How can I ask Android MediaPlayer not to play after onPrepared?

Question

I am working on an Android application which does lots of concurrencies and RxJava treading in the background and it is possible to not want to play a music which is in the async preparation phase for some reason:

player.prepareAsync()

and

override fun onPrepared(mp: MediaPlayer?) {
    isPreparing = false

    if (playAfterPreparing) {
        //start playback
        mp?.start()
    } else {
        // don't play and keep it prepare for later!!!
    }

    updateNotification()
}

but the problem is after preparation you should play(!) because: Media Player called in state 0, error (-38,0)

I even tried to start and pause one after another in preparation:

override fun onPrepared(mp: MediaPlayer?) {
    Timber.i("onPrepared")
    Timber.i("playAfterPreparing: $playAfterPreparing")

    isPreparing = false

    //start playback
    mp?.start()

    if (!playAfterPreparing) {
        mp?.pause()
    }

    updateNotification()
}

but it didn't work cause it rendered to the same issue.

I also know how MediaPlayer state machine is working, but don't see anything in this situation in documents: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/MediaPlayer.html

any solution for such a situation?

`after preparation you should play(!)` no. No errors appear if you don't start playback when prepared. It is likely caused by some other reason — Vladyslav Matviienko, Mar 02 '18 at 09:46
@VladyslavMatviienko this is exactly the behavior I suppose to see! but as I mentioned in question according to this answer https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9008770/media-player-called-in-state-0-error-38-0 I always get -38 error! — Mohsen Mirhoseini, Mar 02 '18 at 09:48
I still think that you get that error for some other reason. Nobody knows what else you are doing with your mediaplayer. — Vladyslav Matviienko, Mar 02 '18 at 09:50
ok, if you think so, I will write a simple app with only one MediaPlayer to test. — Mohsen Mirhoseini, Mar 02 '18 at 09:54
@VladyslavMatviienko you were correct! I create a very simple app with only one MediaPlayer and it worked for me. I will investigate more what was exactly my issue and will post it here. By the way, in my app I was using local music but in my simple test I tested with online streaming. — Mohsen Mirhoseini, Mar 02 '18 at 10:21

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 02 '18 at 10:51

Thanks to @VladyslavMatviienko comments, I suspected that I am doing something wrong somewhere else and he was correct. According to Android MediaPlayer document:

It is possible to stay in Prepared state, but it is not possible to call any method namely pause() and that was my fault. In Prepared state You can only call start(), seekTo() or stop().

Hope this answer comes handy for those who might face this issue later.

How can I ask Android MediaPlayer not to play after onPrepared?

1 Answers1