IssueTracker

Thanks for the comment Oraganise.. I tried a workaround hack to deal with this by calling seekTo(0) immediately after MediaPlayer.start().  It sort've solves the problem, however sometimes the seekTo(0) call will actually skip the first 1 - 3 seconds of the clip, which is also pretty unacceptable :S.  Hope the android team can respond with a fix or temporary workaround for this soon!

I have the exact same problem with the app I'm developing (testing on my nexus 5 with stock android 4.4 unrooted). The bug doesn't appear on my galaxy nexus running android 4.3 paranoid android. Calling seekTo(0) right after MediaPlayer.start() seems to be a working workaround for now.

This bug does appear to be a 4.4 issue rather than a nexus 5 issue. I have now tested this on a 4.4 nexus 4 device and it exhibits the same behaviour. Note the seekTo work around does not work for streaming video.

Has anyone found a workaround for these issues?  No one from the android team has responded either.  Are they working on a patch fix for this?  Would be good to know if there's a fix being worked on, or a workaround at least.  This issue is affecting all my users and Nexus 5 is becoming a popular device.

It's not a Nexus 5 issue, just tested on a stock Nexus 4 and the same thing is happening. I was hoping 4.4 would fix some of the MediaPlayer issues not add to them!!

Please share if anyone got a workaround or solution for this issue. A timely response from Android team is much appreciated.

FYI, our files are encoded using libmp3lame through ffmpeg and we're still having this problem.

Updated my nexus 5 to 4.4.2 and MediaPlayer still appears to be broken; I can't help wondering how/why the Google Play Music app appears unaffected.

J.Dixon, I'm also wondering why the Google Play Music app is not affected.  They must be using a different streaming protocol or something.  This is ridiculous that we have to guess at these things.  I don't know what to do to get the attention of the Android team.  This is very frustrating.

The following logs are helpful:

20:27:42.605   5365:5380    LocalDevicePlayback  D  Event logging MUSIC_PAUSE_PLAYBACK_REQUESTED: [1855, NAUTILUS]/Thrdre7hf7ay2jmrv5k7swsah5i
20:27:42.615    177:18109           LiveSession  I  onConnect <URL suppressed>
20:27:45.849  17447:17447  ildProcessConnection  W  The connection is not bound for 0
20:27:48.802    177:18109               ESQueue  I  found AAC codec config (24000 Hz, 2 channels)
20:27:48.802    177:18109             avc_utils  I  found AVC codec config (640 x 360, Baseline-profile level 3.0)
20:27:49.262    177:18109       PlaylistFetcher  I  We've missed the boat, restarting playback.
20:27:51.104    177:18109       PlaylistFetcher  I  queueing discontinuity (seek=0, explicit=1)
20:27:51.104    177:18109             ATSParser  I  discontinuity on stream pid 0x0101
20:27:51.104    177:18109             ATSParser  I  discontinuity on stream pid 0x0100
20:27:56.630    177:18109       PlaylistFetcher  I  We've missed the boat, restarting playback.
20:28:00.625    177:18109       PlaylistFetcher  I  queueing discontinuity (seek=0, explicit=1)
20:28:00.625    177:18109             ATSParser  I  discontinuity on stream pid 0x0100
20:28:00.625    177:18109             ATSParser  I  discontinuity on stream pid 0x0101

When running on my 4.4 device I notice the first song/audio file plays perfectly (no bug) but all subsequent ones experience the buggy playback. I have formed the hypothesis that it is because I use multiple MediaPlayers (a work around to the problem that they take multiple seconds to start/queue streamed music even when streaming from the local device) that I experience the bug; perhaps Google play music only uses a single MediaPlayer instance. Can anyone else here confirm if they are using multiple MediaPlayer instances or are you re-using a single instance?

For playing video I'm using just a single instance of media player which fails immediately.

The number of mediaplayers have no effect on this issue.  This is related to the logic that fetches individual segments of live media.  Most likely Play Music Play is not affected because it is not streaming live media.

This bug has become a conglomeration of many issues.  Need more info (such as how to reproduce, what is happening, and what is the expected behavior) for these.

1.[OP] "MediaPlayer.start() gets stuck and doesn't start playing until I call seek()" - does it only happen on a live broadcasts or also on prerecorded content?  So far I could only repro on live broadcast.  Please share the .m3u8 URL that fails.

2.[OP] "MediaPlayer calls OnCompletionListener.OnCompletion() too early". Does this happen on live broadcasts, prerecorded content, and/or also on local playback?  Please share the .m3u8 URL that failed.

3.[OP] Did you actually upgrade your app to use API 19, or just your device to Android 4.4 (that includes API 19)?  In other words, before the update of your app (targeting API 18), but running on Android 4.4 (API 19), did you see the issue?

4.[#2] "seekTo(0) call will actually skip the first 1 - 3 second" - this sentence is only relevant on prerecorded content.  Is this what you mean?  Again please share your .m3u8 that failed.

I've thrown together a very simple app that show the issue. Run on a 4.3/4.2 device and the stream displays within 0.5 seconds. Run on a 4.4 device and it may no't display or start after 10 - 40 seconds!

N.B. I've tested this on a nexus 4,5,7 and 10 so it might be a google specific codec issue?

Regarding the issue where playback stops prematurely: I don't believe this is a bug, but however it's caused by the new PowerManagement features of Android 4.4+.  Basically the CPU shuts down when the screen is off and hence the MediaPlayer is unable to stream properly.  To fix this, MediaPlayer provides an API to add a wake lock, which tells the system to keep the CPU alive while the MediaPlayer is streaming media.

mMediaPlayer = new MediaPlayer();
// ... other initialization here ...
mMediaPlayer.setWakeMode(getApplicationContext(), PowerManager.PARTIAL_WAKE_LOCK);

More details here: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/mediaplayer.html#wakelocks

Hope this helps a lot of you!

It appears that this is similar to the issue posted here, where *.m3u8 video streams fail over 3G.

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=64182

Sample app attached

I have some issue, somebody have any trick or hack?

I've seen (or rather, heard) the early completion problem with local playback of downloaded MP3 podcasts on 4.4.2.  The main step needed to reproduce the problem is to turn the screen off with the power button.  See https://github.com/danieloeh/AntennaPod/issues/330 for more details.

I experienced similar issues on my Nexus 5 (4.4.2) with two audio player apps which use MediaPlayer to stream MP3 via HTTP.

My steps:
1. Start playback in the first app and wait until sound starts.
2. Start playback in the second app. First app stops due to audio-focus loss. Second app demonstrates issues: shows current position at approx 0:10, shows playing state, but no sound and no seek progress. Sound starts after a manual seek or repeated start() call.
3. If I continue such switches between apps, error (-2147483648, 0) may occur.

I noticed that it is important to use HTTP locations, not local files.
Google Play Music is also affected, but only when you play unbuffered media from your account.

I'm developing a Video Streaming app that works fine in 4.0 - 4.3 versions but in 4.4 have many problems and buffering is much slower. I haven't found any solution or trick to solve. It's scheduled to solve the bug in some version?

Are Video buffer increase in android 4.0+?. Maybe too Long? I think Vitamio, for example, works with a less buffer size?

I have very strange media playback (like buffer underruns/corruption) when using multiple media players in org.prowl.wintersunrpg (wintersun on android)

This results in very garbled playback. So far haven't found a workaround.  All I'm doing is using 2 media players playing 2 mp3 files (CBR, Joint stereo, 192kbps)

I'm facing that problem in 4.0.x to.

Soluction candidate: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/mediaplayer.html#wakelocks

so much hoops to jump through when developing with Android.

This is still an issue with WebViews. I have some videos embedded into a WebView which randomly stop playing. Logcat shows:

09-16 14:10:25.702    7670-7802/xxx W/MediaPlayer﹕ info/warning (703, 3121)
09-16 14:10:25.712    7670-7802/xxx W/MediaPlayer﹕ info/warning (701, 0)
09-16 14:10:27.942    7670-7802/xxx W/MediaPlayer﹕ info/warning (702, 0)

Wake Lock is activated in the App itself, but theres no way I can set it on a video tag or through Javascript, as far as I know. Help would be much appreciated. Same Video / HTML structure plays perfectly with 4.3

Has anyone ran into this issue again?  I'm seeing it on Lollipop devices again.  And I"m definitely acquiring a Wake Lock as mentioned here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19918118/mediaplayer-randomly-stops-on-android-4-4-19/20713956#20713956

I'm getting random stops from MediaPlayer on Nexus 5 with 5.0.1 when playing local audio files. Usually 1-2 seconds before the end of the track. However, Nexus 9 with the same version of Android works without a problem. Also, every other device I tried worked without a problem.

I had random stops issue from MediaPlayer on Nexus 5 with 5.0.1 too, when playing streaming audio.  
There is no onCompletion() callback, and the player just stuck in the end of the track.

And other devices worked fine.

I am facing a similar issue on Nexus 4 running Android 5.1.1. The song when played from url takes around 4 seconds to play on my 4.2.2 device but the same song takes around 15 seconds to play on my nexus 4 OS ver 5.1.1

Has anyone found a fix to this as the seekto() method is not working for me.

i am using m3u8 streaming link . App runs on 5.0- , but above 5.0+ gives (1,-38) error.

Started having issues with MediaPlayer skipping a few versions ago. I'm actually streaming over SSH (first JSch and now ConnectBot) but this was working fine for a long time. Now when I start playback it begins buffering but the audio skips ahead and through the song. It's as if buffering is not working correctly anymore (doesn't pause playback and wait for data like it used to.)

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