I'm trying to use Android's MediaPlayer to play a backing audio track to a music game which should stay in sync with other events.
However, I'm finding that on different devices the backing track seems out of sync.
After some frustration, I'm coming to the conclusion that the time it takes to start playing the audio is indeterminate.
Is there a way around this? Or some kind of callback from the MediaPlayer that represents "starting to play NOW"?
AFAICT I can't use the SoundPool for this backing track as the audio file is too long.
Related
How can I play background audio, in Android, without interrupting the MediaPlayer playback, by either using MediaPlayer (preferred) or OpenSL ES?
I know SoundPool is able to play sound effects without interrupting any MediaPlayer playback, but the size is limited to 1M per effect, which is way to less. Not requesting audio focus, via AudioManager doesn't seem to work either, audio doesn't play at all in this case.
And in the case of OpenSL ES, all audio generally stops when I start to play a longer asset file. It's similar to the behaviour of SoundPool described above.
Edit from the comments:
I don't want to interrupt other music players, it's the background
audio of a game, which shall play without interrupting the, for
example, music of a player. Games like Subway Surfer, Clash Royale and
such seem to have this achieved somehow, but I could not achieve it
via OpenSL ES, or MediaPlayer.
In order to play sound in background you can use SoundPool, AudioTracks and OpenSlES.
Soundpool: Use small files and make a sequence. In my last project i use 148 sound files (all small) in different scenarios and played using soundpool. Make a list and play one by one or in parallel. Also in games usually you have a small set of sound for particular scenario and it loops. Best is soundpool for that. You can also perform some effects like rate change. Also ogg files are way small, so use them.
AudioTrack: You can use RAW PCM data in audio track. If you want you can extract pcm data using MediaExtractor from almost all formats and use it. But it will be a little work for you in your case, but it is really good (supports huge data, even live streaming).
OpenSLES: Apparently android uses opensles in background for all its purpose. So using it will help you a lot. But it's not easy to get everything done on it. You need to learn more for lesser work.
I have been deeply working on OpenSlES for about 20 days and still i will say for small purpose use soundpool, medium to high level implementation use AudioTracks and for kickass implementation use OpenSLES.
PS: It will be bad effect on your user if you play game sound in background while they are playing their music or their call. Personal experience.
Whenever I call setDisplay() on a MediaPlayer while it is playing (i.e. setDisplay(null) when backgrounding a video to play audio in the background) the media player stutters and rewinds for some small amount of time. Once I comment out these lines, essentially restricting the application to only play audio, these stutters and consequent rewinds no longer occur. Any ideas what the issue may be?
EDIT:
So I think the cause of the problem might be android media player choosing the closest keyframe to resume from on each display change because it can''t render inbetween keyframes. Any ideas?
I am creating an app which can play my radio stream. I am using MediaPlayer, but it is not enough. For example, buffering time is unpredictable, buffering time is not available. I would like to use an other mediaplayer, which is fast, and e.g. I can set the buffering time. Is there any open source solution?
I've been trying to make multiple sounds work simultaneously but I kept getting errors like Sample not ready and Error creating AudioTrack. Though I've taken care of the first error, the other error persists.
I'm using two mp3 files, that are away above 5 mb(>4 minutes) and thus was wondering if SoundPool is the right way to go about it? I can use Media Manager but it doesn't let me play multiple files simultaneously.
SoundPool is recommended for <1MB sound clips, so I'd use MediaPlayer in your case. You can call the following for each sound and they will play simultaneously:
MediaPlayer.create(YourActivity.this, R.raw.your_sound).start();
Or you can create multiple MediaPlayer objects and play a sound on each, then release() them.
I'm writing my first android app, trying to playback two 10min soundfiles synchronously (imagine an instrumental track and an acapella), to be able to change the volume of each track independently). I am using two MediaPlayers for this, since a SoundPool is targeted at shorter audio samples as far as I read.
Now my problem is that, when pausing and resuming the playback, sometimes the players are not synchronous anymore, even though I set their positions to the same value before resuming playback.
I know that this is kind of inevitable, because they cannot be started at exactly the same moment and they may require different amounts of time for starting playback, but: Is there maybe any other approach to meet my requirements?
You can take a look at JetPlayer, this may accomplish what you want as far as synchronization.
To use it you create audio channels (your instrument channel and vocal channel) as MIDI files in a track and the player can keep them synchronized while allowing you to mute or unmute the different channels as appropriate.
The user guide for creating JET resouces can be found here.