Question

I’m using the MediaPlayer class in an app that I’m currently working on. I want to hold on to an instance of the MediaPlayer class for the lifetime of my Activity. I’m releasing the resources from the MediaPlayer class in the onPause() { } method of the activity, however when the activity starts I see the following warning pop up in the LogCat window:

W/MediaPlayer-JNI(16795): MediaPlayer finalized without being released

Any idea what I’m doing wrong here or how to remove this warning? It doesn’t appear to cause any issues and the sound works just fine.

I have a bit too much code to post because I wrapped a few objects to allow state to be managed (the MediaPlayer class doesn’t currently provide state information), and various other reasons, but the code is pretty much:

@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    initialiseSounds(this);
}

@Override
protected void onPause()
{
    soundManager.releaseResources();
}

@Override
protected void onResume()
{
    initialiseSounds(this);
}

With this method in my SoundManager class:

public void releaseResources()
{
    player.release();
}

And in initialiseSounds I’m doing:

MediaPlayer player = new MediaPlayer();
player.reset();
player.setAudioStreamType(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC);
AssetFileDescriptor assetFileDescriptor = context.getResources().openRawResourceFd(resourceId);
setDataSource(player, assetFileDescriptor);

When I want to play the track I do:

player.prepare();
player.start();

Appreciate any advice,

Thanks,

Answer 1

I’m not completely sure of the origin of that message, but notice here that you’re creating two MediaPlayers: one in onCreate and one in onResume.

That message seems to indicate that it doesn’t like that a MP is being finalized (GC’d) without being ‘released’. It may be referring to that first mediaPlayer you create in onCreate, which is lost after you reassign it in onResume.

Perhaps the error will go away if you only create one MediaPlayer instead of two?