Android Things video playback on Raspberry Pi

Question

Has anyone been able to successfully play a video using Android Things on a Raspberry Pi? If so was there anything special you had to do to get it to work? If not does any one know why it isn't working?

I made a simple video player that plays a local video from disk. The app runs fine on a phone but I get an error dialog on the Pi saying "Can't play this video".

One Thing I have already ran into but I think I solved was there are no content providers in Android Things, so instead of using a uri for the video source I gave it a file directly like so.

EDIT: Code edit

VideoView videoPanel;
.
.
.
videoPanel.SetVideoURI(Android.Net.Uri.FromFile(new Java.IO.File("/sdcard/Movies/videoFile.mp4")));

Sungod

Where is the file, specifically? – Kinetic

Oh sorry the video.src is a string and it is /sdcard/Movies/videofile.mp4 – Sungod

Do you hold the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission? Did you reboot your Thing after installing your app (as runtime permissions are not granted until after a reboot, due to current limitations in the preview)? – Kinetic

Yes I just double checked in debug mode and the permission is granted, and I rebooted as a sanity check. – Sungod

can you also paste the output of adb logcat? – Anders

Answer 1

I was using 0.5.1-devpreview with raspberry pi 3, and tried to use exoplayer to play mp4. Audio works but not video (just black screen). Same result for youtube iframe sdk (black screen with only audio playing).

Wigwag

The bug is tracked here: issuetracker.google.com/issues/67738615 – Wigwag

Answer 2

I was able to get it to work for my project using setVideoPath instead of SetVideoURI. So your code would be

File file = new Java.IO.File("/sdcard/Movies/videoFile.mp4");
videoPanel.setVideoPath(file.getAbsolutePath());

Weatherproof

What Android Things version did you get this to work on? I saw there was an update recently but haven't updated it yet. – Sungod

The latest developer preview, version 0.2 – Weatherproof

The video playback is kind of jumpy since they haven't added any support for OpenGL yet, but it does play at least. – Weatherproof

FileNotFound(Permission Denied) permission readExternalPermission is set – Significs

@Jason did you set the READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE permission in your manifest? – Weatherproof

of course set, and reboot it, but i do not know the AT whether or not support the 1920*1080. – Significs

Answer 3

Try adding this

android:hardwareAccelerated="true"

to your activity in the manifest.

Baboon