Android Question MediaPlayerStream with creds for basic auth?

miker2069 · Jun 7, 2019

I'm trying to stream just the audio from an IP camera. The camera I'm using (Amcrest) publishes the URL for the audio stream as:

http://ip/cgi-bin/audio.cgi?action=getAudio&httptype=singlepart&channel=1

I can put that in a browser and it pops up a basic url auth dialog and after entering creds it works. Unfortunately I tried the format:

http://userassword@ip/cgi-bin/audio.cgi?action=getAudio&httptype=singlepart&channel=1

Which doesn't seem to seemless auth in a browser. VLC (VideoLan app) seems to do a better job at it though - and I assume it's parsing it out and handling the auth behind the scenes.

The MediaPlayerStream type of the Audio library doesn't seem to have a way to pass in or set creds for basic auth on a URL. I took a long shot and maybe thought if I authenticated with an HTTPJob first then that would work - it didn't (thought I'd try anyway).

So is there anyway to authenticate against the streaming server and use MediaPlayerStream?

I guess as a harder workaround would be to get the raw bytes (the IP camera can encode as AAC or G.711A or PCM - my particular camera only supports the first 2 though). The web service returns:

HTTP Code:
20 0 OK
Content Type: Audio/G.711A
Body:
<Audio data>
<Audio data>

Saw I guess I could use that and pipe it to an AudioStreamer? I was hoping for a slightly easier solution. Also I need to see if audiostream supports AAC or G.711A encoding.

Any insight is appreciated.

Thank You!

moster67 · Jun 8, 2019

It was a long time ago I did this but maybe you need to encode it...
If I recall correctly, you can use StringUtils to encode it.

Erel · Jun 9, 2019

Try it with ExoPlayer.

miker2069 · Jun 10, 2019

So I gave expoplayer a whirl. I based my code attempt office this stack overflow post on authenticating streams in exoplayer (found here). After some time I came up with the following inline java. Th idea (so I thought) was to base64 encode the username and password, and pass that string *and* the ref to the SimpleExoPlayer instace from b4a to my inline java. In that routine it would setup the authorization header, and then associate it with a data source. Theoretically it should connect the stream url, authenticate, and then I should be able to return back to b4a and play it. Here's my code:

B4X:

#If JAVA

import anywheresoftware.b4a.keywords.B4AApplication;
import anywheresoftware.b4a.objects.SimpleExoPlayerWrapper;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.upstream.DefaultHttpDataSourceFactory;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.upstream.DefaultHttpDataSource;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.ExtractorsFactory;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.source.ExtractorMediaSource;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.extractor.DefaultExtractorsFactory;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.source.MediaSource;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.source.LoopingMediaSource;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.SimpleExoPlayer;
import com.google.android.exoplayer2.util.Util;
import android.net.Uri;

public String FirstMethod(String encoded, anywheresoftware.b4a.objects.SimpleExoPlayerWrapper exoplayer) {

   // encrypt Authdata
    //byte[] toEncrypt = (username + ":" + password).getBytes();
    //String encoded = android.util.Base64.encodeToString(toEncrypt, Base64.DEFAULT);
   
    String ua = Util.getUserAgent(this, "exoplayer2example");
           
    DefaultHttpDataSourceFactory dataSourceFactory = new DefaultHttpDataSourceFactory(ua);
    DefaultHttpDataSource source = new DefaultHttpDataSource(ua,null);
    dataSourceFactory.setDefaultRequestProperty("Authorization","Basic "+encoded);
   
    ExtractorsFactory extractorsFactory = new DefaultExtractorsFactory();
    MediaSource videoSource = new ExtractorMediaSource(Uri.parse("http://10.0.0.111/cgi-bin/audio.cgi?action=getAudio&httptype=singlepart&channel=1"), dataSourceFactory,extractorsFactory, null, null);
    final LoopingMediaSource loopingSource = new LoopingMediaSource(videoSource);
   
    exoplayer.Prepare(videoSource);
   
   return ua;
   

}
#End If

For the moment, I hard coded the url to the ip camera audio stream inside the java routine.

I setup my SimpleExoPlayer and my encoded username/password (I just hacked up the exoplayer example) and pass everything up to my routine like so:

B4X:

Dim s As String = NativeMe.RunMethod("FirstMethod",Array(encoded_creds,player1))
   
    Log("ret: " & s) 'will print Hello World!
    Activity.LoadLayout("1")
    SimpleExoPlayerView1.Player = player1

Actually it *seemed* to attempt to authenticate as now I see 401 auth errors thrown from DefaultHttpDataSourceFactory in the log. After looking at a successful auth in my browser in fidler, I realize that my camera requires digest authentication and not basic (which is what I was using because I copied from the stackoverflow example). Digest auth is a different beast altogether - I'm sure it's doable, it's just not trivial (I haven't searched the forum yet to see if anyone has manually setup the digest auth header - there is java code out there so I know I could probably adapt that). Anyway, that's as far as I got with the exoplayer approach. Seems like auth won't be trivial at all (plus I'm not totally up to speed on the best way to setup inline java so I know my code is very crude).

Apparently this is a fairly frequently appearing question and some of the other alternatives suggested using a WebView and just hide it if you're just streaming audio. I tested that as well and that was very simple (after overriding the UserNameandPassword WebView event). It worked well. I don't know how much control I'll have over volume or muting or anything like that, but for now that works. I plan on trying to get digest auth working since I think I got pretty far with the exoplayer approach.

I figured I share my progress so far in case anyone comes across the need for authenticated audio/video streams on android. Any comments or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Android Question MediaPlayerStream with creds for basic auth?

miker2069

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moster67

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Erel

B4X founder

miker2069

Active Member

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Android Question MediaPlayerStream with creds for basic auth?

miker2069

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moster67

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