Develop Bugs

"Who is this 'Mediaserver' and why is he sucking my battery dry?"

Just solved a really annoying battery drain issue. Figured I'd post the results...
I noticed last week that my phone was going through the battery MUCH faster than normal. A check of Settings/About Phone/battery use told me that the "Mediaserver" was using over 35% of my battery, surpassing the phone standby -- which is saying a LOT given what my T-Mo reception is like.
Now, I'm still learning, so when the description says is does something with running apps, I assume that the issue is an app I recently installed, so I remove apps I recently installed or updated. Nope.
I saw another post about a laggy G2 that seemed to also have battery issues. It recommended using Watchdog Lite to see what was happening. So, off to the Android Market.
After installing Watchdog Lite, I saw that the CPU was 0% idle with 75-95% "nice." Well, no idle = battery suckage, so off to see what tasks are using CPU. The initial check didn't show anything -- until I enabled monitoring "Phone Processes." The alerts for the "mediaserver" "linux task" showed that this process was taking every cpu cycle it could. Off to Google.
Did a search on "android mediaserver loop" and found a couple of bugzillas that essentially said that a corrupt media file (pic, movie or sound) could send mediaserverover the edge. So, I started to move *every* picture off the sd card onto my computer's HD.
Knew I was on to something when mediaserver stopped going crazy once usb storage was turned on. So, I moved all the image and movie files off and turned off usb storage. The CPU spun back to100% busy, but slowed back down to about 9o% or more idle.
Now all I have to do is find the bad file or files, and I can add it to the bugzilla.
EDIT: It seems that this has also made the cooliris gallery wake up and start updating again. So anyone seeing that the gallery isn't updating may need to see if their mediaserver linux task is unusually busy. If so, offload as many media files as possible and see whap happens...
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk

Very useful post. Thanks!

I saw this sucking down battery for me as well while playing around with CM7 nightlies, but never thought too much about it. Good find!

I've noticed this issue with mediaserver too but never managed to find what's causing this.
Thanks for the tips

there might be a difference here but media server from G1 (htc dream) was the music stock music player. it might be different here but thats what it was in the G1

lil-devil said:
there might be a difference here but media server from G1 (htc dream) was the music stock music player. it might be different here but thats what it was in the G1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
actually the stock music player is /system/app/music.apk on all vanilla android phones.

I believe that music player depend of mediaserver.
I have installed system panel and noticed a 30% cpu usage when I play some music with Cyanogen 7 RC2.
I will try with another Rom to compare the result.

I found my cause for the problem
I got really frustrated with the Galaxy S2 because of this mediaserver issue...
From wat i have researched, I found that once the 'gallery' is opened and closed,
Phone keeps using the cpu 100%.
Phone's back becomes red hot.
The battery drains rapidly in 2-3 hours.
I plug it on to a charger it doesn't charge up
the mediaserver process comes up in the 'battery usage' with 60% usage
Now, I switch off the phone. Boot it up. Charge the phone to 100%. Its all perfect and no heating up too. After 7 hours of usage, no mediaserver process in 'battery usage'.
I went into the gallery once. Browsed some photos. And Closed it.
Now it all started again. I've tried this 3 times now.
And I have no idea wats wrong with the gallery.

Do what I did and either move all the media files off the sd card or drop ". nomedia" files in strategic locations. (Don't forget to look all over the card because they could be in unexpected places.
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Tapatalk

could this mediaserver also be caused by lots of Pandora listening?

Mr. Turbofan said:
could this mediaserver also be caused by lots of Pandora listening?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems to be related to streaming audio also. I'm trying to figure out why since moving to GB my battery is being drained by media server when I never had this issue on Froyo. It only seems to take up the majority of the battery time when I'm listeing to Pandora over Bluetooth during the day.

Very interesting and usefull find, indeed.

Solving the problem lies in the options build.prop
must be changed:
---
media.stagefright.enable-player = true
---
to:
---
media.stagefright.enable-player = false
---
If this option is not in the file, it is necessary to add.

stopservice said:
Solving the problem lies in the options build.prop
must be changed:
---
media.stagefright.enable-player = true
---
to:
---
media.stagefright.enable-player = false
---
If this option is not in the file, it is necessary to add.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't think that is the cause. Mine is already set to false and still have the problem.

Is there a process we can freeze to stop this.

You really *don't* want to kill this process as it is the cataloger for *both* the music player and the picture gallery. Your best bet is to do something like I did to work around the issue.
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using Tapatalk

I started having the same issue (on Galaxy Note) today. Glad I found this thread in any case.
Once thing I noticed is PowerAmp plays sound files from games if you don't give it a media folder to stick to. I can only assume that it's using the media server to find these based on what someone in this thread said.
So it would seem that the .nomedia file method is definitely the best (to stop game sound files being found).
[Edit:] Oddly the behaviour stopped now. Mediaserver is no longer raping my battery. What do you think of the idea of putting .nomedia in every folder and then removing it from only folders you need (images, video and audio folders)?
You can easily do this by running:
Code:
for i in *; do cp file $i; done
from cli in Android (I think). "file" = <path to .nomedia>

No inherent reason you can't do that...
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using Tapatalk

mediaserver was not a notable issue for me untill 2 days before i installed "sprit fm".... then boom ...... mediaserver just gone mad and taking upto 65% of my battery..... now uninstalling "spirit fm" and will see what happens.

Mediaserver and Arel WARS
Hey all! Glad I found this thread. Got a Samsung Galaxy SII Skyrocket I727 from AT&T. From what I researched mediaserver is part of a standard for DLNA. I am a newb on xda so I cannot post links however search on youtube "Android DLNA MediaServer" and you can get a downlow as to what it is meant for.
Anyways mediaserver gets to be 400+ and sometimes even 500+mb according to Watchdog when playing a GAMEVIL game called Arel WARS. This is the first time I have ever had a problem with mediaserver and ONLY happens when I play Arel WARS. I reboot my phone and see mediaserver at 2.7mb. I start Arel WARS and BAM 100+mb already. After playing for about 20 minutes my phone becomes laggy and the game freezes up. I check Watchdog and it shows 400+mb being used by mediaserver. I then kill Arel WARS and mediaserver is still sucking 400+mb. I try several types of app killers but none can even see the process in order to kill it. I try an app called "reboot" that is supposed to simulate a reboot by killing apps and processes but mediaserver is still sucking the life out of my phone. Bottom line the only way I can kill mediaserver is by rebooting the phone and then its back to 2.7mb and it stays that way ONLY until I start playing Arel WARS. I can launch gallery all day long and media player and mediaserver is good.
Just giving my two cents. I emailed Watchdog dev to see if he can help me out since Watchdog seems to be the only app that can actually see mediaserver and also emailed GAMEVIL to see if they might have a memory leak problem somewhere. I will update when I get word from either.
UPDATE:
I recorded my phones screen to show you mediaserver and it sucking the life out of my phone. There is no way to kill it to my knowledge and the more I play Arel Wars the more it consumes precious ram. Copy this link into your browser to download the video. Its about 10 minutes long and about 18mb.
dl.dropbox.com/u/6778642/Android/Mediaserver_ArelWars.mp4.
You should be able to play it in your browser.
BTW I am still waiting on either GAMEVIL or the dev of Watchdog to hit me up with an email so I'll update if and when I get word.

[Q] Mediaserver battery drain

I've got the One X for about a month now, but I keep getting this issue now and then, and it's really really annoying.
It always happens in morning, and I only notice it when my low-battery signal goes off (this morning at 10:00 already). The phone feels very warm, and it's already depleted to 10%. When checking battery usage, it says "Mediaserver" used 85% of the energy!
Now this morning, I didn't play any music or watch any photo or video. On the tram to work, I only used a coupe apps (Engadget, Tweakers, Nu.nl (news site), "volvo ocean race game", autoblog.nl and a soccer app (voetbal international)). But I've used these same sites on my Desire and never had a problem with them.
It's a really annoying problem, and I don't seem to be able to turn of "mediaserver" untill my battery dies before lunch! I don't have a desk job (doctor in hospital) so I don't have any means to recharge during the day...
Now this doesn't happen every day, but 4 times already (that's once every week!).
Please help!

i have had it once, seems it gets locked in with you play sounds. have you tried a factory reset might help.

Try clearing data of all media applications (gallery, music etc...).
I guess your media index got corrupted, this happened to me before and this is how I solved it. I actually saw the reason in logs.
Install OS Monitor from the market and take a look at the logs of mediaserver

No haven't tried a factory reset, wish it wouldn't have to come to that. But a normal reset did solve the problem sometimes. And I haven't played any sounds this morning, however only when muting the phone with the volume rockers i do get a sounds...

[Q] Galaxy Nexus extremely laggy after loading music into storage

Hello all,
I have a question about an issue that has been plaguing my phone for about the last month. I have tried numerous ROMs, kernels and basebands (which shouldn't make a difference but it's worth a try). Basically what is happening is when I have a clean install of a ROM with nothing loaded into storage, my phone is snappy and works perfectly, like butter, no matter the ROM or kernel. As soon as I load music on to my phone, the phone slows down dramatically. I start having "xxx is not responding" messages from every app I load up and the phone slows down to a crawl. I have tried many ROMs and kernels. If I install a new ROM without wiping my internal storage, the phone boots up with the newly loaded ROM slowly and can barely make it through the Android setup without crashing. If I wipe the internal storage and load a new ROM it works perfectly and snappy.
Does anyone know of a reason why this would happen? I am surprised that some music files could slow down the phone so much. Any thoughts are appreciated. I haven't tried going back to stock, but that is my next step. Somehow I think it would still slow down. I got the phone with ICS on it and immediately rooted and loaded JB ROMs on it. It didn't really start at first until I loaded my 10GB music collection on there. Any ideas?
Thanks!

Media storage scans new media and logs it into the appropriate apps.
Even with what I drop on (~4 gigs of music) it can lag for a few hours even.
Without you doing further testing and diagnosis I would guess that is your problem.
Settings>Battery should show media scanner high on the list.
Have you tried to let it settle (build up caches and read the files) for a day?

Yes, I was on a trip last week and let it sit for three days. I figured as much for the media scans, so I let it sit for a day. I don't see media scanner anywhere on my battery list. Just mediaserver, as I try to listen to the music that is on the phone as much as I can without locking anything up. I have:
Screen
Phone Idle
Mediaserver
Cell standby
Winamp
FBTouch
Android OS
Chrome
Android System
Voice Calls

jlink38 said:
Yes, I was on a trip last week and let it sit for three days. I figured as much for the media scans, so I let it sit for a day. I don't see media scanner anywhere on my battery list. Just mediaserver, as I try to listen to the music that is on the phone as much as I can without locking anything up. I have:
Screen
Phone Idle
Mediaserver
Cell standby
Winamp
FBTouch
Android OS
Chrome
Android System
Voice Calls
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe you need to defragment (I kid, I kid)

danielsaenz said:
Maybe you need to defragment (I kid, I kid)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sometimes I wish I could.

Figured it out. I re encoded my music to VBR and copied it to my phone and all is well!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Hi, sorry for my eng., I have the same problem as you. But I think it's not only music. Tested read\write speed on clean stock, it's awesome. Then filled storage with music (6 gigs) and movies (6 gigs) - write speed decreased from 12 MB\s to 0,7 MB/s!!! WTF?! Then I deleted all music and movies (+12 Gb free) and ran tests again - read\write speed still low! Forever Gone (Nexus 7 memory lag's solution) doesn't helped.
Any ideas?

Well, reported to google about this problem. Others should look for an Issue 39154 on google code threads and join discussion
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda app-developers app

[Q] Media server

When I check my battery status from "settings->battery->*press battery graph*" I notice something called "mediaserver, consuming 80% of my battery. the stats show it keeping the phone awake almost right throughout. I googled this up but couldnt find anything meaningful apart from some forums calling it an android bug.
one of the forums said it is to do with Music player (any music player not just the stock player) that continuously looks for details of tracks and gets stuck with a bad mp3 . I deleted all songs from my phone and also uninstalled "tunein radio". The media server is still not going away and keeping the device awake.
Anyone else experiencing this? If this is an android bug then this is extremely frustrating.

Awful battery since latest update aw2

Yesterday during my sleep time in sleep mode my watch used 75% of the battery today in 3hours I'm down 25% any ideas ?

I checked my watch 51% of the battery on the music app.. I don't have music on my watch.... anyone can help me explain that ?

Glad I came to this site. Havent downloaded this update and hesitating to do so.
My app says its R820XXU1CTI4 so I have icon on my phone.

I found the problem it was reporting 50+ % of music app usage it seems that when I'm watching twitch it thinks it's music so it send the pasuse continue play to the phone, I disabled music control from the phone to the watch and voila , however music control uses too much battery

chuby007 said:
I found the problem it was reporting 50+ % of music app usage it seems that when I'm watching twitch it thinks it's music so it send the pasuse continue play to the phone, I disabled music control from the phone to the watch and voila , however music control uses too much battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Where did you find the disable music control setting?

I would like to know how to disable the music control as well, as I have the exact problem. Listened to podcasts overnight and saw a %50 batter usage from the music app despite having never opened it.

hydroxide said:
I would like to know how to disable the music control as well, as I have the exact problem. Listened to podcasts overnight and saw a %50 batter usage from the music app despite having never opened it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
go to the music app, to the right it has a phone icon, press it, it will change to a watch icon, it will disable the controls... and basically the same happend to me I slept with music, and woke up to 25% of battery this fixed it

chuby007 said:
go to the music app, to the right it has a phone icon, press it, it will change to a watch icon, it will disable the controls... and basically the same happend to me I slept with music, and woke up to 25% of battery this fixed it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This works one time, hitting pause and play again resets it on my device.
Manually having to turn off music control every time you hit play is not ideal for my use. Apparently another Samsung watch had the same problem a year or two ago and was only resolved with an update.

Fixx63 said:
This works one time, hitting pause and play again resets it on my device.
Manually having to turn off music control every time you hit play is not ideal for my use. Apparently another Samsung watch had the same problem a year or two ago and was only resolved with an update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Update, this setting did not initially stick reversing itself. It now appears to be sticking and working as intended.

How did you get it to stick ? Mine keeps automatically switching back whenever I stop and start a new track.

hydroxide said:
How did you get it to stick ? Mine keeps automatically switching back whenever I stop and start a new track.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just played with it and now it's not working again. I'm not able to figure out a sequence to get it to stick.