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I have set a series of classes to decode H264 streaming video from a server and render it on a SurfaceView. Now this code is working perfectly on every device I've tried including the emulator, but suddenly I bought myself a S7 and in this device it does not work properly anymore.
The weird thing is that some times it will work perfectly, then some other times it will throw this error:
06-15 16:41:40.249 13300-24605/cm.myapp E/ACodec: [OMX.Exynos.avc.dec] ERROR(0x90000012)
06-15 16:41:40.249 13300-24605/cm.myapp E/ACodec: signalError(omxError 0x90000012, internalError -2147483648)
06-15 16:41:40.249 13300-24604/cm.myapp E/MediaCodec: Codec reported err 0x90000012, actionCode 0, while in state 6
06-15 16:41:40.249 13300-24578/cm.myapp W/MediaStreamerThread: Failed to draw media.
Sometimes it will crash on the dequeueInputBuffers call:
java.lang.IllegalStateException
at android.media.MediaCodec.native_dequeueOutputBuffer(Native Method)
at android.media.MediaCodec.dequeueOutputBuffer(MediaCodec.java:2379)
And then again, some other times it will throw this very different error:
06-15 16:34:57.239 13300-16625/cm.myapp W/System.err: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: The surface has been released
06-15 16:34:57.239 13300-16625/cm.myapp W/System.err: at android.media.MediaCodec.native_configure(Native Method)
06-15 16:34:57.239 13300-16625/cm.myapp W/System.err: at android.media.MediaCodec.configure(MediaCodec.java:1778)
java.lang.RuntimeException: Could not create h264 decoder
These errors by themselves are not very verbose and thus I cannot figure out where the problem might be.
Again my code works perfectly on most devices but it's failing on this one. How is this possible? Any ideas?
This is my decoding code:
public class H264Decoder
static private final long TIMEOUT_US = 10000L;
private MediaCodec mDecoder;
private Surface mSurface;
private static final List<byte[]> EMPTY_ENCODE_RESULT = new ArrayList<>();
public void init()
mDecoder = MediaCodec.createDecoderByType( "video/avc" );
MediaFormat mediaFormat = MediaFormat.createVideoFormat("video/avc", 640, 480);
mDecoder.configure(mediaFormat, mSurface, null, 0);
mDecoder.start();
catch(NoClassDefFoundError ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
throw new RuntimeException("Could not create h264 decoder", ex);
public List<byte[]> offer(byte[] data)
List<byte[]> returnValue = new ArrayList<>();
returnValue.add(decode(data, true));
return returnValue;
public void release()
assert mSurface != null;
assert mDecoder != null;
mDecoder.stop();
mDecoder.release();
mDecoder = null;
public H264Decoder(Surface surface)
mSurface = surface;
public byte[] decode(byte[] data, boolean updateRender)
if (mSurface == null)
return null;
// INPUT -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
int inputBufferIndex = mDecoder.dequeueInputBuffer(TIMEOUT_US);
if (inputBufferIndex >= 0)
// Get an input buffer from the codec, fill it with data, give it back
ByteBuffer inputBuffer = mDecoder.getInputBuffers()[inputBufferIndex];
inputBuffer.put(data);
mDecoder.queueInputBuffer(inputBufferIndex, 0, data.length, 0, 0 );
// OUTPUT ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MediaCodec.BufferInfo info = new MediaCodec.BufferInfo();
int outputBufferIndex = mDecoder.dequeueOutputBuffer(info, TIMEOUT_US);
if ( outputBufferIndex >= 0 )
final ByteBuffer[] outputBuffer = mDecoder.getOutputBuffers();
mDecoder.releaseOutputBuffer(outputBufferIndex, updateRender);
else if ( outputBufferIndex == MediaCodec.INFO_OUTPUT_BUFFERS_CHANGED )
//outputBuffers = codec.getOutputBuffers();
else if ( outputBufferIndex == MediaCodec.INFO_OUTPUT_FORMAT_CHANGED )
MediaFormat format = mDecoder.getOutputFormat();
return null;
–
It is hard to say what can go wrong. One thing is though
mDecoder.releaseOutputBuffer(outputBufferIndex, updateRender);
if(!updateRender) {
return outputBuffer[outputBufferIndex].array();
I would not recommend returning array from output buffer. According to documentation it states
Once an output buffer is released to the codec, it MUST NOT be used
If you truly need to have encoded sample, I would better create a copy of output buffer, call release, and then return the copy.
If byte array that's returned used to be processed somehow else, I would recommend extracting this method of decoder into the loop and process the byte buffer (output buffer), and then call release output buffer. For more reference I would look into MediaCodec Synchronous Processing using Buffers
–
–
–
On Samsung Galaxy S8, I would get ERROR(0x90000012) asynchronously after calling MediaCodec.configure(), before feeding any stream input.
One sure way of getting ERROR(0x90000012) is to use streams in AVCC format (like Apple Quicktime movies).
In fact, it seems across many Android devices, we have more success using H264 in Annex-B format.
Annex-b also means not needing to pass out of band extra data using MediaCodec.BUFFER_FLAG_CODEC_CONFIG or sps/pps configured via MediaFormat (csd-0, csd-1 keys).
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