Android Marshmallow "Can't play this video" error

Question

I am in the process of upgrading an app to android 6.0. Everything seems to be alright except when trying to play certain videos from a remote source. They play just fine on our non Marshmallow devices (for specifics, I have a Galaxy S3 on 4.1.2 Jelly Bean that's playing the exact same video just fine, no issues). We've tested with multiple devices on 6.0, and the problem seems to be localized to just this OS.

When trying to play a video in a simple videoview, I get an alert saying "Can't play this video".

I had some problems with other videos on 4.1.2 in the past, and thought it may be a codec issue, which I think again may be the culprit. The videos that won't play all have these in common:

• AAC
• H.264
• MPEG-4 SDSM
• MPEG-4 ODSM

When I try to launch the activity with the videoview, this is what the logcat spits out.

201-801/? D/audio_hw_primary﹕ out_set_parameters: enter: usecase(1: low-latency-playback) kvpairs: routing=2
201-800/? D/audio_hw_primary﹕ select_devices: out_snd_device(2: speaker) in_snd_device(0: none)
201-800/? D/msm8974_platform﹕ platform_send_audio_calibration: sending audio calibration for snd_device(2) acdb_id(15)
201-800/? D/audio_hw_primary﹕ enable_snd_device: snd_device(2: speaker)
201-800/? D/audio_hw_primary﹕ enable_audio_route: apply and update mixer path: low-latency-playback
777-1257/? I/MediaFocusControl﹕ AudioFocus  requestAudioFocus() from android.media.AudioManager@f9138b2 req=1flags=0x0
4591-4591/? W/MediaPlayer﹕ Couldn't open file on client side; trying server side: java.io.FileNotFoundException: No content provider: http://videopath.mp4
201-5605/? D/NuPlayer﹕ onSetVideoSurface(0xb48c2700, no video decoder)
777-811/? I/ActivityManager﹕ Displayed com.example.i.PityTheFooActivity: +108ms
1139-1139/? I/Keyboard.Facilitator﹕ onFinishInput()
201-5606/? E/GenericSource﹕ Failed to init from data source!
201-5605/? D/NuPlayerDriver﹕ notifyListener_l(0xb60986a0), (100, 1, -2147483648)
4591-4605/? E/MediaPlayer﹕ error (1, -2147483648)
4591-4591/? E/MediaPlayer﹕ Error (1,-2147483648)
4591-4591/? D/VideoView﹕ Error: 1,-2147483648

Is this a known problem with Marshmallow, or is this something wrong with the videos perhaps?

Answer 1

Videos with ODSM / SDSM codecs can bypass being deinterlaced, but it appears Android Marshmallow will not recognize ODSM / SDSM codecs and will require the videos to be deinterlaced. Previous OS versions will not play videos that haven't been deinterlaced normally, with the exception being the video file including ODSM or SDSM codecs.

I believe this is due to Quicktime support issues, and may need to be opened as a defect with Android Marshmallow, but may also be intended by Google.