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 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 adverts utilizing ExoPlayer’s built-in playlist help, go an HlsInterstitialsAdsLoader.AdsMediaSourceFactory because the media supply manufacturing unit 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 following might not be seamless in some circumstances, 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’ll be able to do that function 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 searching for mode’ so keep tuned for updates on this space.

Media3 1.6.0 introduces a brand new media3-ui-compose module that incorporates 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 lessons that hyperlink to the Participant, along with some primary composable constructing blocks. You should utilize these to construct your individual personalized UI widgets. We plan to publish default Materials-themed composables in a later launch.

Another enhancements on this launch embody: shifting system calls off the appliance’s predominant thread to the background (which ought to cut 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 concentrating 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 alternative for the framework MediaExtractor however applied utilizing Media3’s extractors. For those who’re utilizing the Android framework MediaExtractor, take into account migrating to get constant conduct throughout gadgets and cut back crashes.

We have additionally added experimental help for retrieving video frames in a brand new class ExperimentalFrameExtractor, which may act as a alternative for the MediaMetadataRetriever getFrameAtTime strategies. There are a couple of 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 could be utilized (together with Presentation to scale the output to a desired dimension) and it runs sooner on some gadgets resulting from 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
    }

Enhancing, transcoding and export

Media3 1.6.0 contains efficiency, stability and purposeful enhancements in Transformer. Highlights embody: 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.

Take a look at Widespread media processing operations with Jetpack Media3 Transformer for some code snippets exhibiting the way to course of media with Transformer, and tricks to cut back latency.

This launch additionally features a new Kotlin-based demo app showcasing Media3’s video results framework. You’ll be able to 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 challenge Tracker when you run into any bugs, or when you have questions or function requests. We look ahead to listening to from you!