video playback on android

[reven]

hi, just wondering how ndroid managed to get recording/live tv playback working on android?

i tried using a m3u8 in a html5 video tag without success. and ive tried using the VideoView, but the ts files recorded arent supported.

do you use the transcode option? if so what transcoding settings do you use?

only thing i managed to get to play was a simple mp4 file i had laying around, that was using the stream?f= option.

[bgowland]

It relies on external / 3rd-party player apps. I just put together an Intent with ACTION_VIEW and set the URL and mime type to "video/*" and throw it out to the system which then finds a player (or list of players presented via a chooser).

As for transcoding, yes I use the /transcode option but it's a bit of a personal bugbear as it's causing a lot of problems depending on TV standards in different countries - some options work for some people and not for others. I'm hopefully going to move to using VLC via the new JSON API in NEWA.

Currently playback of recordings / videos (if transcoding isn't requested) is handled at the nDroid Service end by just reading chunks of the file and writing it out to the OutputStream of an HTTP response but, again, the Android end depends on 3rd-party players. I also intend moving to VLC and the JSON API for recordings.

[reven]

bugger, i was hoping you discovered a way to use the videoview or a 3rd party component that you could embed.

currently experimenting with just using handbrakecli to convert recordings to "Android Tablet" profile and play those directly in videoview. not ideal, but should allow for playback inside the app. just no live tv that way obviously.

[bgowland]

Yeah I know - it's a PITA due to limited media types supported by Android.

To be honest I only vaguely looked at doing it in-app a couple of years back and it was obviously going to be a complicated job and haven't really looked since. I have spotted there are a number of pre-compiled libraries for the Android ffmpeg port - not sure how you'd use it though.

Cheers,
Brian

[mvallevand]

Several XBMC devs have spent the better part of the Gotham cycle going from calling an external player to first libstagefright and now MediaCodec frameworks with Android. It's working pretty well now with most formats but it is not a plugin.

Martin

[bgowland]

@reven - I've got a simple Android video player working with VideoView using VLC as the streaming engine via the JSON API that UJB has put into NEWA. It took a lot of fiddling with the VLC streaming options and I still haven't found the right combination but it sort of works.

If you've got something working with VideoView I can't imagine your code is much different to mine - the key things were getting the VLCService params right and using the OnPreparedListener in VideoView before starting playback.

It should be possible to adapt for live tv but I need to discuss things with UJB on that subject.

Cheers,
Brian

[reven]

i did some more research, and I believe it might be the google tv device I have. some people at plex stated they couldnt use the plex transcoder on some google tv devices as they didnt support HLS, whereas some other google tvs did support it. plus someone mentioned returning the one i bought and replacing it wth a vizio costar and plex could then playback all media.

so, im going to have to buy a costar and hope that works, but that will have to wait until next pay day (and I get paid monthly )

[bgowland]

What version of Android does your device have? Looking at the docs, HLS wasn't supported before v3.x

[reven]

i think i read somewhere they added it to some google tv devices running older firmware versions, seems a bit of a mess (probably why they're replacing it with pure android), think its on 3.2 off the top of my head.

[bgowland]

The subject of Android versions on different devices as a whole is a bit of a mess. One side-effect of having open source software - It comes down to the manufacturer as to whether or not they rewrite their own interpretation and roll it out as an upgrade or not.

As much as I'm not an Apple fan I can see the attraction of the ring-fenced approach and relatively small number of devices they produce. I just checked my Android dev console and there are 4870 different device types out there and manufacturers release new ones on a daily basis.

EDIT: BTW, I just watched a 1 hour recording using my video player using mpv2/mp3/mpeg-ts params with the NEWA VLCService - a few glitches but a good start.