Play a video using JavaFX on Raspberry Pi

Question

I need to run a JavaFX project on Raspberry Pi (RASPBIAN JESSIE). The project includes usage of WebView and MediaView/MediaPlayer. Since Oracle does not support JavaFX on ARM platforms, I tried JavaFX port by Gluon (JavaFX Embedded SDK 8.60.8). WebView works almost perfectly. However, when I want to play a video using MediaPlayer/MediaView, I get the exception:

Error in GstPipelineFactory: can't find element for factory named qtdemux
Exception in Application start method
java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:497)
    at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.launchApplicationWithArgs(LauncherImpl.java:389)
    at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.launchApplication(LauncherImpl.java:328)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:497)
    at sun.launcher.LauncherHelper$FXHelper.main(LauncherHelper.java:767)
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Exception in Application start method
    at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.launchApplication1(LauncherImpl.java:917)
    at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.lambda$launchApplication$156(LauncherImpl.java:182)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Caused by: MediaException: UNKNOWN : com.sun.media.jfxmedia.MediaException: Could not create player! : com.sun.media.jfxmedia.MediaException: Could not create player!
    at javafx.scene.media.MediaException.exceptionToMediaException(MediaException.java:146)
    at javafx.scene.media.MediaPlayer.init(MediaPlayer.java:511)
    at javafx.scene.media.MediaPlayer.<init>(MediaPlayer.java:414)
    at zirro.App.start(App.java:21)
    at com.sun.javafx.application.LauncherImpl.lambda$launchApplication1$163(LauncherImpl.java:863)
    at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$runAndWait$176(PlatformImpl.java:326)
    at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$null$174(PlatformImpl.java:295)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at com.sun.javafx.application.PlatformImpl.lambda$runLater$175(PlatformImpl.java:294)
    at com.sun.glass.ui.monocle.RunnableProcessor.runLoop(RunnableProcessor.java:92)
    at com.sun.glass.ui.monocle.RunnableProcessor.run(RunnableProcessor.java:51)
    ... 1 more
Caused by: com.sun.media.jfxmedia.MediaException: Could not create player!
    at com.sun.media.jfxmediaimpl.NativeMediaManager.getPlayer(NativeMediaManager.java:224)
    at com.sun.media.jfxmedia.MediaManager.getPlayer(MediaManager.java:104)
    at javafx.scene.media.MediaPlayer.init(MediaPlayer.java:467)
    ... 10 more

Any ideas how to successfully run a JavaFX application with WebView and MediaView/MediaPlayer on Raspberry Pi?

Answer 1

WebView and Media were never part of the JavaFX ARM distribution, but Gluon recently added it to the embedded SDK that can be downloaded from here and installed with a recent JDK for ARM, available here.

Media requires a few extra steps as it depends in the native drivers that usually are not fully installed on a regular Jessie distribution.

First install these drivers:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-good
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad 

Now edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add at the end:

deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main

Save the file (Ctrl+O, Ctrl+X).

Finally update and install the drivers:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-alsa

Now you can try to run again your JavaFX application.

If you find again the same exception (MediaException: UNKNOWN), check if it shows this message: Error in GstPipelineFactory, notice the driver that is missing, and try to install it.