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 all the time please take a look at the full launch notes for a complete overview of modifications 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 help, go an HlsInterstitialsAdsLoader.AdsMediaSourceFactory because the media supply manufacturing facility when creating the participant. For extra info see the official documentation.

This launch additionally contains experimental help for ‘pre-warming’ decoders. With out pre-warming, transitions from one playlist merchandise to the subsequent might not be seamless in some instances, for instance, we might have to modify codecs, or decode some video frames to achieve 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 this 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 in search of mode’ so keep tuned for updates on this space.

Media3 1.6.0 introduces a brand new media3-ui-compose module that comprises performance for constructing Compose UIs for playback. You’ll 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 lessons that hyperlink to the Participant, along with some primary 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: transferring 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 carried out utilizing Media3’s extractors. Should 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 help 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 provide HLG bitmaps from Android 14 onwards), Media3 results might be utilized (together with Presentation to scale the output to a desired dimension) and it runs quicker on some gadgets as a result of transferring shade area conversion to the GPU. Here 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 contains efficiency, stability and useful enhancements in Transformer. Highlights embrace: help for transcoding/transmuxing Dolby Imaginative and prescient streams on gadgets that help this format and a brand new MediaProjectionAssetLoader for recording from the display, which you’ll check out within the Transformer demo app.

Try Widespread media processing operations with Jetpack Media3 Transformer for some code snippets displaying how one can 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 by way of ExoPlayer.setVideoEffects.

Get began with Media3 1.6.0

Please get in contact by way of the Media3 concern Tracker in the event you run into any bugs, or you probably have questions or characteristic requests. We sit up for listening to from you!