Develop Reference

Android Video on Chromebook dropping First Few Frames

I have an app which plays a lot of video files. It's been all good on every phone and tablet I've tested on. I just tested on an Acer Chromebook and the first few frames (maybe up to a 1/4 second) are being dropped on all video files, so the video appears to start just slightly beyond 0. Some of the videos have audio that starts immediately and so it's obvious to the user that the video is clipped at the start. I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this issue, maybe on a Chromebook or other device and if there is some simple way to deal with it?
There is absolutely nothing fancy about my code. I'm using VideoView, preload the video with setVideoURI(), then call videoView.start() on a button press.
Thanks!

This problem only appears if I make a call to seek(0). So rather than doing that to replay the video I have to load the video each time it's requested. That workaround resolves the problem.

android chrome embed video shows in full screen only

I made a static website tool that runs in all major browsers and iPad and Android(chrome). I show .mp4 video source with a simple embed tag. This was working just dandy until sometime this weekend. Come monday testing the video in android chrome, it plays audio only when not full screen, and plays correctly when full screen. I tested with the html5 video tag I use in other tools and actually same bug. I converted the video to other formats and codec, same bug. I tested tools that were completed months ago and working perfectly when sold, same bug. Seems likely that it started when chrome updated sometime after the 10/11 over the weekend. But as this project is on the home stretch and I had just debugged the last bugs I am putting it out there hoping for some feedback. I can't be the only one as it is happening with the video tag as well as the embed tag. It has to be chrome that changed my code didn't. Any insights out there?

Samsung Galaxy S4 Streaming Video Playback Orientation Issue

When playing back videos on the Samsung Galaxy S4 the video does not recognize the orientation metadata. It always plays on landscape.
The app also records the video and plays correctly on all other devices while streaming. The S4 plays it fine only if the video is stored in the device but it won't work for streaming.
Using MediaPlayer and SurfaceView on a Fragment, not a VideoView.
Have tried to disable Air View, Air Gesture, Smart Stay, Smart Scroll and Auto Rotate without luck.
Also even stored the orientation hint along with the video to rotate manually the element in the layout, but the SurfaceView when rotated using lockCanvas doesn't work and when rotating its parent element goes black and only plays the audio.
Any suggestions I can try to get this bug fixed? Have you experiencing the same when using the S4? Any help on this will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I asked this question a few months back and haven't heard anything. I would love to know as well.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17950072/galaxy-s4-media-player-ignores-rotation-metadata
Edit: This also occurs on the Galaxy Note 3.

Found a workaround for this issue. Try using a TextureView instead a SurfaceView, before playing the video, get the rotation info with MetadataRetriever and adjust the TextureView as needed. It worked on this side.
See the details here:
Streaming Video Playback Orientation Issue # Samsung Developers Forum

Android MediaPlayer Doesn't Display Video on Scroll Plus 7 device when Native App calls eglSwapBuffers

I've an app that uses a Native Activity as it is mostly C++ code (cross platform).
I also need to play Video and Audio so have another Activity that uses MediaPlayer to play video and/or audio. This is used in conjunction with the Native Activity to play Video in front of the OpenGL rendered application.
The MediaPlayer activity is based upon that in the ApiDemos example, and works fine on MOST devices (Nexus 7/10, Galaxy S3/Tab2, even some low-cost devices like Fusion5).
BUT running it on a low-cost Scroll Plus 7" tablet - the code functions, but no Video is displayed.
The Audio plays, the Video Controls show and are usable.
NOTE: I have actually been able to hack with the code to get the Video showing - though this is not a solution it may help someone identify the problem.
In my Native Code where the Open Gl render calls eglSwapBuffers, if I comment this line out the Video shows. (I complete the rendering in a loop inside android_main)
Obviously this means my OpenGL Rendering that needs to go on in the background stops working, so I cannot fix it this way.
Device:
Scroll Plus
7" TABLET by Storage Options
Jelly Bean 4.1
From LogCat i believe it is running a CedarX-based Media Decoder/Renderer.

After 4 days on this issue, I've finally found out that the Video was being drawn BEHIND my OpenGL. Why only on this device I don't know. All the other aspects of the Video Activity (the controls etc) are in front where it should be.
The eglSwapBuffers was a red-herring, in that case I was not drawing anything to the screen.

Android + Take video captures of your screen

Hey Guys,
I am looking for a source code\framework which will allow me to
record the device's springboard, in other words to "take video
captures of your screen".
Something like 'Display Recorder' for the iPhone, Link.
I already found this project "capture video", but unfortunately it will give low quality video (5/6 FPS)...
Is there any way to improve it?
Kind Regards,
M

Romain Guy posted recently about how he makes recordings of his Honeycomb device, and the solution was to feed the HDMI output into a video recording device attached to a desktop machine.
My suspicion is that if that's what he proposes, there's no way to do it that well on-device. Even if you can access the screen in all scenarios, many devices don't have the power to encode a video stream at good enough speed, which explains why Capture Video is giving such poor results.