ExoPlayer provides an easy way to play a selected part of a media that also works for live streams. We consider two ways to achieve it.
I use ExoPlayer from Media3, version "1.1.1":
implementation("androidx.media3:media3-exoplayer:1.1.1")
In order to configure clipping for the media a MediaItem has the clippingConfiguration field:
val mediaItem = MediaItem.Builder()
.setUri(VIDEO_URI)
.setClippingConfiguration(
ClippingConfiguration.Builder()
.setStartPositionMs(0)
.setEndPositionMs(3000)
.build()
)
.build()
To set the media segment we need two methods from ClippingConfiguration.Builder:
fun setStartPositionMs(startPositionMs: Long) - sets the start position in milliseconds which must be a value larger than or equal to zero.
fun setEndPositionMs(endPositionMs: Long) - sets the end position in milliseconds which must be a value larger than or equal to zero.
There is a special constant to indicate that the end position is the end of the media - C.TIME_END_OF_SOURCE. This constant is equal to Long.MIN_VALUE.
To play the media in a loop we need to set the repeatMode:
exoPlayer.repeatMode = Player.REPEAT_MODE_ONE
After these steps ExoPlayer starts to play the selected media segment infinitely.
Under the hood, the player uses ClippingMediaSource to clip the media segment, we can use it directly:
val mediaSourceFactory = DefaultMediaSourceFactory(context)
val mediaItem = MediaItem.fromUri(VIDEO_URI)
val mediaSource = ClippingMediaSource(
mediaSourceFactory.createMediaSource(mediaItem),
0,
3000000
)
exoPlayer.setMediaSource(mediaSource)
Note, there is one important difference, MediaItem.clippingConfiguration methods take the time in milliseconds, whereas ClippingMediaSource constructor takes the time in microseconds. 1 millisecond is 1000 microseconds.
To convert you can use the utility method from the media3 library:
androidx.media3.common.util.Util.msToUs(timeMs: Long)