Streaming Audio from A URL in Android using MediaPlayer?

Question

Hi,

I've been trying to stream mp3's over http using Android's built in MediaPlayer class. The documentation would suggest to me that this should be as easy as :

MediaPlayer mp = new MediaPlayer();
mp.setDataSource(URL_OF_FILE);
mp.prepare();
mp.start();

However I am getting the following repeatedly. I have tried different URLs as well. Please don't tell me that streaming doesn't work on mp3's.

E/PlayerDriver(   31): Command PLAYER_SET_DATA_SOURCE completed with an error or info PVMFErrNotSupported
W/PlayerDriver(   31): PVMFInfoErrorHandlingComplete
E/MediaPlayer(  198): error (1, -4)
E/MediaPlayer(  198): start called in state 0
E/MediaPlayer(  198): error (-38, 0)
E/MediaPlayer(  198): Error (1,-4)
E/MediaPlayer(  198): Error (-38,0)

Any help much appreciated, thanks S

Answer 1

Check out this site: Custom Audio Streaming with MediaPlayer

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

I've had the same error as you have and it turned out that there was nothing wrong with the code. The problem was that the webserver was sending the wrong Content-Type header.

Try wireshark or something similar to see what content-type the webserver is sending.

Answer 3

No call mp.start with an OnPreparedListener to avoid the zero state i the log..

Answer 4

Pandalover, did google ever tell you anything concrete about those errors? I am getting some of the same errors from MediaPlayer when trying to stream audio, and cannot find definitions for them anywhere. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 5

I am using "http://www.pocketjourney.com/downloads/pj/tutorials/audio.mp3" url to listen to audio and it works fine but when I work with live streaming like online radio , media player show same error mentioned in the first post. for example http://www.radio.net/rad/radio.asx is the URL

Answer 6

I am getting the same error when i try to stream the audio from a radio. I am looking for a example to work with streaming online radio.

Answer 7

Android MediaPlayer doesn't support streaming of MP3 natively until 2.2. In older versions of the OS it appears to only stream 3GP natively. You can try the pocketjourney code, although it's old (there's a new version here) and I had trouble making it sticky — it would stutter whenever it refilled the buffer.

The NPR News app for Android is open source and uses a local proxy server to handle MP3 streaming in versions of the OS before 2.2. You can see the relevant code in lines 199-216 (r94) here: http://code.google.com/p/npr-android-app/source/browse/trunk/Npr/src/org/npr/android/news/PlaybackService.java

And this is the StreamProxy class: http://code.google.com/p/npr-android-app/source/browse/trunk/Npr/src/org/npr/android/news/StreamProxy.java

The NPR app is also still getting the "error (-38, 0)" sometimes while streaming. This may be a threading issue or a network change issue. Check the issue tracker for updates.

Answer 8

Now，I alse find the problem that I cann't play live audio with adroid media player. Can some one give a solution?