Error while removing fragment containing videoView in 4.0.4

Question

I have a fragment containing VideoView and few other views.

public class PlayerPane extends Fragment { 
    ... // static variables
    private ImageView imageView;
    private ImageView gifView;
    private VideoView videoView;
    private WebView webView;
    private PDFView pdfView;
    private MyScrollTextView scrollTextView;
    private MediaPlayer audioPlayer;
    ...

    @Override
    public void onDestroyView() {
        if (videoView != null && videoView.isPlaying()) {
            LOGGER.info("Stopping videoView");
            videoView.stopPlayback();
            videoView.suspend();
            videoView = null;
        }
        super.onDestroyView();
    }

Whenever I remove this fragment while the video is being played, IllegalStateException is being thrown only in Android 4.0.4 (No issue with versions above 4.0.4).

Following is the exception:

java.lang.IllegalStateException
    at android.media.MediaPlayer._reset(Native Method)
    at android.media.MediaPlayer.reset(MediaPlayer.java:1236)
    at android.widget.VideoView.release(VideoView.java:549)
    at android.widget.VideoView.access$2300(VideoView.java:49)
    at android.widget.VideoView$6.surfaceDestroyed(VideoView.java:537)
    at android.view.SurfaceView.updateWindow(SurfaceView.java:581)
    at android.view.SurfaceView.onWindowVisibilityChanged(SurfaceView.java:290)
    at android.view.View.dispatchDetachedFromWindow(View.java:9823)
    at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchDetachedFromWindow(ViewGroup.java:2266)
    at android.view.ViewGroup.removeViewInternal(ViewGroup.java:3588)
    at android.view.ViewGroup.removeViewInternal(ViewGroup.java:3568)
    at android.view.ViewGroup.removeView(ViewGroup.java:3516)
    at android.app.FragmentManagerImpl.moveToState(FragmentManager.java:951)
    at android.app.FragmentManagerImpl.removeFragment(FragmentManager.java:1123)
    at android.app.BackStackRecord.run(BackStackRecord.java:592)
    at android.app.FragmentManagerImpl.execPendingActions(FragmentManager.java:1382)
    at android.app.FragmentManagerImpl$1.run(FragmentManager.java:426)
    at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:605)
    at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:92)
    at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137)
    at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4424)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511)
    at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:784)
    at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:551)

This is how I remove the fragment:

getFragmentManager.beginTransaction().remove(fragmentToBeRemoved).commit();

What is causing this IllegalStateException and how do I resolve this? Anything pointing towards the solution would be of great help.

Answer 1

I suggest you take a different approach. Before you remove the fragment. Call this code before you attempt to remove the fragment.

videoView.stopPlayback();
videoView.suspend();

As is evident from the stack trace, when you remove the fragment, What Android does is to remove the VideoView (it's a view after all) which results in Videoview Attempting to release the underlying Mediaplayer. But the Mediaplayer itself might not be a state to be released which is causing this issue. Ideally this well might have been handled within VideocView, but looks like no

Answer 2

I think you call reset() after release() and this throw illegalstateexception.

Answer 3

See the code given on this URL. This is from the actual android github repo. https://github.com/android/platform_frameworks_base/blob/866658261f4613e17ed6f39a74975ad0c9f40767/media/jni/android_media_MediaPlayer.cpp

the reset function from java calls the native _reset function which is given in the CPP file in this URL this is very hard to debug as it is a JNI calls which can not be debugged. So In my opinion it is very hard to know what is going wrong unless we really know what exactly you are doing