into an array, then loops through the array moving files one by one depending on the filename extention. Note, in the IF statements, ~ means Matches, and !~ means Doesn't Match.

(Your directory may look different to mine)

1. List Files

   Dir: external-sd/DCIM/Camera Variable: %Myfiles

2. Variable Set

   Name %ArrayIndex To 0

3. Variable Add

   Name %ArrayIndex Value: 1

4. Move

   From %Myfiles(%ArrayIndex) To external-sd/Pics

   IF %Myfiles(%ArrayIndex) ~ *.jpg

5. Move

   From %Myfiles(%ArrayIndex) To external-sd/Vids

   IF %Myfiles(%ArrayIndex) ~ *.mp4

6. Goto

   Type Action Number Number 3

   If %ArrayIndex !~ %Myfiles(#)

Now you can launch this task with a shortcut on your homescreen, or you can make it fully automatic by having Tasker run this task whenever the Camera app closes.

To do this create a Context -Application-Camera, and link it to the above task. Then long-click on the task and select "Move to Exit"

Answer 2

DCIM has historically been used to store pictures and videos - it stands for Digital Camera IMages. The location is hard coded into the camera application and cannot be changed.

There are a small number of alternative camera apps on the market - I haven't looked, but they may support custom image/video save locations.

Without a rooted device, there is no way to use the mount command at boot, unless you make an app to do it. This could in theory work, but that command would most likely need root to be executed (I will try now and tell you).

Apps however should not think that only images reside in the DCIM directory. This is incorrect, and you would do well to contact the app developer to tell them this.