Android – MediaPlayer stop playing after about 5 seconds

androidmedia-playerplayback

I'm currently developing a simple game and now it's time to add music and sound effect. I tried using MediaPlayer, just like described here: Android media player bug

However I have another problem, the MediaPlayer stop playing the music after about 5 seconds. What is probable causing this?

Best Answer

I had this problem too. It was probably due to having the MediaPlayer-object only existing within a method.

For example:

//ERROR, stops after 5 sec!
public static void playMusic(int id)
{
  MediaPlayer mediaPlayer = MediaPlayer.create(context, id);
  mediaPlayer.setLooping(true);
  mediaPlayer.start();
}

It is most likely that the garbage collector will come in and clean away the MediaPlayer-object.

This fixed the error for me:

//mediaPlayer-object will not we cleaned away since someone holds a reference to it!
private static MediaPlayer mediaPlayer;

public static void playMusic(int id)
{
    mediaPlayer = MediaPlayer.create(context, id);
    mediaPlayer.setLooping(true);
    mediaPlayer.start();
}

Related Solutions

Android – How to stop EditText from gaining focus at Activity startup in Android

Excellent answers from Luc and Mark. However, a good code sample is missing. Adding the tags android:focusableInTouchMode="true" and android:focusable="true" to the parent layout (e.g. LinearLayout or ConstraintLayout) like in the following example, will fix the problem.

<!-- Dummy item to prevent AutoCompleteTextView from receiving focus -->
<LinearLayout
    android:focusable="true" 
    android:focusableInTouchMode="true"
    android:layout_width="0px" 
    android:layout_height="0px"/>

<!-- :nextFocusUp and :nextFocusLeft have been set to the id of this component
to prevent the dummy from receiving focus again -->
<AutoCompleteTextView android:id="@+id/autotext"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent" 
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:nextFocusUp="@id/autotext" 
    android:nextFocusLeft="@id/autotext"/>

Android – Problems with MediaPlayer, raw resources, stop and start

Here is what I did to load multiple resources with a single MediaPlayer:

/**
 * Play a sample with the Android MediaPLayer.
 *
 * @param resid Resource ID if the sample to play.
 */
private void playSample(int resid)
{
    AssetFileDescriptor afd = context.getResources().openRawResourceFd(resid);

    try
    {   
        mediaPlayer.reset();
        mediaPlayer.setDataSource(afd.getFileDescriptor(), afd.getStartOffset(), afd.getDeclaredLength());
        mediaPlayer.prepare();
        mediaPlayer.start();
        afd.close();
    }
    catch (IllegalArgumentException e)
    {
        Log.e(TAG, "Unable to play audio queue do to exception: " + e.getMessage(), e);
    }
    catch (IllegalStateException e)
    {
        Log.e(TAG, "Unable to play audio queue do to exception: " + e.getMessage(), e);
    }
    catch (IOException e)
    {
        Log.e(TAG, "Unable to play audio queue do to exception: " + e.getMessage(), e);
    }

mediaPlay is a member variable that get created and released at other points in the class. This may not be the best way (I am new to Android myself), but it seems to work. Just note that the code will probably fall trough to the bottom of the method before the mediaPlayer is done playing. If you need to play a series of resources, you will still need to handle this case.

Best Answer

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Android – Problems with MediaPlayer, raw resources, stop and start

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