Live-stream video from one android phone to another over WiFi

Question

I have searched the internet for days now on how to implement a video streaming feature from an android phone to another android phone over a WiFi connection but I can t seem to find anything useful  I looked on android developers for sample code  stackoverflow  google  android blogs but nothing  All I can find are some sort of phone-to-desktop or desktop-to-phone solutions for streaming  but nothing that I can borrow in my implementation    I need to control a robot using an arduino ADK  so I am using 2 phones  one which will be mounted on the robot and another which will receive the video stream from the robot  I am mentioning this because I am trying to achieve the smallest delay between the broadcast time and the viewing time   I am writing 2 apps  one master app to control the robot from the handheld phone  which will control the slave app and receive the stream  and the second slave app which will run on the robot-strapped phone  controlling the motors actuators streaming to master app  I can not use third party apps unfortunately  I need to integrate the video stream code into my 2 apps   What options are there for achieving this  Also is it very hard to do because I never worked with videostreaming  tough I am doing pretty good in both Java and Android development  How should I encode decode the stream  how do I initiate the connection  will I need to work with UDP instead of TCP IP   I really don t know where to start  with no sample code anywhere  I am pretty sure this can be achieved  I just can t find anything useful to get me started in the right direction   I stumbled across spydroid  but it is using VLC on a desktop so its no good for me     EDIT  Check out Cagney Moreau s blog  He goes into details about implementing this

User · Answer

If you do not need the recording and playback functionality in your app, using off-the-shelf streaming app and player is a reasonable choice.

If you do need them to be in your app, however, you will have to look into MediaRecorder API (for the server/camera app) and MediaPlayer (for client/player app).

Quick sample code for the server:

// this is your network socket
ParcelFileDescriptor pfd = ParcelFileDescriptor.fromSocket(socket);
mCamera = getCameraInstance();
mMediaRecorder = new MediaRecorder();
mCamera.unlock();
mMediaRecorder.setCamera(mCamera);
mMediaRecorder.setAudioSource(MediaRecorder.AudioSource.CAMCORDER);
mMediaRecorder.setVideoSource(MediaRecorder.VideoSource.CAMERA);
// this is the unofficially supported MPEG2TS format, suitable for streaming (Android 3.0+)
mMediaRecorder.setOutputFormat(8);
mMediaRecorder.setAudioEncoder(MediaRecorder.AudioEncoder.DEFAULT);
mMediaRecorder.setVideoEncoder(MediaRecorder.VideoEncoder.DEFAULT);
mediaRecorder.setOutputFile(pfd.getFileDescriptor());
mMediaRecorder.setPreviewDisplay(mPreview.getHolder().getSurface());
mMediaRecorder.prepare();
mMediaRecorder.start();

On the player side it is a bit tricky, you could try this:

// this is your network socket, connected to the server
ParcelFileDescriptor pfd = ParcelFileDescriptor.fromSocket(socket);
mMediaPlayer = new MediaPlayer();
mMediaPlayer.setDataSource(pfd.getFileDescriptor());
mMediaPlayer.prepare();
mMediaPlayer.start();

Unfortunately mediaplayer tends to not like this, so you have a couple of options: either (a) save data from socket to file and (after you have a bit of data) play with mediaplayer from file, or (b) make a tiny http proxy that runs locally and can accept mediaplayer's GET request, reply with HTTP headers, and then copy data from the remote server to it. For (a) you would create the mediaplayer with a file path or file url, for (b) give it a http url pointing to your proxy.

See also:

Stream live video from phone to phone using socket fd

MediaPlayer stutters at start of mp3 playback

User · Answer

I did work on something like this once  but sending a video and playing it in real time is a really complex thing   I suggest you work with PNG s only  In my implementation What i did was capture PNGs using the host camera and then sending them over the network to the client  Which will display the image as soon as received and request the next image from the host  Since you are on wifi that communication will be fast enough to get around 8-10 images per-second approximation only  i worked on Bluetooth   So this will look like a continuous video but with much less effort   For communication you may use UDP sockets Faster and less complex  or DLNA  Not sure how that works

User · Answer

You can check the android VLC it can stream and play video  if you want to indagate more  you can check their GIT to analyze what their do  Good luck

User · Answer

You can use IP Webcam  or perhaps use DLNA  For example Samsung devices come with an app called AllShare which can share and access DLNA enabled devices on the network  I think IP Webcam is your best bet  though  You should be able to open the stream it creates using MX Video player or something like that

[android] Live-stream video from one android phone to another over WiFi

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