MediaPlayer Framework on GingerBread and Apple's HTTP Live Streaming Support

Question

According to the release notes, StageFright replaces the OpenCore framework in the GingerBread release. It seems that there have been numerous discussion that says: Apple\'s HTT

Answer 1

Gingerbread does support playing some HLS streams using the httplive:// scheme prefix but the codecs supported are very limited and it's very easy to construct a perfectly valid stream that crashes the media framework and fails to play.

My experiences have shown that this crash normally occurs while loading or decoding the first segment, even for encrypted content, but that the key does not get requested suggesting that the framework is ignoring the KEY lines.

Of course, for those who only need to support the very newest devices on the market, the support for HLS in ICS appears reasonable (though still imperfect) however those of us who need some kind of backwards compatibility are left decidedly out in the cold, and it seems the only option for streaming (as opposed to progressive download) is RTSP, which itself is poorly implimented in Android.

Answer 2

Alright, I have found some data and I am going to update this thread by answering my own question. If someone has suggestions or other considerations to bring to table please add.

1. Stagefrightframework that comes with Honeycomb build supports HTTP Live Streaming. The documentation reads most parts of the draft specification without mentioning explicitly which parts.

2. The video and audio should conform to media formats supported by Android.

3. I was able to play content-protected streams employing AES-128 encryption. Though, the performance of the emulator(unfortunately, I did not have the device) was not good. Audio and Video were terribly out of sync. Streaming applications HAVE to be tested on real devices.

4. You cannot stream your data over https. Also, in order to detect that the stream conforms to HTTPLive standard you'll have to replace "http://" part of the URL with "httplive://"