Anyone Have MediaPlayer Working with ParcelFileDescriptor and createPipe()?

Question

Related to my recent question on MediaRecorder and createPipe(), and a discussion of the createPipe() technique in this other SO question, I am now trying to get MediaPlayer to work with content served by a ContentProvider via ParcelFileDescriptor and createPipe().

This sample project has my work to date. It is based off of an earlier sample that plays an OGG clip stored as a raw resource. Hence, I know that my clip is fine.

I have changed my MediaPlayer setup to:

  private void loadClip() {
    try {
      mp=new MediaPlayer();
      mp.setDataSource(this,
                       PipeProvider.CONTENT_URI.buildUpon()
                                               .appendPath("clip.ogg")
                                               .build());
      mp.setOnCompletionListener(this);
      mp.prepare();
    }
    catch (Exception e) {
      goBlooey(e);
    }
  }

Through logging in PipeProvider, I see that my Uri is being properly constructed.

PipeProvider is the same one as in this sample project, which works for serving PDFs to Adobe Reader, which limits how screwed up my code can be. :-)

Specifically, openFile() creates a pipe from ParcelFileDescriptor:

  @Override
  public ParcelFileDescriptor openFile(Uri uri, String mode) throws FileNotFoundException {
    ParcelFileDescriptor[] pipe=null;

    try {
      pipe=ParcelFileDescriptor.createPipe();
      AssetManager assets=getContext().getResources().getAssets();

      new TransferTask(assets.open(uri.getLastPathSegment()),
                       new AutoCloseOutputStream(pipe[1])).start();
    }
    catch (IOException e) {
      Log.e(getClass().getSimpleName(), "Exception opening pipe", e);
      throw new FileNotFoundException("Could not open pipe for: "
          + uri.toString());
    }

    return(pipe[0]);
  }

where the background thread does a typical stream-to-stream copy:

  static class TransferTask extends Thread {
    InputStream in;
    OutputStream out;

    TransferTask(InputStream in, OutputStream out) {
      this.in=in;
      this.out=out;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
      byte[] buf=new byte[1024];
      int len;

      try {
        while ((len=in.read(buf)) > 0) {
          out.write(buf, 0, len);
        }

        in.close();
        out.close();
      }
      catch (IOException e) {
        Log.e(getClass().getSimpleName(),
              "Exception transferring file", e);
      }
    }
  }

However, MediaPlayer chokes:

10-16 13:33:13.203: E/MediaPlayer(3060): Unable to to create media player
10-16 13:33:13.203: D/MediaPlayer(3060): Couldn't open file on client side, trying server side
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060): Exception transferring file
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060): java.io.IOException: write failed: EPIPE (Broken pipe)
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060):   at libcore.io.IoBridge.write(IoBridge.java:462)
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060):   at java.io.FileOutputStream.write(FileOutputStream.java:187)
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060):   at com.commonsware.android.audiolstream.PipeProvider$TransferTask.run(PipeProvider.java:120)
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060): Caused by: libcore.io.ErrnoException: write failed: EPIPE (Broken pipe)
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060):   at libcore.io.Posix.writeBytes(Native Method)
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060):   at libcore.io.Posix.write(Posix.java:178)
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060):   at libcore.io.BlockGuardOs.write(BlockGuardOs.java:191)
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060):   at libcore.io.IoBridge.write(IoBridge.java:457)
10-16 13:33:13.207: E/TransferTask(3060):   ... 2 more
10-16 13:33:13.211: E/MediaPlayer(3060): Unable to to create media player
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060): Exception transferring file
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060): java.io.IOException: write failed: EPIPE (Broken pipe)
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060):   at libcore.io.IoBridge.write(IoBridge.java:462)
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060):   at java.io.FileOutputStream.write(FileOutputStream.java:187)
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060):   at com.commonsware.android.audiolstream.PipeProvider$TransferTask.run(PipeProvider.java:120)
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060): Caused by: libcore.io.ErrnoException: write failed: EPIPE (Broken pipe)
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060):   at libcore.io.Posix.writeBytes(Native Method)
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060):   at libcore.io.Posix.write(Posix.java:178)
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060):   at libcore.io.BlockGuardOs.write(BlockGuardOs.java:191)
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060):   at libcore.io.IoBridge.write(IoBridge.java:457)
10-16 13:33:13.218: E/TransferTask(3060):   ... 2 more

Has anyone seen working code for using createPipe() to serve media to MediaPlayer?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I'm not sure this can ever work. When I run this code I see this trace:

I/AudioSystem(30916): getting audio flinger
I/AudioSystem(30916): returning new audio session id
D/IAudioFlinger(30916): newAudioSessionId In
D/AudioFlinger(28138): nextUniqueId, current 178
D/IAudioFlinger(30916): newAudioSessionId Out, id = 178
D/MediaPlayer(30916): setDataSource(Context context, content://com.commonsware.android.audiolstream/clip.ogg, Map<String, String> headers) in
D/MediaPlayer(30916): setDataSource(FileDescriptor fd) in
E/MediaPlayerService(28138): offset error

That "offset error" comes from the following lines in MediaPlayerService.cpp in AOSP, where it does a fstat() on the read side of the pipe:

status_t MediaPlayerService::Client::setDataSource(int fd, int64_t offset, int64_t length)
{
    struct stat sb;
    int ret = fstat(fd, &sb);

    ....

    if (offset >= sb.st_size) {
        LOGE("offset error");
        ::close(fd);
        return UNKNOWN_ERROR;
    }

And sb.st_size is reported as -1 (via getStatSize() on the ParcelFileDescriptor at the Java level). The error handler closes the descriptor, hence the broken pipe error shortly afterwards.

In my experience MediaPlayer has many broken bits like this. I've never seen it work for anything but directly on local files, and (very buggily) for HTTP streaming. I ended up porting FFmpeg to work around its numerous failings.

Answer 2

I've tried to use pipes with MediaPlayer via a ContentProvider using PipeDataWriter (which basically uses a pipe and a thread).

The problem is that the file descriptor expected by the MediaPlayer, at least for video content, must be seekable, and you cannot do a fseek on a pipe.