Android MiniClient and Audio Passthrough

[stuckless]

The Android MiniClient uses ijkPlayer (based on ffplay/ffmpeg) for media playback. ijkPlayer doesn't support audio-passthrough and to get it to work, there are some chagnes that would need to be made to allow it work.

ExoPlayer does support audio passthrough, but, I find ExoPlayer to be unstable. ie, I find that it will randomly crash on a file, and then if I try to play the same file again, it will work, etc. So, for that reason, i don't really recommend to use it. I'm leaving it it, and keeping it updated as I release update to the minicient in hopes that one day it will become much better.

My time lately hasn't been focussed on the miniclient, instead, I've been doing some work on getting a new phoenix core services build out that requires a new sagex apis and bmt. So, I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to look at the audio-passthrough.

There is a closed feature request for ijkplayer where we've talked about how this might happen in ijkPlayer.

If someone wants to take this on, I can help you get a miniclient build up and running and show you how to re-compile the ijkplayer when you make changes, etc.

If not, then this will likely get looked at in the fall, sometime.

[Fuzzy]

y'know, I wonder if one of the reasons ExoPlayer has so much instability BECAUSE it hands everything off to the hardware to decode or passthrough.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

y'know, I wonder if one of the reasons ExoPlayer has so much instability BECAUSE it hands everything off to the hardware to decode or passthrough.

I think some of it may be that... but also ffmpeg's format parsers have been in development for years... and I think when they probably encounter bad data all the time, and they likely add "hacks" to work around it etc.

ExoPlayer has the idealistic of stance of not adding any hacks or work arounds, at all. They agree that they will play a file if the file is 100% perfect and only 100% perfect. So, ExoPlayer works really well for an application where you are producing the files and handling the player (ie, YouTube)... or if you are only ever handling a single type of file.

That, and they have bugs, like anyone else. When you review the "commit" logs you see that they are always fixing the format parsers, or, adding support for some part of the parser that wasn't implemented before, etc.

Eventually they'll get there, I'm sure... and to be honest, ExoPlayer is a great player if you control the files being produced. For YouTube, I'm sure ExoPlayer is near flawless.

[brianrent]

Are these the only 2 players that can be used. I have used MX player for a while and it plays everything I've thrown at it flawlessly as far as I can tell. Not sure if it does pass through or not.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by brianrent

Are these the only 2 players that can be used. I have used MX player for a while and it plays everything I've thrown at it flawlessly as far as I can tell. Not sure if it does pass through or not.

I like MXPlayer as well... unfortunately, MXPlayer is not a player library, but just a player, so it's not possible to integrate that player into the miniclient. For a player to work with the miniclient it needs to support an API that I can hook into that would allow be embed the player, provide my own playback controls, and support custom data sources. IJK added custom datasource for my benefit, or else, we'd only be using ExoPlayer.

For my testing, IJKPLayer (ffmpeg/ffplay based) plays just about anything that I throw at it as well... included h265 videos using the hardware decoding.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by stuckless

ExoPlayer does support audio passthrough, but, I find ExoPlayer to be unstable. ie, I find that it will randomly crash on a file, and then if I try to play the same file again, it will work, etc. So, for that reason, i don't really recommend to use it. I'm leaving it it, and keeping it updated as I release update to the minicient in hopes that one day it will become much better.

The seeking problem in ExoPlayer I mentioned in the other thread (timeline jumps to end and playback gets all messed up) apparently is specific to the Shield TV device. A developer for ExoPlayer expects a fix to be in the next Shield update so ExoPlayer may soon be more stable for the Shield device at least:

https://github.com/google/ExoPlayer/issues/1522

[jptheripper]

can you do a quick update on the state of dts passthrough?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

can you do a quick update on the state of dts passthrough?

Basically... ExoPlayer supports it... (but doesn't work that well)... and there are no immediate plans to update IJKPlayer to support it. (I don't have the skills to do it )

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Basically... ExoPlayer supports it... (but doesn't work that well)... and there are no immediate plans to update IJKPlayer to support it. (I don't have the skills to do it )

I've been doing some testing with exoplayer and it seems to work very well with the exception of mpeg2. Doesn't really work at all.

Is that the experience you have with it or are there more issues than that?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I've been doing some testing with exoplayer and it seems to work very well with the exception of mpeg2. Doesn't really work at all.

Is that the experience you have with it or are there more issues than that?

When I try to use ExoPlayer... I find that it will randomly just fail to play something... If I try to play it a second time, then it will magically work. Sometimes I'll try it 2-3 times and then it will play the file. These are h264 .ts files. The other issue that I have is that find the skipping doesn't always work (that's on me... there is work I need to do in the MiniClient to manage this better)... And the 3rd thing is that I don't have audio passthrough to a stereo... so I need the player the decode the audio... the problem is the if there isn't hardware decoding for whatever is in the media file, I get no audio

IJKPlayer plays everything I throw at, flawlessly... probably because it's basically a ffmpeg player.

ExoPlayer does have some native integration with ffmpeg for audio... but, unfortunately, the ExoPlayer plugins are not setup to build for the various arm/intel flavours... so even if I included it,... it would just be for 1 achitecture... unless I rewrite their scripts (which I might end up doing at some point, if they don't do it first)

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by stuckless

When I try to use ExoPlayer... I find that it will randomly just fail to play something... If I try to play it a second time, then it will magically work. Sometimes I'll try it 2-3 times and then it will play the file. These are h264 .ts files. The other issue that I have is that find the skipping doesn't always work (that's on me... there is work I need to do in the MiniClient to manage this better)... And the 3rd thing is that I don't have audio passthrough to a stereo... so I need the player the decode the audio... the problem is the if there isn't hardware decoding for whatever is in the media file, I get no audio

IJKPlayer plays everything I throw at, flawlessly... probably because it's basically a ffmpeg player.

ExoPlayer does have some native integration with ffmpeg for audio... but, unfortunately, the ExoPlayer plugins are not setup to build for the various arm/intel flavours... so even if I included it,... it would just be for 1 achitecture... unless I rewrite their scripts (which I might end up doing at some point, if they don't do it first)

Ok. Audio passthrough works for me without issue, but I do sometimes see the skipping issue you are referring to. Basically if there is comskip data it will skip to the end for no reason.

I can't get it to play mpeg2 files at all. They just are a bunch of artifacts and aren't watchable at all.