Android (Samsung S4) HTML5 video pauses

Question

I am using Android Webview to play html5 videos, including Youtube videos (my own tags and Youtube embedded iFrames). I encountered an issue with Samsung Galaxy S4, on the following scenario:

1. Play a video.
2. Press 'back' while/after the video is playing (view closes)
3. Open the view again and press 'play'.
4. The video starts to play and immediately pauses. From this moment the same will happen for each video that I'll try to play.

I tried this on a test environment with two kind of Webviews: "regular" Android Webview and HTML5 webview

The only "suspicious" thing I see is an error while pressing the 'back' (Android error):

sendUserActionEvent() mView == null

Is it a Galaxy S4 issue? An Android issue? Any idea?

tnx, Yaniv

Answer 1

It appears that if the AudioService does not have focus when you close the Webview, it is not paused. This causes several issues (another player cannot start playing etc.)

The only solution that worked for me is:

@Override
protected void onPause() {
    super.onPause();
    ((AudioManager)getSystemService(
            Context.AUDIO_SERVICE)).requestAudioFocus(
                    new OnAudioFocusChangeListener() {
                        @Override
                        public void onAudioFocusChange(int focusChange) {}
                    }, AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, 
                    AudioManager.AUDIOFOCUS_GAIN_TRANSIENT);
}

This will cause the current player to be paused/killed (not sure which) when going down and solve all of the experienced issues/problems.

Answer 2

The previous answer isn't worked to me at Android Kitkat, the following answer will work properly on all platforms.

try {
        Class.forName("android.webkit.WebView")
                .getMethod("onPause", (Class[]) null)
                .invoke(webView, (Object[]) null);
    } catch (ClassNotFoundException cnfe) {
        cnfe.printStackTrace();
    } catch (NoSuchMethodException nsme) {
        nsme.printStackTrace();
    } catch (InvocationTargetException ite) {
        ite.printStackTrace();
    } catch (IllegalAccessException iae) {
        iae.printStackTrace();
    } catch (NullPointerException nullPointerException) {
        nullPointerException.printStackTrace();
    }