Set AVC/H.264 profile when encoding video in Android using MediaCodec API
android, android-mediacodec
Solution
There is no explicit profile selection in the MediaCodec API. Codec will select a profile on its own. It will also select a level based on input width/height and frame-rate numbers, but it may select a level that is higher than minimum required for the configuration.
You can query the encoder codec for the supported levels to see which profiles it may generate, but you will not be able to select a preferred one. Most likely the codec will select the highest profile it can handle for the given level, but there is no guarantee for that.
Problem
Android provides a way to query the supported encoding profiles. But when setting up an encoder I cannot find the way to specify the desired profile to be used. Finding supported profile/level pairs Using the `MediaCodec` API in android you can call `getCodecInfo()` once you have chosen an encoder component. This returns a `MediaCodecInfo` object which provides details about the codec component being used. `getCapabilitiesForType()` returns a `CodecCapabilities` object, detailing what the codec is capable of. This contains an array of CodecProfileLevels which detail the supported profiles and levels which are supported. Trying to set the profile I can't see a field to set the profile for `MedieCodec` or for the `MediaFormat`. There is a `KEY_AAC_PROFILE` for `MediaFormat`, but in the reference it explicitly states this is for aac audio only. In `MediaCodec` there is a way to pass a `Bundle` of extra parameters to the codec using `setParameters()`. This looks like it has no generic documentation, and the parameters which are accepted will be different between codecs (different devices). Background Profiles specify a set of encoding features to use. Simple profiles are less computationally intense, but generally sacrifice quality for a given bit rate as a result. The levels specify the maximum resolution / bit-rate which are supported for a given profile. I expected levels usually to be associated with decoding capability, but since it is describing a hardware encoder which has to run in real time, having a maximum setting makes sense to me. META: (I originally had a lot more links to each class + function I mentioned, but I had to remove them because I don't yet have the rep to post more than 2 links.)