I'm trying to mimic the behavior of the Live Channels app. If user presses home button on the remote, the app is continuing to play the video in the background. But if user presses voice search button on the remote, the playback is paused (but still visible behind).
Currently I'm using a method described at Android Developer site that tells to use requestVisibleBehind function at onPause to tell weather the playback should be continued. But that keeps the video playing after search button is pressed.
I'm looking for a way to tell if the search dialog has been opened and therefore the playback of a video should be paused.
Related
I want to modify the ExoPlayer demo to allow audio playback to continue when the screen gets locked (this should work regardless of whether the media being played is audio or video). Based on some hints (e.g. 1, 2) this is what I came up with so far:
https://github.com/google/ExoPlayer/compare/release-v2...sedubois:background-playback
This is directly based on the ExoPlayer demo code, currently in version 2.12.1. It adds a "foreground" permission, registers a service, and creates a notification in that service (according to the documentation this notification is required for background playback). The service is started when initializing the player.
I can start the player and the demo looks as illustrated below with an audio stream. At this point the notification gets created properly, it shows the player details (title, description, progress bar) and control buttons (see picture below), which work (I can play/pause, restart from the beginning and skip backwards/forwards).
However the playback still stops when I minimize the application or when I lock the screen by pressing the power button. What is the proper way to make this work?
Just to make sure we are on same page. I'm testing on dev-v2 branch of exoplayer repo here
onStop() method in PlayerActivity.java is releasing player, So when app goes in background then onStop() is being called and it is releasing player with method releasePlayer.
If you'll comment out that method i.e. dont release player in onStop(), then player will play in background.
In a video player implemented in an activity, NOT A SERVICE, I am using a MediaSessionCompat to receive media button actions (bluetooth and hset). This video player supports background play, that is the video goeson playing when another activity comes in the foreground.
setActive(true) activates the session and receive media command after the activity
is launched. My player desativates its media session when the it looses audio focus, not after pausing. Everything is fine up to this point.
If another player (I am testing with VLC) activates request the audio focus and setActive(true) everything works as expected.
But when the user of my app retakes the audio focus by cliking the start button on screen (not with media button), it does not activate the media session and media button actions are not received.
A media session behaves differently in a service than in an activity but this behaviour seems to contradict android doc which says :
Android routes media button events in this order: 1) Android first
dispatches media button events to the foreground activity (the
activity on the screen).
Anyway, could you please help me to reactivate the media session when my app is back on the screen.
I'm writing an Android music player, and is stuck on audio focus issue.
It seems like audio focus mainly affects media button receiving, but after reading the document I have no idea about when to gain and give up focus.
My music app will run in background, and need to detect play/pause button every time. That is, even when my app is not running, a user should be able to press headset's play button and start music.
It seems I should never give up audio focus, so why should I implement it?
Does anyone know practically how audio focus should be used? Thank you!
It seems like audio focus mainly affects media button receiving, but
after reading the document I have no idea about when to gain and give
up focus.
They both are separate functionalities, and thus have separate listeners. You may have audio focus taken away from you but you may still choose to respond to play pause hardware keys
That is, even when my app is not running, a user should be able to
press headset's play button and start music.
I am assuming that you meant by the above line is that you are still playing music but not showing an activity. To keep listening to hardware button press, dont unregister your media button receiver(dont call audioManager.unregisterMediaButtonEventReceiver(receiver) yet).
It seems I should never give up audio focus, so why should I implement
it?
you dont give up the focus , it gets taken from you. To handle that gracefully you have AudioFocus listener. For ex, consider an incoming phone call. Would you still like to continue playing your music?
In my application I want to get start time of music player when user started and end time when it stops.I don't want to start any music player in my app. I just want to track user activity in device. So i want my application to get any notification when user started the music .
Do I get any intent for music player started and it stopped.Or do I get any intent for when user opens music files.
Is there any other method other than intent to capture the start time and and time when user starts music player.
Well you can implement the interface 'AudioManager.OnAudioFocusChangeListener' in which there is a method 'onAudioFocusChange' which lets you know if audio focus has been changed, and it can also tell if focus was gained or lost.
See this link, it explains the Audio Focus in detail. An application must gain audio focus through a request, and you can implement the 'AudioManager.OnAudioFocusChangeListener' and if there is focus gain, you can detect if the media player is running, (because some other application such as you tube may gain focus to play its audio), see this to see how to detect which application or service is currently running. You can find if audio has started to play, and if it was the media player or not.
Hope this helps. It was interesting question and I have learned some new things while searching for the answer!
I am trying to figure out what is the correct (new) approach for handling the Intent.ACTION_MEDIA_BUTTON in Froyo. In pre 2.2 days we had to register a BroadcastReceiver (either permanently or at run-time) and the Media Button events would arrive, as long as no other application intercepts them and aborts the broadcast.
Froyo seems to still somewhat support that model (at least for the wired headset), but it also introduces the registerMediaButtonEventReceiver, and unregisterMediaButtonEventReceiver methods that seem to control the "transport focus" between applications.
During my experiments, using registerMediaButtonEventReceiver does cause both the bluetooth and the wired headset button presses to be routed to the application's broadcast receiver (the app gets the "transport focus"), but it looks like any change in the audio routing (for example unplugging the headset) shits the focus back to the default media player.
What is the logic behind the implementation in Android 2.2? What is correct way to handle transport controls? Do we have to detect the change in the audio routing and try to re-gain the focus?
This is an issue that any 3rd party media player on the Android platform has to deal with, so I hope that somebody (probably a Google Engineer) can provide some guidelines that we can all follow. Having a standard approach may make headset button controls a bit more predictable for the end users.
Stefan
Google has a detailed blog post on implementing the newer 2.2 AudioManager media button event receiver while maintaining backwards compatibility with older devices.
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/06/allowing-applications-to-play-nicer.html
After some experiments, I was able to get a working solution with the new transport and audio focus infrastructure in Android 2.2.
What I end up doing is requesting both the Audio Focus (using AudioManager.requestAudioFocus) and the Trasport Focus (using AudioManagter.registerMediaButtonEventReceiver) every time my application starts playback.
requestAudioFocus takes a callback that is called when the audio focus is taken away from you (for example the internal player starts a playback). In my case I just pause the playback in my application if the focus is taken permanently. Same callback also now tells you that the focus is taken only temporary (for example the Nav system is talking) so you can "duck" your playback - lower the volume or pause and resume after it is done talking.
The only issue remaining is that the built in Music Player takes the transport focus every time you connect a Bluetooth headset. This has the effect where the first press of the Play button on the headset after connecting it, always starts the playback in the default Music Player.
There is probably a way to detect the headset connection and "hijack" the transport focus. In my case, I decided to not "fight" the default player, and get the transport focus back when the user manually starts the playback in my application.
If somebody has more insight or knows of a better way of handling the transport/audio focus, please share it.
I also have this same issue with the media button registration.
Periodically the Android returns the media button registration to the default music player. I have not been able to figure out why. This can happen while may application is actively playing as well as while my application playback is paused.
After a number of users complained that their Bluetooth pause and play control buttons would periodically stop working to control my application, I implemented code that re-registers my application by calling registerMediaButtonEventReceiver every 2 seconds. This allows me to get the button registration back and for the most part avoids the time window where where the user presses a Bluetooth media button and the default media player ends up responding.
My application is holding the audio focus during this entire time period, but still loses the Bluetooth button events periodically while it has audio focus. My application always unregisters the media button event receiver if it is called with a notification that it is losing the audio focus, and then registers again if it is later called when a temporary audio focus loss returns the audio focus.
The work around to keep the 2 second timer running and re-registering has been working, but I would like to get rid of this 2 second timer if someone has found a work around for the media button registration periodically switching back to the default media player.