Styjun

So I am trying to decode a stream of raw h264 data and render it to a surface on Android. Here are the steps:

1. Receive a packet of h264 stream


2. Accumulate it and try to extract NAL units (byte sequences starting with 00 00 00 01 (NAL header) and up until the next NAL header.


3. For every extracted NAL unit, call feedFrame(data) where data is a byte[] that starts with NAL header and contains the extracted unit.


4. See the video rendered on the surface I provided.

The following code does utilizes the AVC decoder:

public StreamReceiver(DashCamActivity activity, Surface surface, int width, int height, byte[] sps, byte[] pps) 
 this.activity = activity;
 decoder = MediaCodec.createDecoderByType("video/avc");

 format.setByteBuffer("csd-0", ByteBuffer.wrap(sps));
 format.setByteBuffer("csd-1", ByteBuffer.wrap(pps));
 decoder.configure(format, surface, null, 0);
 decoder.start();



public void shutdown() 

 decoder.stop();
 decoder.release();


public void feedFrame(byte[] data) 

 BufferInfo info = new BufferInfo();
 int inputIndex = decoder.dequeueInputBuffer(1000);
 if(inputIndex == -1)
 return;
 ByteBuffer inputBuffer = decoder.getInputBuffers()[inputIndex];
 if (inputIndex >= 0) 
 inputBuffer.clear();
 inputBuffer.put(data, 0, data.length);
 inputBuffer.clear();
 decoder.queueInputBuffer(inputIndex, 0, data.length, 0, 0);
 

 int outIndex = decoder.dequeueOutputBuffer(info, 1000);

 switch (outIndex) 
 case MediaCodec.INFO_OUTPUT_FORMAT_CHANGED:
 break;

 case MediaCodec.INFO_TRY_AGAIN_LATER:
 break;

 case MediaCodec.INFO_OUTPUT_BUFFERS_CHANGED:
 break;

 default:
 decoder.releaseOutputBuffer(outIndex, true);
 break;
 

For smaller resolutions (1024x768, 1280x800) everything works perfectly. However with larger resolutions (1920x1080, 1900x600), where the length of the byte array I provide is above 65535 (64k), the video starts having stutters and artifacts and Logcat reports strange decoder errors (e.g. IOCTL_MFC_DEC_EXE failed(ret : -2001) on Galaxy S3).
This also happens on a relatively new device that can play 4k with twice the framerate I provide. So I must be doing something wrong, and I don't know if my 64k theory has any truth in it, it's merely an observation.

So to recap:

• I am providing individual NAL units to the decoder, starting with the
  header.


• The h264 stream is of baseline profile, level 4.0.


• Writing the contents of the NAL units to a file in the order they arrive produces a video file that is fully playable using the basic media players

How do I get it to play at high resolutions?