Adjust the buffer size of Mediacodec's decoder on Android 4.2

Question

I'm decoding a H.264 stream on Android 4.2 using Mediacodec. Unfortunately, the decoder always buffers 6-10 frames, which lead to annoying latency, and Android does not provide any API to adjust buffer size. So my question is, how to modify the Android source code (or the OMX driver) in order to reduce the buffer size for realtime video streaming?

Answer 1

Generally speaking, you don't. The number of buffers in the queue is determined by the codec. Different devices, and different codecs on the same device, can behave differently.

Unless you're using the software AVC codec, the codec implementation is provided as a binary by the hardware OEM, so there's no way to modify it (short of hex-editing).