Monday, July 20, 2009

Real Time Audio Streaming for Android - Some Developments

OK, so I've made some progress on this project.

  • I have figured out how the Audio Streaming APIs work on the 1.5 SDK.
  • I have obtained a G 711 speech codec in Java which runs on Android. This was taken from the 'sipdroid' VoIP client.
  • I have been able to stream a pre-recorded PCM voice file to the emulator via UDP and play it using AudioTrack.
  • I have figured out how to use the jLibRtp RTP stack in a Java program. There is a port of the same stack by HSC for Android. So I guess it should work there also, but, I must still test it out.
So, it looks like most of the pieces of the puzzle are in place. However, while using AudioRecord and UDP on the emulator, I have encountered the following problems.

  1. On the emulator, I instantiate AudioRecord with a sampling rate of 8000Hz and an encoding of 16BIT PCM. This works fine. However, when I try to run the same code on a device, the AudioRecord object does not get created. Looks like I will have to experiment with different sampling rates and buffer sizes. Strange, huh?
  2. To test the sending and receiving of PCM data, I built a small Java applet that streamed the PCM data to the emulator. I setup proper port redirections. I am able to receive the data in the emulator, but, when I try to send data OUT from the emulator, nothing happens.
Looks like once these problems are sorted out, we are good to go!!!


8 comments:

  1. interesting, but funny how could you have got that far (applet to emulator), but the emulator cannot send out? have you tried using a real device instead of emulator. what error messages, if any do you get? also, what does the ddms logger say? could you send me your email address?

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  2. the fundamental problem is real-time, you're tests involve sending a pre-recorded file.

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  3. in 1.5 sdk they hardcoded one sample rate 8000/16/1. Just look into android sources

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  4. did you investigate audio latency? did you get some progress in this area?

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  5. @kevin: this is my email ID:
    earlenceferns@gmail.com

    @oleksander:
    there are lots of problems with the audio APIs in 1.5 I am trying to work around these problems.

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  6. I have three different phones, tell me if you want me to test some of this on any of them (ADP1, Google ION, HTC Hero).

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  7. @Gunnar - thanks, I will send some APKs in some time :)

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  8. Hello, nice work,can you post your code? or can you make a tutorial explaining how to do it?,
    I have managed to use AutdioTrack and AudioRecord but can't send the packets over JLibRTP. thanks maxsap

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