Friday, November 16, 2012

Multimedia on JellyBean 4.2

Besides wireless display and some new camera hardware interface, it seems there isn't much change on Multimedia framework from the new released JellyBean 4.2 source code. Most of the patches are for bug-fixes and small code refactoring.
And same as 4.1, we can enable NuPlayer as the default media engine for local & http playback with a system property "media.stagefright.use-nuplayer".
However, compared to Awesomeplayer, there are still some functional gaps to fully switch to NuPlayer:

  • Timed text support;
  • BUFFERING related status update in GenericSource;
  • Secure input buffer support for content protection, e.g. Widevine;
  • Other minor improvements, such as preparing decode pipeline before PREPARED event, setLooping, changing surface texture while playing,etc.
Google has also added some code for fragmented MP4 parser, perhaps for MPEG-DASH but it's said to be experimental.