react-native-video: HLS stream Android 4.4 - error (-38, 0)

Expected behaviour:

The video component receives a m3u8 file and plays the stream (Android 4.4).

Actual behaviour:

The video component shows nothing (black box), there is no error in the JS console, or in the app.

The Android logcat gives this error:

E/MediaPlayer: Should have subtitle controller already set
E/MediaPlayer: error (-38, 0)
E/MediaPlayer: start called in state 0
    error (-38, 0)
E/MediaPlayer: Error (-38,0)
E/MediaPlayer: Error (-38,0)

This is the only thing I can find related to to the mediaplayer. Normal videos, or devices with Android 5+ are working fine.

Environment:

react-native info returns:

Environment: OS: macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 Node: 9.4.0 Yarn: Not Found npm: 5.6.0 Watchman: 4.9.0 Xcode: Xcode 9.3 Build version 9E145 Android Studio: 3.1 AI-173.4697961

Packages: (wanted => installed) react: ^16.2.0 => 16.2.0 react-native: ^0.53.3 => 0.53.3

Device OS: Android 4.4(.2).

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 6 years ago
Reactions: 6
Comments: 26 (12 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@cobarx I’m having issues with the Exoplayer. When switching between videos it will switch to an infinite buffer state. It is easy to reproduce. Just change the sourceUri a several times and after a few times it will will freeze.

No error in both the logcat, or React Native. Is this a known issue? Because it seems to fix the Android 4.4 problem. But I can’t use the Exoplayer with this bug.

nbennink on May 29, 2018

Hey, Can update that we’ve found a direction - the buffering problem is happening only in HTTPS & HLS videos.

We’re now using http only for exoplayer. Hope it’ll help someone

eyalcohen4 on Jun 5, 2018

It might be possible that we have to trust our SSL certificate manually. https://github.com/square/okhttp/wiki/HTTPS#customizing-trusted-certificates

When looking at other Exoplayer implementations and the official docs I saw them using the DefaultHttpDataSourceFactory instead of the OkHttpDataSourceFactory. Is there a reason why RNVideo is using this?

In DataSourceUtil.java this seems to work for me. But I don’t know if it can lead to other problems if we change it to this.

 private static HttpDataSource.Factory buildHttpDataSourceFactory(ReactContext context, DefaultBandwidthMeter bandwidthMeter, Map<String, String> requestHeaders) {
       DefaultHttpDataSourceFactory factory = new DefaultHttpDataSourceFactory(getUserAgent(context), bandwidthMeter);

       // Add request headers
       if (requestHeaders != null) {
           for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : requestHeaders.entrySet())
           {
               factory.setDefaultRequestProperty(entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
           }
       }

       return factory;
   }

nbennink on Jul 2, 2018

Hey, I’ve updated to 2.1.1, and the player still gets stuck in buffering mode at X times of loading.

you can see a reproducing repository here.

Click on the green field for X times (here it’s sometimes 5, sometimes 30) and eventually it won’t play anymore. Tested on Samsung Galaxy S8, OnePlus 5 and LG K10

Please let us know if we can do something!!

cc @cobarx

eyalcohen4 on May 29, 2018

@eyalcohen4 No, I still have the issue and I can’t find a solution. I’m still looking into it so I’ll let you know when I know more.

nbennink on May 30, 2018