Hello developers! I've been wondering lately, about the sad situation of media playback on Android - namely: Video that isn't supported in hardware and/ or natively supported by Android OS.
Coming from Windows Mobile devices, I was suprised (and frankly, dismayed) to see that things like simple playback of an XviD-encoded AVI file were not possible, even with third party apps. Currently there is only one application available (RockPlayer, currently in beta), and it only runs well on high-end devices, due to the need for immense CPU power. The same videos that stutter using this only usable DivX/XviD player on Android (I need to overclock my Milestone's Cortex A8 to get it smooth) run perfectly well on older Windows Mobile devices such as the Touch Diamond/Touch Pro/Touch Pro 2 - all of which use far slower CPUs. Android devices with the same CPUs can't even run RockPlayer because it uses CPU features that aren't even available on these older Qualcomm chips - probably needed because otherwise the performance wouldn't be up to par, even on a Cortex A8 or Snapdragon... So what exactly is the problem with Android? Why is it so difficult to develop efficient decoders for video formats that aren't natively supported? Are codecs usually written in a way that makes them impossible to implement with the tools available for Android (Assembly?)? Or does the fact that "...the NDK does not enable you to develop native-only applications. Android's primary runtime remains the Dalvik virtual machine." limit the speed of the software so drastically that it makes implementation of highly efficient software such as a decent XviD decoder impossible? I look forward to hearing your input on this, and would be very thankful for links to resources concerned with the issue of performance and efficiency in Android applications. Thanks in advance! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
