Android 4.0 support for the 2 decoders instances on the omap4

some answers to questions;

1. Android 4.0 support for the 2 decoder instances on the omap 4 platform i.e. panda board .

A: it must be supported by Android, if you are using OMAP4 and using HW codecs just take in consideration that only one overlay can be used for first video instance, second needs to use or software renderer from view's setlayertype(..) or GPX surface.

2. Android 4.0 substile and close caption support

A: it is not supported but could be implemented by sending subtitles to a graphics layer of DSS.

3. Picture in Picture support on android 4.0 for omap4 platform

A: I don't have any data about this.

4.Dynamic codec upgradtion on android 4.0 to add  new codec to the system at run time

A: (using Stagefright) do you meant at Android layer with software codecs, by what i have read in Android code it is not possible since most of the codec selection code is at compilation level, but it is possible to select between many OMX_plugins that allows change or add a new codec, but it will require code changes, like the ones made to adding MPEG2 format from Froyo to Gingerbread, if you plan to update full system binaries (full system update) it must be possible.

 Note that Panda specific questions should be directed to pandaboard@googlegroups.com.

Some clarifications

1. Android 4.0 support for the 2 decoder instances on the omap 4 platform i.e. panda board .

A: Android framework supports an unlimited number of video decoder instances (resources permitting).  However, OMAP4 restricts the number of concurrent video decoder instances (even in paused state) based on memory and cpu bandwidth.  You can normally decode around 62MPixel/sec on a standard OMAP4.

2. Android 4.0 substile and close caption support

A: Android 4.0 does not provide stock subtitle support.  You would have to create a media player (or modify awesome player) to decode and display the subtitles.  E,g. You could use a TextView to display them.

3. Picture in Picture support on android 4.0 for omap4 platform

A: Android 4.0 does not provide stock Picture-in-Picture support.  Furthermore, there can only be one VideoView in the system, making PIP impossible using VideoViews (which is the normal way of displaying videos in the Android UI).  However, you could create a GL app/view that displays the 2 videos concurrently.