android live streaming - h264 decoding

Question

Since i'm a little familiar with android and video streaming, i know it's complicated to handle live video streams from device to device.

Requirement: play incoming raw h264 stream

Are there any ways beside serving rtp/rtsp to playback the stream? VideoView needs local rtsp or http server to handle the stream and i cannot believe, that there are no other ways to simply play it.

Could be GStreamer / FFMpeg a good solution to decode the stream?

Have you looked at MediaCodec? I think it is only available on JellyBean btw. — Pete
Yes, but the documentation of MediaCodec API is just bad, only few examples... is it possible to decode the raw h264 stream and play it directly via videoview? — alex_muc
Doesn't look like the VideoView api offers a way of doing so - you may have to do it the hard way. — Pete
Or take a look at MediaPlayer, or if you need to do it really low level, perhaps use this for inspiration: dranger.com/ffmpeg — Pete
videoview implements mediaplayer, therefore i think this will not work. thank you for the inspiration, i will have a look! — alex_muc

Robert Ende Robert Ende · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-31T10:21:09

For this purpose, you can use the new MediaCodec API introduced in Jelly Bean.

All you have to do is set a surface when configuring, e.g.

mDecoder.configure(mFormat, surfaceHolder.getSurface(), null, 0);

Then, when you release the output buffer, just tell the decoder to show the frame on the surface, e.g.

mDecoder.releaseOutputBuffer(decoderIndex, true);

If you need to get comfortable with the MediaCodec API, this tutorial was a good start for me: http://dpsm.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/android-mediacodec-decoded/

android live streaming - h264 decoding

1 Answers