Get MPEG-4 video stream's profile programmatically on Android

Question

Is there any way to get MPEG-4 video fils's profile-code using standard Android API?

Sample profile-codes are: baseline, main, high and so on.

I don't want to include ffmpeg binary in the android app just to get this information.

I found reference of list of profiles in MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel class. Can any body confirm if this is the one I should be using?

Here is an example screenshot of video info taken from MX Player app

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• UPDATE #1: I looked into MX Player app, looks like they use ffmpeg binary, so I can safely say they use that to extract profile-code.
• UPDATE #2: I also looked into ExoPlayer v1 APIs, they also don't seems to have specific API to get this info.

Answer 1

Profile code can be found using MediaExtractor

Based on API documentation it seems that the encoding profile-code is only available from API level 24 (Nougat) and up.

Here is method I wrote to extract the profile code, feel free to modify to meet your need.

/**
 * Get video profile-code from video file.
 *
 * @param videoFilePath Path of the video file.
 * @return One of predefined AVC profiles from {@link MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel} when found, or {@code -1} if
 * Android API level does not support extracting profile data.
 */
@TargetApi(21)
public int getVideoEncodingProfile(final String videoFilePath) {
    int videoProfileCode = -1;

    File inputFile = new File(videoFilePath);
    if (!inputFile.canRead()) {
        throw new RuntimeException("Unable to read " + inputFile);
    }

    MediaExtractor mediaExtractor = new MediaExtractor();
    // Initialize MediaExtractor and configure/extract video information
    try {
        mediaExtractor.setDataSource(inputFile.toString());
    } catch (IOException e) {
        Log.e(TAG, "Unable to set MediaExtractor source.", e);
        throw new RuntimeException("Unable to set source.");
    }

    MediaFormat videoMediaFormat = findVideoMediaFormat(mediaExtractor);
    // MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel of the video track
    if (videoMediaFormat != null && videoMediaFormat.containsKey(MediaFormat.KEY_PROFILE)) {
        videoProfileCode = videoMediaFormat.getInteger(MediaFormat.KEY_PROFILE);
    } else {
        // Current API level does not support encoding profile information.
        Log.w(TAG, "Video profile code is not supported by current API level.");
    }

    mediaExtractor.release();
    mediaExtractor = null;

    return videoProfileCode;
}

/**
 * Find video MediaFormat from MediaExtractor.
 *
 * @param mediaExtractor The MediaExtractor which is used to find video track.
 * @return MediaFormat for video track, or {@code null} when video track is not found.
 */
private MediaFormat findVideoMediaFormat(final MediaExtractor mediaExtractor) {
    MediaFormat videoTrackMediaFormat = null;
    int totalTracks = mediaExtractor.getTrackCount();
    for (int i = 0; i < totalTracks; i++) {
        MediaFormat trackFormat = mediaExtractor.getTrackFormat(i);
        if ((trackFormat.containsKey(MediaFormat.KEY_MIME)
                && trackFormat.getString(MediaFormat.KEY_MIME).contains("video"))
                || (trackFormat.containsKey(MediaFormat.KEY_WIDTH) && trackFormat.containsKey(MediaFormat.KEY_HEIGHT))
                ) {
            videoTrackMediaFormat = trackFormat;
            break;
        }
    }
    return videoTrackMediaFormat;
}

And here is sample code on how to use it.

String TAG = "DEBUG"; // Define your tag
int profileCode = getVideoEncodingProfile(videoInfo.getLocalVideoPath());

switch (profileCode) {
    case MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel.AVCProfileBaseline:
        Log.d(TAG, "getVideoEncodingProfile() returned AVCProfileBaseline");
        break;
    case MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel.AVCProfileMain:
        Log.d(TAG, "getVideoEncodingProfile() returned AVCProfileMain");
        break;
    case MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel.AVCProfileExtended:
        Log.d(TAG, "getVideoEncodingProfile() returned AVCProfileExtended");
        break;
    case MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel.AVCProfileHigh:
        Log.d(TAG, "getVideoEncodingProfile() returned AVCProfileHigh");
        break;
    case MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel.AVCProfileHigh10:
        Log.d(TAG, "getVideoEncodingProfile() returned AVCProfileHigh10");
        break;
    case MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel.AVCProfileHigh422:
        Log.d(TAG, "getVideoEncodingProfile() returned AVCProfileHigh422");
        break;
    case MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel.AVCProfileHigh444:
        Log.d(TAG, "getVideoEncodingProfile() returned AVCProfileHigh444");
        break;
    default:
        Log.d(TAG, "getVideoEncodingProfile() returned unsupported profile code or code not found.");

}

Hope it helps. If you have other way which supports at least Jelly Bean API level 16 let me know.

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For reference, here is a snapshot of MediaFormat of a video track taken from Nougat 7.1.1 device. (NOTE: Lower level API will return less attributes)

Other references:

• Get video file info from desktop app - How to get h264 video info?