Switching Surface smoothly

[fabrantes]

This is actually more of a question rather than an issue.

Whenever you call MediaCodecVideoTrackRenderer.setSurface() with a new Surface, playback will stop until a new sync frame is received. I haven't looked too deep into the internals but I guess the buffers used by MediaCodec are obtained directly from a given surface so it needs to be reset. Is there any way of passing the current decoding state to a new MediaCodec/Surface?

The question is if it would be possible at all to avoid the playback gap at all and what modifications would it require to ExoPlayer.

Thanks!

[mick1418]

I'd be also interested in the answer to this question, as I'm trying to implement a fullscreen mode and need to change surface on the fly without an image gap.

[thomaspaulmann]

Hello @fabrantes,

what do you plan to do? What I do, is using two exo players with to surface/texture views and switching them is a lot faster then setting a new surface. Maybe this will help you.

[nguyentando]

Is there anyone figured out how to switch surface smoothly?
I'd like to hear your solution.

[fabrantes]

At the moment I'm sharing the same SurfaceTexture on two TextureViews, that was the only decent approach I could find, but it requires some care with the View lifecycle. Still open to alternatives 😄

[nguyentando]

So there is no solution with Android API < 14 (use SurfaceView instead of TextureView)?
Because I can't find any methods like TextureView.setSurfaceView in SurfaceView class, so we can't share the same surface between 2 SurfaceView.

[ojw28]

What renderers are you using to target API levels under 14 anyway, given that the standard audio/video renderers require API level 16+? Note that only 4% of active Android devices are running API level 14 and below, and only 7% of active Android devices are running API level 15 and below.

[nguyentando]

I use MediaPlayer for API < 14.
There are about 20% of my users use devices which run on Android < 14, so I simply can't ignore them.

[qqli007]

@fabrantes, @ojw28 ,I share the same SurfaceTexture,but when goto another TextureView ,it only has voice no video.Do you have any idea about it?

when goto another TextureView, I used like this to replay:

           if (surfaceTextureSaved != null) {
                Surface surface = new Surface(surfaceTextureSaved);
                player.setSurface(surface);
                player.setPlayWhenReady(true);
            }

[luckcoolla]

Hello,
Guys, I have solved similar problem with workaround. I need to change surface for player during Activity switch (from ActivityA to ActivityB) on player paused state. Player had no any video output before I will call player.start() (or exoPlayer.setPlayWhenReady(true)).

My code for activity switch:

        //prepare to ActivityA destroy
        videoTrackToRestore = getSelectedTrackIndex(TYPE_VIDEO);
        selectTrack(TYPE_VIDEO, DISABLED_TRACK);
        blockingClearSurface();
        ...
        ...
        //surface on ActivityB prepared:
        selectTrack(TYPE_VIDEO, videoTrackToRestore);
        setSufraceView(surfaceView);

And this code workaround has helped me to make exo player render video picture on the new surface on paused state:

        savedPlayer.setPosition(savedPlayer.getPosition());

[razcakappa]

@fabrantes Hi, I'd like to discuss about the Cubed (3) player project. How shall we proceed?a

[ojw28]

We've made one minor improvement in dev-v2, which is to enable fast switching on API level 23 and above in the case of switching directly from one surface to another (i.e. not with a gap where there's no surface in between). Of course this is far away from being a complete solution, but it might be useful to some people. The relevant change is here: a9617af

[molexx]

Thanks @ojw28 - I have switching SurfaceView when zooming to fullscreen mostly working using that change.

I'm still having fun with rotation. In #1084 you noted:

It may be that setOutputSurface provides a more efficient solution from API level 23, although it's still slightly awkward if you don't have a surface at all for some period of time during the transition.

what were your thoughts towards 'slightly awkward' options please? Whilst I can now switch SurfaceViews it seems that both of them need to be in layout to avoid the player throwing an exception and releasing the codec, and whilst the Activity rotates there's no layout.

It would be ok to pause playback for the duration of the rotate - if the playback were actually paused (do I need to wait for playWhenReadyCommitted?) could the surface be swapped without releasing the codec in a similar way to a9617af and it not get upset when the previous surface is destroyed with the Activity?