Player freezes, crashes emulator, on specific video file

[nikclayton]

Version

Media3 main branch

More version details

Commit 683c26c, most recent commit on main at the time of writing (that's what I tested with the demo app).

The user bug report that prompted me to test this is in an app using Media 3 1.9.1 so I checked out that tag too and see the same crash in the demo app.

Devices that reproduce the issue

Emulator running Pixel 9 Pro XL image.

At least one report from a user that it doesn't play on a real device. I'll send them a link to this bug report and they may follow up with more information.

Devices that do not reproduce the issue

No response

Reproducible in the demo app?

Yes

Reproduction steps

Add this entry to media.exolist.json

  {
    "name": "Crash test",
    "samples": [
      {
        "name": "https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/116/958/520/987/414/412/original/53713ec0e817351b.mp4",
        "uri": "https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/116/958/520/987/414/412/original/53713ec0e817351b.mp4"
      }
    ]
  },

Launch the app.

Play the file.

Boom.

Expected result

Plays successfully.

Actual result

Black screen, couple of lines of debug output on screen, emulator freezes, and crashes (not the app, the entire emulator process) after a few seconds.

Important: I ticked the "I will email the bugreport" box below (because I don't want you to ignore reports without a bug report), but adb bugreport doesn't work in this case -- it wants to connect to a running device, and it can't, because the emulator 1. hung, and then 2. crashed.

Media

https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/116/958/520/987/414/412/original/53713ec0e817351b.mp4

Bug Report

• You will email the zip file produced by adb bugreport to android-media-github@google.com after filing this issue.

[marcbaechinger]

Thanks for your report!

As you expected, I can play this on a real device without issues. This asserts that ExoPlayer can extract the frames and send them to the decoder for playback. There is nothing going wrong in the Java space of ExoPlayer. I think we can therefore rule out a specific ExoPlayer extractor or bad media problem.

10:32:50.097  I  Init df7411f [AndroidXMedia3/1.11.0-beta01] [tokay, Pixel 9, Google, 37]
10:32:50.257  D  tracks [eventTime=0.16, mediaPos=0.00, window=0, period=0
10:32:50.257  D    group [ id=0
10:32:50.258  D      [X] Track:0, id=1, mimeType=video/avc, container=video/mp4, bitrate=1619499, codecs=avc1.4D4020, res=1080x1080, color=NA/NA/NA/8/8, fps=24.0, language=und, supported=YES
10:32:50.258  D    ]
10:32:50.258  D    group [ id=1
10:32:50.258  D      [X] Track:0, id=2, mimeType=audio/mp4a-latm, container=video/mp4, primaryGroupId=0, bitrate=196700, codecs=mp4a.40.2, channels=2, sample_rate=48000, language=und, supported=YES
10:32:50.258  D    ]
10:32:50.258  D    Metadata [
10:32:50.258  D      TSSE: description=null: values=[Lavf61.7.100]
10:32:50.258  D      Mp4Timestamp: creation time=0, modification time=0, timescale=1000
10:32:50.258  D      ThumbnailMetadata: presentationTimeUs=2000000
10:32:50.258  D    ]
10:32:50.258  D  ]

If playback fails, then it's probably an emulator issue. We can't really investigate issues on the emulator if they seem to be caused by the codec of the emulator. Given extracting and feeding samples to the emulator works for that file as per the real device test from above, we would need more information about the failure on a real device.

As an aside, I was able to play the file on an emulator in Android Studio with API 36 as well:

Init 438b40 [AndroidXMedia3/1.11.0-beta01] [emu64xa, sdk_gphone64_x86_64, Google, 36]

adb bugreport doesn't work in this case -- it wants to connect to a running device, and it can't, because
the emulator 1. hung, and then 2. crashed.

Thanks for the info. We usually look at any bug that is actionable for us. In such a case with a real device, you can try to restart the device and do the bug report after reboot. While this isn't ideal it may still have some information logged that survives crash and restarts. No need to do that for this case now. See next point.

I'll send them [user who sees this on a real device] a link to this bug report and they may follow up with more information.

That's great. Let's wait for this. I don't think it's worth to investigate the emulator case due to lack of information and we see it working on real device and AS emulator.

[ScottESanDiego]

It fails for me on Android 17 QPR2 Beta 1, Pixel 11 Pro.

I can reproduce it on the aforementioned video file, and basically any video that https://github.com/pachli/pachli-android attempts to play.

[ScottESanDiego]

Oops, forgot to add the bugreport. See https://scotte.ai/scotte/bugreport-blazer_beta-CP41.260701.005-2026-07-22-07-11-06.zip for a bugreport which (hopefully) includes the logcat of attempting to play the video, dragging the seekbar around, and jumping to the end. The still-frames update during the above, but the video never "plays" (there is no way to get the Play/Pause control to change).

[nikclayton]

@marcbaechinger -- just checking, was the bug report received successfully?

[ScottESanDiego]

My phone upgraded to Android 17 QPR2 Beta 2 yesterday, and this bug appears resolved now. Guess it was something more systemic.