ExoPlayer Plugin Source Code

[nosmirck]

Hi, I've been wondering if there's any way to get the source code for the ExoPlayer implementation used for this SDK. I'm required to render DRM secured content so I would like to extend/expose some methods in order to do so.

I already did part of it with the normal ExoPlayer implementation and I can run the Player Activity on top of Unity for full screen video playback, but now for VR, I need exactly what it's already included in this SDK for Video Texture but also sending the license URL.

The problem is that I have no idea how to expose the frames as textures for Unity on my current implementation, and since this one already does that, I would like to just add my exposed calls to DRM secured videos.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[rusmaxham]

We are looking into open sourcing the video plugin. What is your timeframe? It might be faster to roughly outline how the video plugin works so you could implement it in your existing ExoPlayer codebase.

[nosmirck]

Thanks @rusmaxham for getting back.

The current time frame for delivery is around mid July, so, there's not too much of a hurry, however, if you could outline how it works, that'd be great, since I can be trying to understand and get it ready for when you guys open source the implementation.

I've been reading some other repositories and implementations and as I understand, I can render the video in a "Surface" object and I should be able to take the texture from there and pass a pointer for this texture in GPU to Unity and use it to render in 3D. But I have no clue on how to even start, I have not much java experience and I'm still learning how to code plugins for Android. All I have right now in the plugin is an activity that plays the video in full screen (I just send the media url and license url to the plugin and it starts the activity with exoplayer)

[rusmaxham]

Let me write something up for you. I'll try to get that jotted down this week. This will definitely grow your Java and Android experience.

[nosmirck]

@rusmaxham you're the man!!

Thank you very much for the support! I'll wait, in the mean time, I'll keep working with the project, my full screen exoplayer and tuning other stuff.

[MacGyver214-zz]

Hello @rusmaxham, I just happened across this comment thread and happen to be very curious about this as well. If you weren't planning on publicly posting that writeup, I would be very much indebted to you if I could get a copy of that as well. Otherwise, I can't wait to see what you have to say!

[SethGibson]

+1 to this, I've got a project myself that could probably benefit from this info, would love to get a copy of said writeup if possible.

[rocqetQueen]

@rusmaxham how is the current state of this? are you realeasing soon the source code?
I'm also in aproject where we would be very interested in having more details about how this llibrary works :)

[rusmaxham]

Source code will be available in the next release, coming soon.

[rusmaxham]

The code is available in the latest release.

[dmvictor]

Hi @rusmaxham, It's really kind of you to share the plugin. I have tried GVR SDK for Unity v1.170.0, the obbVideoSample, dashVideoSample and panoVideoSample works pretty good. I was wondering the support of UDP protocol with this SDK. Hence, I have changed the video URL with "udp://ip:port" in the panoVideoSample, it seemed UDP not support.

In my existing ExoPlayer codebase, I have used UdpDataSource to support UDP streaming. Moreover, I added some tunings for low latency. I want to build plug-ins for Android with my ExoPlayer codebase, but it seems complicated with so many modules (eg. extension-ffmpeg, extension-okhttp).

In this SDK, I have found that there are several AAR files under "\Assets\GoogleVR\Plugins\Android" folder, including "exoplayer-r1.5.11.aar" and "gvr-exoplayersupport-release.aar". Under "\Assets\GoogleVR\Plugins\Android\libs\armeabi-v7a" folder, I found "libgvrvideo.so" and "libaudioplugingvrunity.so" as well.

I know there are AAR plug-ins and native plug-ins for Android, but the relationship of the plug-ins really confused me. Could you tell me how to build plug-ins like yours for Unity?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[dmvictor]

Hi @rusmaxham, I'm sorry for not looking thoroughly into the project. I'll study the source codes in the "native_libs" folder first. And try to add the functionality for my requirement. Thank you!

[rusmaxham]

There are three binary pieces to the GVR video plugin:

1. GoogleVR/Plugins/Android/gvr-exoplayersupport-release.aar is the Java portion of the GVR video plugin that interfaces with ExoPlayer. This is where the bulk of the plugin logic lives. This code lives in native_libs/gvr-exoplayersupport.
2. GoogleVR/Plugins/Android/libs/armeabi-v7a/libgvrvideo.so is largely a C wrapper around the Java portion. This wrapper is a far more efficient way to access the Java portion from Unity, as Unity's Java integration is known to be quite slow and generates a fair amount of C# garbage that will trigger the garbage collector. This code lives in native_libs/video_plugin.
3. exoplayer-r1.5.11.aar is the ExoPlayer library, pulled directly from JCenter.

If you want to change any behavior without changing any of the existing C# interfaces, you can do that just within the Java gvr-exoplayersupport. If you want to add or change any of the interfaces to C#, you will need to do that in the C/C++ video_plugin.

To add your udp support, you may likely be able to do that entirely in the Java gvr-exoplayersupport by parsing the url string passed through to it to handle it differently. I think that can be done here.

[dmvictor]

Hi @rusmaxham. Thanks for your clarification. May I ask is there some ways to develop this ExoPlayer plugin more efficiently? So far, when I need to make some modifications (eg. add some logs) for this project. I have to do the steps in the following, which is quite cumbersome.

1. Write the code in Android studio.
2. Compile the "gvr-exoplayersupport" module to an aar.
3. Move the compiled aar to "\Assets\GoogleVR\Plugins\Android" folder.
4. Build the apk by Unity.
5. Push the apk to my Android phone.
6. Start the demo app and press the corresponding button.
7. Observe the result from Logcat in Android studio.

Could you share how you develop this plugin? I’m a newbie in Unity programming. I was wondering if there is a pure Android application which used "gvr-exoplayersupport-release.aar" as an Android library. So I can omit step 3 and step 4 for faster development at the earlier stage, which needs not to switch IDE and waiting for the compiling time in Unity. Some other way to speed up the development is really appreciated. Thank you!