Develop Reference

MediaPlayer on Android Wear OS. Why do I get a IOException after prepare. Prepare failed status=0x1

I would like to create an app on Wear OS which plays back an online stream. The following code works fine under Android but not on Android Wear OS. Does anyone has an idea, why I get the Prepare failed status.
MediaPlayer mediaPlayer;
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
binding = ActivityMainBinding.inflate(getLayoutInflater());
setContentView(binding.getRoot());
mTextView = binding.text;
String url = "....the url like http://streamserver.com/stream";
mediaPlayer = new MediaPlayer();
mediaPlayer.setAudioAttributes(new AudioAttributes.Builder().setUsage(AudioAttributes.USAGE_MEDIA)
.setContentType(AudioAttributes.CONTENT_TYPE_MUSIC)
.build());
try {
mediaPlayer.setDataSource(url);
mediaPlayer.prepare(); //here the Exception takes place after around 15 seconds of waiting.
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
mediaPlayer.start();
}
If I change the code to mediaPlayer.prepareAsync(); with mediaPlayer.setOnPreparedListener(...) it also doesn't work.
Logcat shows: E/MediaPlayerNative: error (1, -2147483648)
Any idea, why it doesn't work on Wear OS but works on android?
Thanks
Jason

OK I found the solution and the error. The error takes place if the url is a HTTP connection instead of a HTTPS. If the source is only accessable from a HTTP connection there are at least 2 solution.
1.) that one worked for me.
enter the following line in the manifest under application
android:usesCleartextTraffic="true"
2.) add a network security file. info found under
https://developer.android.com/training/articles/security-config.html
that solves the problem

Reasons why Android camera unavailable

I using android android.hardware.Camera class to capture image. For initialization I use following code.
Camera cam = null;
try {
cam = Camera.open();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
// camera unavailable
}
return cam;
I am interesting in catch block. For example, torch app is running at the moment of initialization. So Camera.open() throw RuntimeException with message Fail to connect to camera service.
Here is exception:
Is it possible to know the reason why camera is unavailable? I want to guide user how to fix this, for example show a dialog: "dude, turn off your torch".
If it's not possible, then in which cases camera could be blocked? I just will show user dialog with general instruction what he could do, for example: 1. turn off torch. 2. Close all camera app 3. Fed your cat etc.

Streaming to VideoView only plays on Wifi when using Samsung phones

I am using the following library to stream YouTube videos to an Android application.
http://code.google.com/p/android-youtube-player/source/browse/trunk/OpenYouTubeActivity/src/com/keyes/youtube/OpenYouTubePlayerActivity.java?r=3
I am successfully able to play videos on HTC and Motorola phones over 3G and Wifi. However, on Samsung Galaxy (Epic 4G) and Samsung Galaxy II phones I am only able to play using Wifi. 3G gives me this error: "Cannot play video. Sorry this video cannot be played."
I have tried forcing low quality YouTube streaming, but this did not help. I see in my log that Start() is being called in both cases (3G/Wifi). Is this an issue with VideoView? Is there a workaround?
Edit 2
The videos are coming from YouTube API. I have attempted using embedded and normal streams, as well as lowest quality stream available (varying per video). Also, I do not think it is an encoding issue since the same videos play correctly using Wifi.
Edit 1
I also receive the following output regardless of wether video plays using Wifi or does not using 3G.
01-30 15:22:38.305: E/MediaPlayer(3831): error (1, -1)
01-30 15:22:38.305: E/MediaPlayer(3831): callback application
01-30 15:22:38.305: E/MediaPlayer(3831): back from callback
01-30 15:22:38.309: E/MediaPlayer(3831): Error (1,-1)
According to this Link, these errors means the following (I think):
/*
Definition of first error event in range (not an actual error code).
*/
const PVMFStatus PVMFErrFirst = (-1);
/*
Return code for general failure
*/
const PVMFStatus PVMFFailure = (-1);
/*
/*
Return code for general success
*/
const PVMFStatus PVMFSuccess = 1;
/*
Further adding confusion.

Yes, as you are thinking, this is a issue in VideoView, similar issues also appear in MediaPlayer, and I've encountered similar and strange issues as you did, I had problems when the video was played only on 3G and not on Wi-Fi. This usually happens on 2.1 and some 2.2 devices, but not on higher API levels as I've seen so far.
So what I can recommend is do the following :
First check if the running device may be one that can have issues, something like this :
//Define a static list of known devices with issues
static List sIssueDevices=Arrays.asList(new String[]{"HTC Desire","LG-P500","etc"});
if(Build.VERSION.SDK_INT<9){
if(sIssueDevices.contains(Build.Device){
//This device may have issue in streaming, take appropriate actions
}
}
So this was the simplest part, to detect if the running device may have issues in streaming the video. Now, what I did and may also help you, is buffer the video from Youtube in a file on the SDCard and set that file as the source for your VideoView. I will write some code snippets to see how my approach was :
private class GetYoutubeFile extends Thread{
private String mUrl;
private String mFile;
public GetYotubeFile(String url,String file){
mUrl=url;
mFile=file;
}
#Override
public void run() {
super.run();
try {
File bufferingDir=new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory()
+"/YoutubeBuff");
File bufferFile=new File(bufferingDir.getAbsolutePath(), mFile);
//bufferFile.createNewFile();
BufferedOutputStream bufferOS=new BufferedOutputStream(
new FileOutputStream(bufferFile));
URL url=new URL(mUrl);
URLConnection connection=url.openConnection();
connection.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", "Mozilla");
connection.connect();
InputStream is=connection.getInputStream();
BufferedInputStream bis=new BufferedInputStream(is,2048);
byte[] buffer = new byte[16384];
int numRead;
boolean started=false;
while ((numRead = bis.read(buffer)) != -1 && !mActivityStopped) {
//Log.i("Buffering","Read :"+numRead);
bufferOS.write(buffer, 0, numRead);
bufferOS.flush();
mBuffPosition += numRead;
if(mBuffPosition>120000 &&!started){
Log.e("Player","BufferHIT:StartPlay");
setSourceAndStartPlay(bufferFile);
started=true;
}
}
Log.i("Buffering","Read -1?"+numRead+" stop:"+mActivityStopped);
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
public void setSourceAndStartPlay(File bufferFile) {
try {
mPlayer.setVideoPath(bufferFile.getAbsolutePath());
mPlayer.prepare();
mPlayer.start();
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IllegalStateException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
Another issue will arise when the VideoView has stopped playing before the end of file, because not enough was buffered in the file. For this you need to set an onCompletionListener() and if you are not at the end of the video, you should start again the video playback from the last position :
public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp) {
mPlayerPosition=mPlayer.getCurrentPosition();
try {
mPlayer.reset();
mPlayer.setVideoPath(
new File("mnt/sdcard/YoutubeBuff/"+mBufferFile).getAbsolutePath());
mPlayer.seekTo(mPlayerPosition);
mPlayer.start();
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IllegalStateException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
In the end, of course the GetYoutubeFile thread is started in the onCreate() method :
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
//init views,player,etc
new GetYoutubeFile().start();
}
Some modifications and adaptation I think will have to be done for this code, and it may not be the best approach, but it helped me, and I couldn't find any alternative.

I have tackle with this problem in my own way.First every time read your log cat.If you got
Error (1,-1)
that means you will get sorry,this video can not play message.So in this case finish that activity, give custom progress bar and download video.Then after downloading save it in temporary folder then play it.After playing delete that folder.
To reading log cat---
try {
Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("logcat -d");
BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader(process.getInputStream()));
StringBuilder log=new StringBuilder();
String line;
while ((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) {
log.append(line);
}
} catch (IOException e) {
}
Read this answer too. although it is just user experience not linked to app.but it happens sometimes in default application also
Heaps of videos, even if I have full 3G network coverage, will say "Sorry, this video cannot be played". One day, I got so pissed off with it, I just kept pressing 'Okay' to dismiss the message, and then pressed the video again only to see the "Sorry, this video cannot be played" message again. I repeated this process (in my blind anger), but eventually, after about 5 tries, the video decided to miraculously play!
This method pretty much works for me every time. Most videos won't want to play the first time, but eventually if I am just persistent, and keep telling it to play even though it tells me it 'can't' play the video, it will play! Although, some videos i've had to press 'Okay', press the video, press 'Okay', press the video etc... for like 20 times before it actually decided to play. Those times, I have been incredibly close to getting my phone and throwing it down on the floor because of how shitty I am with how youtube won't work.
I wish there was a way to fix this problem. No one seems to have come up with a solution. Everyone just says "oh yeah I have the same problem" but no one contributes anything. GOOGLE, SOLVE THIS PROBLEM ON YOUR PHONES. THIS SEEMS TO BE HAPPENING WORLDWIDE, ON A RANGE OF ANDROID PHONES.

This message often cames from the inappropriate encoding of the video ("Cannot play video. Sorry this video cannot be played.") I was struggling with videoview for a while , now the correct encoded videos play on all tested devices, even when using Wifi or 3G. Let em know if you want to know how to encode the videos. And for streaming the videos I used the demo from android sdk apis and it works flawless.

VideoView / MediaPlayer Error (1, -18)

I have an application that is built to API level 2.2. This application contains a video that starts playing as soon as it is launched. The video is played inside a VideoView and the actually video file is stored in my internal storage (files directory for my apps package).
Most of the time it starts up just fine. But occasionally I get an error pop - up that says "Sorry, this video cannot be played." and has an Ok button. As soon as I press the ok button the video starts playing correctly. I need to figure out what is causing this error, or at the very least how I can catch whatever error it is and have it try again since it always works perfect after I hit ok. Inside the logs when this error box is shown I see these messages:
ERROR/PVOMXAudDecNode(21215): Ln 2232 OMX_EventError nData1 -2147479547 nData2 0
ERROR/PlayerDriver(21215): Command PLAYER_PREPARE completed with an error or info -18
ERROR/MediaPlayer(9282): message received msg=100, ext1=1, ext2=-18
ERROR/MediaPlayer(9282): error (1, -18)
ERROR/MediaPlayer(9282): callback application
ERROR/MediaPlayer(9282): back from callback
ERROR/MediaPlayer(9282): Error (1,-18)
DEBUG/VideoView(9282): Error: 1,-18
Where can I find a reference as to what exactly error code -18 indicates? And does anyone have any suggestions I could try to prevent it from happening in the first place. I have only observed This error on the Sprint Epic 4g.
Edit: well as far as I can tell no exceptions are getting thrown to me. I assume what is happening is that the video view knows to catch whatever exception is causing and it throws up the pop-up. Inside my log there is no exception stack trace just this reference to error -18.
As for how I am calling prepare. I use this:
mVideoView.setOnPreparedListener(new MediaPlayer.OnPreparedListener() {
#Override
public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer arg0) {
mVideoView.start();
}
});
and this:
mVideoView.setVideoPath(file.getAbsolutePath());
it calls prepare as part of setVideoPath (I assume it does anyway, but this method is undocumented). which causes onPrepared to get called in my listener.
Edit 2: for now i've just added an onErrorListener like so:
EDIT IMORTANT! this code will infinte error loop on ICS. For ICS devices I took out the setPath call, and returned false instead. It tries again by itself once and it succeeds.
mVideoView.setOnErrorListener(new OnErrorListener(){
#Override
public boolean onError(MediaPlayer arg0, int arg1, int arg2) {
Log.i(myTag, "MP ERROR: "+ arg1 + " - " + arg2);
mVideoView.setVideoPath(file.getAbsolutePath());
return true;
}
});
this catches the error and I can see in my logs that arg2 = -18 when this error happens. I just have it retry and return true so it doesn't throw up the dialog. So far i've never seen it fail twice in a row so this always starts the video correctly and doesn't make infinite loop.
I am still very interested if anyone can tell me exactly what error code -18 indicates though.

How do you catch potential exceptions thrown by prepare()? Do you catch IOException specifically and then retry calling the prepare()?
Try using prepareAsync() instead, which does not block and calls listener when player is ready. Also it does not throw IOException.

If you are running it on Froyo or Gingerbread the problem might be your device is not supporting playback of the file. Lower versions do not support videos encoded with formats other than baseline format. You may use some tools like video info on pc and check if the files are baseline formatted.

H264 encoder in android?

I've been having some problems while trying to fix a simple video recording app*. I think I followed the sequence of steps correctly. The following is a simplification of the part of the code that is giving me problems. This code is executed only as a callback once a button is pressed:
if ( mRecorder != null){
mRecorder.reset();
mRecorder.release();
}
mRecorder = new MediaRecorder();
if(mViewer.hasSurface){
mRecorder.setPreviewDisplay(mViewer.holder.getSurface());
Log.d(TAG,"Surface has been set");
}
try {
Log.d(TAG,"Sleeping for 4000 mili");
Thread.sleep(4000);
Log.d(TAG,"Waking up");
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
Log.e(TAG,"InterruptedException");
e.printStackTrace();
}
mRecorder.setVideoSource(MediaRecorder.VideoSource.CAMERA);
mRecorder.setAudioSource(MediaRecorder.AudioSource.MIC);
mRecorder.setOutputFormat(MediaRecorder.OutputFormat.MPEG_4);
mRecorder.setVideoFrameRate(12);
mRecorder.setVideoSize(176, 144);
mRecorder.setVideoEncoder(MediaRecorder.VideoEncoder.MPEG_4_SP);
mRecorder.setAudioEncoder(MediaRecorder.AudioEncoder.AMR_NB);
mRecorder.setMaxDuration(MAX_DURATION_TEST);
String targetFile = "/sdcard/webcamera/temp.mp4";
File localFile = new File(targetFile);
if(localFile.exists()){
Log.d(TAG,"Local file exists");
}else{
Log.d(TAG,"Local file does not exist");
}
mRecorder.setOutputFile(targetFile);
try {
mRecorder.prepare();
bPrepared = true;
Log.i(TAG,"prepared");
return;
} catch (IllegalStateException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
Log.e(TAG ,"IOException");
Log.e(TAG,"Message: "+e.getMessage());
StackTraceElement[] array = e.getStackTrace();
for(StackTraceElement element : array){
Log.e(TAG,""+element.toString());
}
}
The important thing which I don't understand here is that whenever I put the video encoder to be MPEG_4_S it works. On the other hand whenever I put the encoder to be H264 it just does not. The problem is that this piece of code is just part of a bigger project, and the rest of it kind of expects this video to be encoded with h264.
I'm testing on a samsung Galaxy I-7500, running on froyo by the way. And I think the Galaxy I-9000 has the same problem.
The puzzling thing for me is that according to this documentation right here:
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html, MPEG_4_SP encoding should not be supported at all, while H264 is supported since honeycomb. So why is it working with MPEG_4_SP at all? and is it possible to make it work with H264?
The error I get is not really clear.
07-11 00:01:40.626: ERROR/MediaSource(1386): Message: prepare failed.
07-11 00:01:40.766: ERROR/MediaSource(1386): android.media.MediaRecorder._prepare(Native Method)
07-11 00:01:40.766: ERROR/MediaSource(1386): android.media.MediaRecorder.prepare(MediaRecorder.java:508)
07-11 00:01:40.766: ERROR/MediaSource(1386): com.appdh.webcamera.MediaSource.prepareOutput(MediaSource.java:74)
07-11 00:01:40.766: ERROR/MediaSource(1386): com.appdh.webcamera.MainActivity.startDetectCamera(MainActivity.java:312)
*Actually, the app is a little more complicated than just that, as it also does stream the video over LAN, but the part which I am concerned here has nothing to do with that. You can check this interesing project out here: http://code.google.com/p/ipcamera-for-android/

As you already wrote H.264 encoding support can be only expected from devices running honeycomb and later, which currently means only tablets. If you need H.264 you should test for prepare failed and either tell the user that the device is not supported or better block devices without H.264 using market filters. Or you can compile ffmpeg for android - like several other projects do. Have a look at these links:
http://odroid.foros-phpbb.com/t338-ffmpeg-compiled-with-android-ndk
http://bambuser.com/opensource
FFmpeg on Android

You also can use JCodec
It supports Android and have few samples for it.
The best way to compile it with Gradle is:
compile 'com.github.jcodec:jcodec:0.2.0-vg4'
but for latest improvements and bug fixes you need to compile from latest commits (there is still no new release from 2016)