[video_player] VideoPlayerController.initialize() never return if the file is invalid (text file)

Steps to reproduce

on mac os

      VideoPlayerController controller = VideoPlayerController.file(file);
      await controller.initialize();

if file is a .fish file (a shell script that is not a video but a text file) await controller.initialize(); will never return or throw an exception, you wait indefinitely...

Expected results

if the file is not a video it should throw an exception

Actual results

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@stephane-archer

Thanks for the report @stephane-archer
I tried a sample text file with plugin's example with which I received below log:

Caused by: com.google.android.exoplayer2.source.UnrecognizedInputFormatException: None of the available extractors (FlvExtractor, FlacExtractor, WavExtractor, FragmentedMp4Extractor, Mp4Extractor, AmrExtractor, PsExtractor, OggExtractor, TsExtractor, MatroskaExtractor, AdtsExtractor, Ac3Extractor, Ac4Extractor, Mp3Extractor, AviExtractor, JpegExtractor) could read the stream.
E/ExoPlayerImplInternal(29974):       at com.google.android.exoplayer2.source.BundledExtractorsAdapter.init(BundledExtractorsAdapter.java:92)
E/ExoPlayerImplInternal(29974):       at com.google.android.exoplayer2.source.ProgressiveMediaPeriod$ExtractingLoadable.load(ProgressiveMediaPeriod.java:1017)
E/ExoPlayerImplInternal(29974):       at com.google.android.exoplayer2.upstream.Loader$LoadTask.run(Loader.java:412)
E/ExoPlayerImplInternal(29974):       at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1137)
E/ExoPlayerImplInternal(29974):       at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:637)
E/ExoPlayerImplInternal(29974):       at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:1012)
E/flutter (29974): [ERROR:flutter/runtime/dart_vm_initializer.cc(41)] Unhandled Exception: PlatformException(VideoError, Video player had error com.google.android.exoplayer2.ExoPlaybackException: Source error, null, null)
E/flutter (29974):

Do you see same exception ? It does throw .UnrecognizedInputFormatException which seem to be expected as the file passed is non-video file.

@darshankawar

@darshankawar I don't see any exception on MacOS. await controller.initialize(); never finish.
You should probably do the same test on MacOS

I tried plugin example and ran (basic.dart) on desktop and used below sample non-video file which gave me below exception:

https://example-files.online-convert.com/document/txt/example.txt',

https://github.com/flutter/packages/blob/f4719ca2feffe9831c42371488f179b438a1cdf8/packages/video_player/video_player/example/lib/basic.dart#L30

[ERROR:flutter/runtime/dart_vm_initializer.cc(41)] Unhandled Exception: PlatformException(VideoError, Failed to load video: Operation Stopped, null, null)

Does it represent your case ?

no, await controller.initialize(); never return, throw, or finish in any way. the code is just blocked here forever.
I think this should at least timeout.

in this case, the file is: "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/fractale/Desktop/proxy_research/benchmarktorun.fish"
it has execution permission and the content is:

#!/usr/bin/env fish
# ffmpeg -i a.mov -vcodec prores_ks -profile:v 0 -vf scale=-1:540 btmp.mov
hyperfine --warmup 5  --prepare 'rm btmp.mov || true' 'ffmpeg -i a.mov -vcodec prores_ks -profile:v 0 -vf scale=-1:540 btmp.mov' 'ffmpeg -i a.mov -vcodec prores_ks -profile:v 1 -vf scale=-1:540 btmp.mov' 'ffmpeg -i a.mov -vcodec prores_ks -profile:v 2 -vf scale=-1:540 btmp.mov' 'ffmpeg -i a.mov -vcodec prores_ks -profile:v 3 -vf scale=-1:540 btmp.mov' 'ffmpeg -i a.mov -vcodec prores_ks -profile:v 4 -vf scale=-1:540 btmp.mov' 'ffmpeg -i a.mov -vcodec prores_ks -profile:v 5 -vf scale=-1:540 btmp.mov'

Thanks for the update. Keeping the issue open for tracking.

Currently the way the plugin is designed, initialize completion is driven by event channel callbacks rather than an async method channel response, which makes it easy to never resolve the callback. It looks like what happens here is probably than we send an error event to the stream, but never associate it with initialize.

In the short term we could potentially work around it with a new event stream type just for initialization errors, but we should redesign the flow for initialize in general to use a response.

@stuartmorgan

@stuartmorgan is there anything I can run to help you understand better the issue?

[video_player_avfoundation] send video load failure even when eventsi…

fix: added video initialization timeout (#3313)

[video_player_avfoundation] send video load failure even when eventsi…

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[video_player] VideoPlayerController.initialize() never return if the file is invalid (text file) #147707

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[video_player] VideoPlayerController.initialize() never return if the file is invalid (text file) #147707

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darshankawar commented on May 2, 2024

stephane-archer commented on May 2, 2024

darshankawar commented on May 3, 2024

stephane-archer commented on May 3, 2024

stephane-archer commented on May 3, 2024

darshankawar commented on May 6, 2024

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stuartmorgan-g commented on May 13, 2024

stephane-archer commented on May 13, 2024

stuartmorgan-g commented on Nov 22, 2024

ddikman commented on May 26, 2025

choim4389 commented on Oct 24, 2025

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