Raw H.264 stream output by MediaCodec not playble

Question

I am creating raw H.264 stream output by MediaCodec. The problem is the output file is not playable in android default player (API 16). How can it be that Android can export file that is not playable in player, only in VLC on the PC. Maybe some thing wrong with my code? My video is 384x288.

public class AvcEncoder {

private MediaCodec mediaCodec;
private BufferedOutputStream outputStream;
private File f;

public AvcEncoder(int w, int h, String file_name) 
{ 
    f = new File(file_name + ".mp4");

    try {
        outputStream = new BufferedOutputStream(new FileOutputStream(f));
    } catch (Exception e){ 
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    String key_mime = "video/avc"; //video/mp4v-es, video/3gpp, video/avc
    mediaCodec = MediaCodec.createEncoderByType(key_mime);  
    MediaFormat mediaFormat = MediaFormat.createVideoFormat(key_mime, w, h);

    mediaFormat.setInteger(MediaFormat.KEY_BIT_RATE, (w * h) << 3);
    mediaFormat.setInteger(MediaFormat.KEY_FRAME_RATE, 25);
    mediaFormat.setInteger(MediaFormat.KEY_COLOR_FORMAT, MediaCodecInfo.CodecCapabilities.COLOR_FormatYUV420SemiPlanar);
    mediaFormat.setInteger(MediaFormat.KEY_I_FRAME_INTERVAL, 5);

    mediaFormat.setInteger(MediaFormat.KEY_AAC_PROFILE,MediaCodecInfo.CodecProfileLevel.MPEG4ProfileMain);
    mediaCodec.configure(mediaFormat, null, null, MediaCodec.CONFIGURE_FLAG_ENCODE);
    mediaCodec.start();
}

public void close() {
    try {
        mediaCodec.stop();
        mediaCodec.release();
        outputStream.flush();
        outputStream.close();
    } catch (Exception e){ 
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
}


public void offerEncoder(byte[] input) {
    try {
        ByteBuffer[] inputBuffers = mediaCodec.getInputBuffers();
        ByteBuffer[] outputBuffers = mediaCodec.getOutputBuffers();
        int inputBufferIndex = mediaCodec.dequeueInputBuffer(0);
        if (inputBufferIndex >= 0) {
            ByteBuffer inputBuffer = inputBuffers[inputBufferIndex];
            inputBuffer.clear();
            inputBuffer.put(input);
            mediaCodec.queueInputBuffer(inputBufferIndex, 0, input.length, 0, 0);
        }

        MediaCodec.BufferInfo bufferInfo = new MediaCodec.BufferInfo();
        int outputBufferIndex = mediaCodec.dequeueOutputBuffer(bufferInfo, 0);
        while (outputBufferIndex >= 0) {
            ByteBuffer outputBuffer = outputBuffers[outputBufferIndex];
            byte[] outData = new byte[bufferInfo.size];
            outputBuffer.get(outData);
            outputStream.write(outData, 0, outData.length);

            mediaCodec.releaseOutputBuffer(outputBufferIndex, false);
            outputBufferIndex = mediaCodec.dequeueOutputBuffer(bufferInfo, 0);
        }
    } catch (Throwable t) {

      }
  }
}

Answer 1

The Android MediaPlayer doesn't handle raw H.264 streams.

One difficulty with such streams is that the H.264 NAL units don't have timestamp information, so unless the video frames are at a known fixed frame rate the player wouldn't know when to present them.

You can either create your own player with MediaCodec (see e.g. "Play video (TextureView)" in Grafika), or convert the raw stream to a .mp4 file. The latter requires MediaMuxer, available in API 18, or the use of a 3rd-party library like ffmpeg.