Media3 1.6.0 — what’s new?

Posted by Andrew Lewis – Software program Engineer

This text is cross-published on Medium

This launch features a host of bug fixes, efficiency enhancements and new options. Learn on to seek out out extra, and as at all times please try the full launch notes for a complete overview of adjustments on this launch.

Playback, MediaSession and UI

ExoPlayer now helps HLS interstitials for advert insertion in HLS streams. To play these advertisements utilizing ExoPlayer’s built-in playlist assist, move an HlsInterstitialsAdsLoader.AdsMediaSourceFactory because the media supply manufacturing unit when creating the participant. For extra info see the official documentation.

This launch additionally consists of experimental assist for ‘pre-warming’ decoders. With out pre-warming, transitions from one playlist merchandise to the following will not be seamless in some instances, for instance, we might have to modify codecs, or decode some video frames to succeed in the beginning place of the brand new media merchandise. With pre-warming enabled, a secondary video renderer can begin decoding the brand new media merchandise earlier, giving near-seamless transitions. You possibly can do that characteristic out by enabling it on the DefaultRenderersFactory. We’re actively engaged on additional enhancements to the way in which we work together with decoders, together with including a ‘quick looking for mode’ so keep tuned for updates on this space.

Media3 1.6.0 introduces a brand new media3-ui-compose module that accommodates performance for constructing Compose UIs for playback. You could find a reference implementation within the Media3 Compose demo and study extra in Getting began with Compose-based UI. At this level we’re offering a primary set of foundational state courses that hyperlink to the Participant, along with some fundamental composable constructing blocks. You should use these to construct your personal personalized UI widgets. We plan to publish default Materials-themed composables in a later launch.

Another enhancements on this launch embrace: shifting system calls off the appliance’s most important thread to the background (which ought to scale back ANRs), a brand new decoder module wrapping libmpegh (for bundling object-based audio decoding in your app), and a repair for the Forged extension for apps focusing on API 34+. There are additionally fixes throughout MPEG-TS and WebVTT extraction, DRM, downloading/caching, MediaSession and extra.

Media extraction and body retrieval

The brand new MediaExtractorCompat is a drop-in substitute for the framework MediaExtractor however applied utilizing Media3’s extractors. In case you’re utilizing the Android framework MediaExtractor, take into account migrating to get constant habits throughout gadgets and scale back crashes.

We have additionally added experimental assist for retrieving video frames in a brand new class ExperimentalFrameExtractor, which may act as a substitute for the MediaMetadataRetriever getFrameAtTime strategies. There are just a few advantages over the framework implementation: HDR enter is supported (by default tonemapping right down to SDR, however with the choice to supply HLG bitmaps from Android 14 onwards), Media3 results may be utilized (together with Presentation to scale the output to a desired dimension) and it runs quicker on some gadgets as a result of shifting shade area conversion to the GPU. This is an instance of utilizing the brand new API:

val bitmap =
    withContext(Dispatchers.IO) {
        val configuration =
            ExperimentalFrameExtractor.Configuration
                .Builder()
                .setExtractHdrFrames(true)
                .construct()
        val frameExtractor =
            ExperimentalFrameExtractor(
                context,
                configuration,
            )

        frameExtractor.setMediaItem(mediaItem, /*results*/ listOf())

        val body = frameExtractor.getFrame(timestamps).await()
        frameExtractor.launch()
        body.bitmap
    }

Modifying, transcoding and export

Media3 1.6.0 consists of efficiency, stability and useful enhancements in Transformer. Highlights embrace: assist for transcoding/transmuxing Dolby Imaginative and prescient streams on gadgets that assist this format and a brand new MediaProjectionAssetLoader for recording from the display, which you’ll be able to check out within the Transformer demo app.

Try Widespread media processing operations with Jetpack Media3 Transformer for some code snippets displaying the best way to course of media with Transformer, and tricks to scale back latency.

This launch additionally features a new Kotlin-based demo app showcasing Media3’s video results framework. You possibly can choose from a wide range of video results and preview them through ExoPlayer.setVideoEffects.

Get began sith Media3 1.6.0

Please get in contact through the Media3 problem Tracker when you run into any bugs, or you probably have questions or characteristic requests. We look ahead to listening to from you!