Video streaming through socket and playing from client

Question

I have two simple programmes, server and client, both at localhost. What I want to do is to streaming the video from the server to the client through socket and the client can play it by using filediscriptor of the socket. First I try to send some message and the client can receive it. After that I send a few bytes of the video from the server'sd card to the client. The client can receive those bytes but cannot play it. Anyone know how to solve the problem?

Here is my server and client code snippets:

Server:

        //Receive request from client.
     Socket client=serversocket.accept();
     System.out.println("accept");

     //Receive client message.
     BufferedReader in=new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(client.getInputStream()));
     String str=in.readLine();
     System.out.println("read:"+str);

     //Send message to client.
     //PrintWriter out=new PrintWriter(new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(client.getOutputStream())),true);
     //out.println("server message");
     FileInputStream fis=new FileInputStream("/sdcard/toystory3.3gp");
     byte buffer[]=new byte[2000];
     fis.read(buffer,0,20);
     DataOutputStream out=new DataOutputStream(client.getOutputStream());
     out.write(buffer,0,20);
     in.close();
     out.close();
     client.close();
     System.out.println("close");

Client:

 Socket socket=new Socket("127.0.0.1",4444);
 String message="Initial"+"\r\n";
 //Send message to server.
 PrintWriter out=new PrintWriter(new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(socket.getOutputStream())),true);
 out.println(message);

 //Receive message from server.
 BufferedReader br=new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(socket.getInputStream()));
 String msg=br.readLine();
 //ParcelFileDescriptor pfd=ParcelFileDescriptor.fromSocket(socket);
 //MediaPlayer m=new MediaPlayer();
 //m.setDataSource(pfd.getFileDescriptor());
 //m.prepare();
 //m.start();

 if(msg!=null)
 {
  System.out.println("Data received.");
  System.out.println(msg);
 }
 else
 {
  System.out.println("Data not received.");
 }
 out.close();
 br.close();
 socket.close();

Answer 1

This won't work because 3gp (and other avi derived files like mp4, etc) have header (sic) at the end of the file. So any player must have access to the whole file.

RTSP/RTP is the only way to stream the video at the moment. HTTP adaptive streaming is in the works.

Also if you're trying to do p2p video (device to device) you should know that all devices on operator networks are behind the NAT firewall. They can only open connections outbound. You'll need to use some kind of NAT-piercing.