Multiple Instances of MediaElement

[ne0rrmatrix]

The idea of having multiple media elements in a view inside a carousel view or collection view is compelling. It works sort of in android. In windows it does not work correctly most of the time. On iOS and Mac it is incredibly problematic and breaks frequently with fixes taking a long time.

Most media players offer the option for a single instance. The idea is that you reuse a single instance to play different video's. How many people need or want to play multiple video's at the same time? Are their any real world use cases?

If we go to single model of supporting just one instance I suggest we create pages in sample app to illustrate how one might transition from inside a collection or carousel view to a single instance of media element? What do people in the community think? Am I missing anything obvious or are there a lot of use cases for having multiple independent media elements? I understand the use case of a grid of items that play video. But can we not demonstrate how to do that without creating an instance for each video? It seems like that by itself would use a lot of memory and hurt performance?

I am looking for people thoughts and opinions on this and will try and bring it up at this months monthly toolkit meeting on Thursday October 2nd.

[ghost]

@ne0rrmatrix here is one Has anyone experienced something similar or know how I can use MediaElement in multiple CollectionView without the app crashing on Android or giving an error on iOS?.

Second is Load more than one URL and should stream next and previous video's in backend without delay. #2427).

This one is also related - How to get CarouselView current and previews UI Element. #2648.

Preformance wise about MediaElement? MediaElement using 100% CPU inside CarouselView. #2642

This is not related to multiple MediaElement, but [related as a persistent MediaElement](Media Element - Persist across pages #2563).

Loopback to your question - Update Media Element to add missing TODO's #2501.

[ghost]

@ne0rrmatrix just an observation. There are some discussions never answered and 80% of them is related to MediaElement, always something new, not like a general idea. Maybe there are some users who would like to use MAUI + MediaElement, but have specific needs?

• MediaElement - Add BufferingProgress property #2637
• MediaElement Android ExoPlayer Caching #2569
• Global Audio Player (not tied to a page like MediaElement) #2565
• Android MediaElement Change hover background Opacity/Color #2387
• MediaElement: Disable background playback #2350
• MediaElement: 3sec. delay start HLS-Stream #2261
• Update MediaElement Transport Controls for Windows #2236
• MediaElement.MetadataTitle from Audio stream (f.e. shoutcast radio) #2231
• Allow adjusting MediaElement status polling timer tick rate #1975

[dodgex]

I am one of the users you mentioned :D I recently evaluated dotnet/maui as react native replacement and with dotnet/maui 10 now working with xcode 26 i finally got an minimal poc running. But for my App i would need #2231 ti get the metadata from a running radio stream.

[dodgex]

@ne0rrmatrix any feedback on those topics? :) I still have a bit hope, that MAUI could be a replacement for react native in my app but missing media information from the stream (#2231) is a show stopper :(

[ne0rrmatrix]

All of those are great ideas. You are welcome to create new discussions about changes and if you look here: https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/Maui/wiki/Submitting-a-New-Feature you can learn more about the process of adding new features. ATM I have many open PR's waiting on review by other maintainers. Until some of those are resolved and/or merged/close I will be focusing on bug reports. I would love to just start adding new features but that takes a lot of time and effort. I have the time but it also requires others to review it. If there is a large community interested where people are actively up-voting it helps to get traction for adding new features. You are also welcome to contribute yourself and start the ball rolling for adding any of these. Just look at the document above and you can help out by contributing too.

[dodgex]

Thank you for your response. The feature I am interested in already has a "new feature"-discussion topic at #2231 and i guess duplicates should be avoided.

I totally appreciate your work, and the work of all other contributors. Also I totally understand your point with many open PR and the time it takes to build a feature and to review those changes. I am really sorry, if for some reason I might have came across otherwise.

You are also welcome to contribute yourself and start the ball rolling for adding any of these. Just look at the document above and you can help out by contributing too.

As mentioned, there already is a discussion, even if it is missing detailed API Design suggestions (and any type of discussion so far :D).
From my understanding of the document, I would have to provide concrete API Design and hope for an approval of the discussion, to then draft/write a proposal that then again needs an approval. and two other rounds of apporval before opening the PR.

Beside the fact, that this is a lot of approvals (what i totally understand to keep the project clean), my biggest concern right now is, that I am a total beginner in terms of .Net let alone MAUI.

I could try to dig into the code of the toolkit and try to fiddle with the MediaElement stuff in the example app to learn/understand what it takes and then move back to the discussion/proposal phase with potentially having part of the changes ready.