What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so much?

[Chocoburger]

Here is a picture of my current battery stats:

So what exactly is Mediaserver? I haven't done much video or picture viewing on my phone. Used a little bit of youtube app, is that counted under Mediaserver, or under it's own separate category?

Note that I listen to music constantly via Rocket Player (as seen in screenshot above), is Mediaserver linked to that somehow? Since Rocket Player is already at 18% that would total to 48% battery drain just off local music (not online streaming).

So I'm trying to figure out which app is using up all this battery, I don't have an actual 'Mediaserver' app, so I know it's another app that's accessing 'Mediaserver'. Any information would be great since my battery is draining hard from this and yet I don't think I'm actually using this app at all.

 

[splmonster]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

16 hours and still at 96%? Seems like your battery is fine to me. It just shows of that amount of percentage used, what used the most of it. Stop worrying. That looks fine to me.

 

[Chocoburger]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

Eh, the system was in sleep mode for around 13 hours of that. The battery drain over 13 hours is probably 2-3%. If it was actually being used for 16 hours (even simple and basic stuff), that'd be friggin' amazing.

Still, I am curious to know what is mediaserver doing and which apps are accessing it. Anything to improve battery life would be great.

 

[vzwty]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

I've noticed mediaserver only shows on mine when I'm using a USB drive with OTG usb. It powers the USB device so it makes sense that it would drain some battery.Are you using any usb device?

 

[Small_law]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

I'm not exactly sure what media server is, but I think it has something to do with how the device finds locally-stored media files, like if you moved or downloaded MP3 files to the N7 so the Music app will see them. It could be a bug, but does restarting your N7 help? Does it ever finish running so much or is this a constant thing?

Try uninstalling the Rocket Player app to see if it is the culprit. I don't use that app, but there may be a conflict there. You can add it back again.

As an aside, I'm getting phenomenal battery life with my N7. Used it heavily yesterday for browsing, YouTube, and games. It was off charger at least 16 hours and I still had over 20% left at the end of the day.

Edit: if you uninstall rocket player, delete the cache And data in setting before you do. this will make sure that is that if the app is caching media files locally they won't be on the device.

 

[jasoncardenas21]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

This always shows up as taking most of my battery percentage on my RAZR Maxx. I've looked and can't find anything. I've even found a kill media server app on another forum and that doesn't seem to work either. It has to be tied to what Small_law said though because mine happens while listening to downloaded podcasts on DoggCatcher. I'll keep looking, but haven't been able to find anything yet.

 

[briankurtz79]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

Media server accesses local media files from your "SD" memory for playback. The only reason it seems so high is because all you've done is played music. 30% of 4% is only a little over 1% of battery. Think mathematically. Everything is relative

 

[Suntan]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

fwiw, I get media sever taking a fair percentage of my battery on my GSIII when I stream audio from Google Play. Don't know what it is.

It annoys me.

-Suntan

 

[Chocoburger]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

I've noticed mediaserver only shows on mine when I'm using a USB drive with OTG usb. It powers the USB device so it makes sense that it would drain some battery.Are you using any usb device?

No ICEMAN, I don't own an OTG cable yet, so it can't be that. But as others have said it is likely Rocket Player

I'm not exactly sure what media server is, but I think it has something to do with how the device finds locally-stored media files, like if you moved or downloaded MP3 files to the N7 so the Music app will see them. It could be a bug, but does restarting your N7 help? Does it ever finish running so much or is this a constant thing?

Try uninstalling the Rocket Player app to see if it is the culprit. I don't use that app, but there may be a conflict there. You can add it back again.

As an aside, I'm getting phenomenal battery life with my N7. Used it heavily yesterday for browsing, YouTube, and games. It was off charger at least 16 hours and I still had over 20% left at the end of the day.

Edit: if you uninstall rocket player, delete the cache And data in setting before you do. this will make sure that is that if the app is caching media files locally they won't be on the device.

Good info, I'll mull it over and see what I can find.

This always shows up as taking most of my battery percentage on my RAZR Maxx. I've looked and can't find anything. I've even found a kill media server app on another forum and that doesn't seem to work either. It has to be tied to what Small_law said though because mine happens while listening to downloaded podcasts on DoggCatcher. I'll keep looking, but haven't been able to find anything yet.

It just seems odd to me that two apps are taking up battery just to play music. Why not just one app? Add them up and the percentage is just too high to be realistic.

Media server accesses local media files from your "SD" memory for playback. The only reason it seems so high is because all you've done is played music. 30% of 4% is only a little over 1% of battery. Think mathematically. Everything is relative

That is incorrect. If you total the percentages up they add to 100% (actually they add to 101% in the screenshot above--but I just totaled my new current percentage and they totaled to 100%).

So mediaserver is actually using 30% of my total battery capacity and I think the battery stats in the screenshot were wrong. I should have hit REFRESH before showing off the picture but I forgot to. Add that with 18% rocket player and we're at 48% battery life for a some hours of music. Which is way too high and thus the point of this thread.

However I just hit refresh and Mediaserver is now 5% and Rocket Player is 4% (and the N7 has not been turned off for a full week). So as long as I keep hitting refresh, I'll see what to do from there. As it turns out, perhaps mediaserver may not be as bad as I originally thought. We'll see!

 

[Small_law]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

I took a look at my battery stats. I don't think I've accessed any pictures, books, magazines, movies, podcasts, or music today and media server has used 5% of my battery since it last came off the charger. I've done some browsing, Reader, YouTube and social network stuff today, none of it involved caching actual media files. next time I start playing a lot of music or other media I'll keep an eye on the battery stats for media server

Could it have anything to do with DRM? I don't know how it's handled.

 

[HAAS599]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

If you ever have battery concerns, you should charge to 100 and then just use your device normally till you get to about 5%. Then look at your battery stats to see what eats up the most juice and go from there.

 

[rlanza1054]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

I believe I asked this same question on other forums and never got an answer.

I get the same thing with Mediasever. It shows as always running and I don't play music. I don't play videos.

The must be some real technical info on what this service is really all about.

For me, I have huge issues with my Asus TF300T, so this is not only something tied to Nexus 7's, it is used with other devices.

It is a Google Service not a third party service.

So somewhere in the SDK docs, there probably is an explanation of what mediaserver does.

Any developers out there care to look it up for us?

Thanks!

Rob

 

[neccoguy21]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

I seem to be having the same problem with my Galaxy Nexus. I notice that it will be clocking my CPU at almost 50% (an entire cpu with my duel core) when I first turn it on. I use System Panel for live monitoring. I assume it has something to do with the start up process and the device trying to get all your media content ready for you. But even after a considerably long time waiting for it to die off, it never does. If I do a force close of every process and service, it usually behaves normally. I haven't had the problem recently after installing a new ROM and kernel, zipaligning my apks, and fixing system file permissions. Hope that helps.

 

[Budius]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

Media server is exactly what it sounds like, the media that is being served to you.
RocketPlayer used 18% (while you were in the app itself, scrolling through the catalog, album art visualization, some equalisation layer, or whatever extra RocketPlayer do) and when you hit "Play" it will contact the Android system MediaServer and asks it to start playing the track, which during the play duration used 30%.

So yes, 18% while you were in the app, and 30% just for the actual playback.

And it's not draining your battery like crazy, if you do some math:
your battery is 4% down, so it's 30% of 4% which is 1.2% of your total battery and 18% of 4% which is 0.72% of your total battery. Sound right to me.

and I agree, the stats are not that straight forward, but that's due to the modular nature of Android; several separate independent modules that work together in different combinations to achieve different results.




edit:
and even if you don't play music during one battery charge (but do have a lot of tracks in your device) it will still have some media server usage, just for searching and indexing of everything.

 

[natehoy]

Mediaserver is an android service that reads long term memory and presents the results to the operating system. This could be music from your use of rocket player it could be apps if you've moved apps to SD or it could simply be indexing files.

Given the fact that you have 96% battery remaining you have only used 4% of your battery. 30% of that 4% represents a very small amount of batteries used and would be expected after 16 hours.

Even if you have done absolutely nothing with your tablet for 16 hours it would've had to read memory for something during that time.

Using 1.2% of your battery (30% of the 4% you have used so far) over 16 hours is not a problem.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

 

[Chocoburger]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

Hmm you guys have added a lot of pertinent info, thanks. But the numbers I think are off, I should have hit refresh before I posted a screenshot (I may have, but I'm not completely sure), so I'm going to disregard everything since the 96% battery stat should be ignored for now. I'll recharge it to 100% then hit refresh, then use it for a couple of days, refreshing constantly until I'm at about 2% battery, then hit refresh for a final time and then screenshot it and see the correct values once and for all!

 

[natehoy]

Don't worry about hitting refresh just simply use it for a couple of days until your battery is down very very low and then look at your battery stats. That should be the accurate numbers of what actually used your battery.

I'd be willing to bet that media server won't even show up on that and probably your screen will end up taking most of the battery. At least assuming you're actually using your tablet.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

 

[djnshores]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

Eh, the system was in sleep mode for around 13 hours of that. The battery drain over 13 hours is probably 2-3%. If it was actually being used for 16 hours (even simple and basic stuff), that'd be friggin' amazing.

Still, I am curious to know what is mediaserver doing and which apps are accessing it. Anything to improve battery life would be great.

Apps that use "Push" technology to send you notifications, check your GPS location, auto-update apps are all big battery drainers. So is leaving Bluetooth on or Wi-Fi. I understand the Nexus 7 is programmed to power down to one core processor when idle to save battery. It is better than a lot of my other devices.

 

[TenshiNo]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

So mediaserver is actually using 30% of my total battery capacity and I think the battery stats in the screenshot were wrong. I should have hit REFRESH before showing off the picture but I forgot to. Add that with 18% rocket player and we're at 48% battery life for a some hours of music. Which is way too high and thus the point of this thread.

You're missunderstanding what the screen is telling you. It's not using 30% of your "total battery capacity". MediaServer has accounted for 30% of all battery power *used* which, in this case is only 4% of your battery. If all you've done is play music, then this sounds just about right. If you've spent 80% of the time the tablet was "awake" listening to music, then I would expect the music player to be responsible for the majority of the consumed battery power.

The "MediaServer" app is a system component. I'm pretty sure that is the API "gateway" for the music player to "send" the stream of MP3 data to the device to be played. Something like this is commonly referred to as a Hardware Access Layer (HAL). That is, it handles communication between the music playback app, and the device's audio drivers. Without this gateway, every music player application would have to know how to communicate directly with the audio playback chip on every single Android-based device in existence. It would therefore be analogous with the DirectSound library in Windows.

 

[TenshiNo]

Re: What is 'Mediaserver' and why is it draining my battery so mu

I believe I asked this same question on other forums and never got an answer.

I get the same thing with Mediasever. It shows as always running and I don't play music. I don't play videos.

The must be some real technical info on what this service is really all about.

For me, I have huge issues with my Asus TF300T, so this is not only something tied to Nexus 7's, it is used with other devices.

It is a Google Service not a third party service.

So somewhere in the SDK docs, there probably is an explanation of what mediaserver does.

Any developers out there care to look it up for us?

Thanks!

Rob

The "MediaServer" is actually a system component. That is, it's a built-in part of Android. If I am correct in its function (see my post above), you probably use it a lot more than you think.

This service would be used every time your device made a noise. This would include notification chimes and the phone ringing. Possibly even talking on the phone, although I'm not at all certain about that one.