Develop Reference

Android-fullscreen seamless video loop in background

I am created an Android app thta needs to have a fullscreen seemless video loop playing in the background. By 'in the background' I mean that there will be buttons on top of the video.
I've read these threadw already
playback video full screen
Integrating video file in android app as app background
but I'm still confused about the following
1 Is the mediaplayer needed for video playback?
2 Will using OnCompletionListener create a 'seamless' loop or will there be a 'hiccup' as the video loops?

Use the setOnPreparedListener to tell the MediaPlayer to loop and start
videoview.setOnPreparedListener(new OnPreparedListener()
{
#Override
public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp) {
mp.setLooping(true);
mp.start();
}
});
This is seemless on some devices, but can cause a frame or two of stutter on others :/

custom media player error on Android 2.3

I tried to make android custom videoplayer, and its working fine then i play music.
But i got error (1,-38) on 2.3 then trying display video on surface.
// Mediaplayer
mp = new MediaPlayer();
mp.setOnPreparedListener(new MediaPlayer.OnPreparedListener()
{
public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp)
{
isPrepared = true;
mp.start();
}
});
mp.setDataSource("http://commonsware.com/misc/test2.3gp");
mp.prepareAsync();
mp.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);
mp.setDisplay(surfaceHolder);//if comment this string - player is working fine
How to fix it?
What is difference between android 2.3 and 4.0 mediaplayer?

Here is how you can do it :
mp.setDataSource(url);
mp.setOnPreparedListener(this);
mp.prepareAsync();
public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer player) {
mp.start();
}
EDIT :
I think you should set an error listener using setOnErrorListener to see if you get any error when calling setDataSource.

Mine issue turned to be that I provided wrong url for the video playback. I had two urls -one for the raw data and one for progress streaming-comapatible format. I had supplied the first one by mistake. Swapping them fixed my issue. Older Android versions have poorer support for HLS video streaming (that's why the differnce on the different Android versions):
Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)
No Support, despite being the most popular version of Android
Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)
Streams cause tablet devices to crash
Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
VOD streams do not seek
Aspect ratios are not detected and cause image deformation
Fullscreen causes videos to restart from the beginning
Android 4.1+ (Jelly Bean)
Aspect ratio issue is fixed, but seek is still unavailable
Chrome does not understand HLS leading to broken mimetype detection
Taking video fullscreen causes devices to throw an error and stop.
This data is taken from here.

To solve the problem of MediaPlayer error (1,-38) after calling mediaPlayer.start() on Android 2.3 device, just add the following clause after setting up the surface holder.
...;
surfaceHolder_.addCallback(this);
surfaceHolder_.setType(SurfaceHolder.SURFACE_TYPE_PUSH_BUFFERS);
mediaPlayer_ = new MediaPlayer();
...;
For devices equal to or higher than Honeycomb, we don't need to set the surface holder type, the framework will handle that automatically for the attached surface view to the media player, that's why the code works in Android 4.0 but not in 2.3.

Android - changing/replaying video in videoView

App I'm developing contains many short (1-2 sec) videos.
The videos are displayed in one activity. User can either replay video (possibly while video is beeing played) or change actual video.
Part of code changing video:
String videoPath = getVideoPath();
videoView.setVideoPath(videoPath);
videoView.start();
Those 3 lines already causes app to load new video and play it.
Problem starts after video is completed. From this point loading new video causes many problems (Like sometimes for half a movie only sound is played while screen is black blank). There are similar problems with replaying video (which I end up with calling 3 lanes from above).
It seems like android after completing movie releases resources or something like this (and that's why I am settings same path, when I want to replay video).
Ideally I would want video to simply pause and seekTo to beggining of movie after finished playing (but I cannot do this in OnCompletedListener, since it already changed state to stopped...).
Can I somehow achieve this? (By this I mean -> after completed video pauses and seekTo to beginning)
I already tried all combinations of pausing vidoes, suspending them, setting OnPreparedListener, setting OnCompletedListener.
Thx!

Try something like
mVideoView.setOnPreparedListener(new MediaPlayer.OnPreparedListener() {
#Override
public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer arg0) {
mVideoView.start();
}
});
mVideoView.setOnCompletionListener(new MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener() {
public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
mp.reset();
mVideoView.setVideoPath(file.getAbsolutePath());
mVideoView.start();
}
});

stop the playback, change video path, start video
videoView.stopPlayback();
videoView.setVideoPath(newVideoPath);
videoView.start();

I refactored my code in a following way: Everytime I need new video I reload whole activity. It works most of times, but now instead of video blackness at the beginning of playing I sometimes get "Cannot open media file" error.
Has it something to do with android resource managment? I release mediaPlayer in onCompletionListener.
Has anyone had such problem with playing many videos from external storage?

You can do something like this:
videoView.setOnCompletionListener(MediaPlayer.OnCompletionListener { mp ->
mp.seekTo(0);//go to second 0
mp.start()// start again
})
I discover in this link:
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/MediaPlayer

Do this.
videoView.setOnPreparedListener { mp ->
mp.isLooping = true
)

Volume Channels

Such Problem: I have video file recorded with two sound channels. I tried to switch off left sound channel by this code:
MediaPlayer mp;
....
mp.setVolume(0.f, 1f);
... and on Tablet this work good (right volume channel sounds well). But then I tried it on googleTv which I connect to Samsung UE46ES6307U and this code did not work, sound swichs off.
Maybe it is bounds to Dolby Digital Plus / Dolby Pulse audio? Can I somehow programmatically discover how sound channels device has, and what volume in each chanels setuped?
Update:
On this forum http://www.googletvforum.org/forum/logitech-revue/375-audio-problems-logitech-revue.html in one of replies such message: "Logitech has not yet figured out how to pipe multichannel audio thru hdmi.you have to use the optical output. Which is ok."
"How are you constructing the MediaPlayer?"
Videoview vv;
...............
vv.setOnPreparedListener(new OnPreparedListener() {
#Override
public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp) {
mp.setVolume(0.f, 1f);
}
});
Update:
public class MainActivity extends Activity {
MediaPlayer mp = null;
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
if (mp != null) {
mp.reset();
mp.release();
}
mp = MediaPlayer.create(this, R.raw.test);
mp.start();
}
public void onTurnOffLeft(View v){
mp.setVolume(0.f, 1.f);
}
public void onTurnOffRight(View v){
mp.setVolume(1.f, 0.f);
}
}
Method onTurnOffLeft switchs off all sound, and onTurnOffRight method has no effect.
Update2
I tried to play .ogg audio file codded with Vorbis codec - channels turns off well. But I tried to play video files codded with mp3, ac3, pcm, aac - and problem with turning off channels is still there... I need to turn off audio channels in video, but how to solve that problem, I do not know yet.

The MediaPlayer object is backed by different libraries across the devices (not the same between a tablet and a Google TV). How are you constructing the MediaPlayer?
One thing you may want to try is calling #reset() on the MediaPlayer right after it is constructed. By default when you use a "new" operator to construct a MediaPlayer instance it is in an IDLE state (at least on Google TV). By calling reset you allow your own OnErrorListener.onError() handler to be invoked. This will let you see if there is some underlying error that is not visible otherwise.
You may also want to look at AudioManager#setStreamVolume(int, int, int) which sets the volume of ALL streams of a particular type.
Edit 1:
Since you are just grabbing the VideoView from layout (I'm guessing since that code was omitted) after you setup the listener you should call reset on the video view.

Control the playback speed of Android MediaPlayer

I'm using MediaPlayer to play back some videos in an Android application, and they are noticeably faster on my device as when viewed on a computer.
Is there any way to control the playback speed of these videos in order to slow them down?

Beginning API 23, MediaPlayer can set playback speed using this method.
Class MediaPlayer
public void setPlaybackParams (PlaybackParams params) Added in API
level 23
Sets playback rate using PlaybackParams. Parameters params
PlaybackParams: the playback params. Throws IllegalStateException if
the internal player engine has not been initialized.
IllegalArgumentException if params is not supported.
Sample code:
MediaPlayer mp = ...; //Whatever
float speed = 0.75f;
mp.setPlaybackParams(mp.getPlaybackParams().setSpeed(speed));
For API < 23, refer to this SO question.