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

[2defmouze]

It's all relative.. In the case of Chocoburgers screenie when you aren't using the tablet and have no screen on time other things will take higher percentages of batt use. It's completely normal and doesn't look like it's causing any drain to worry about.

Mediaserver generally can get out of whack with a lot of stuff on your sd card as part of it is a component that scans the sd. Corrupt files on there can cause abnormal usage and batt drain, but again that doesn't seem to be the case here, looks fine to me

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

[Lactose The Intolerant]

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

Once again, the way Android reports battery usage continues to confuse people...

If we sat down to eat a pizza (8 slice pie, anchovies FOR THE WIN !!) and we each ate 1 slice, android would report:
Chocoburger has consumed 50%
Lactose has consumed 50%

This doesn't mean we've eaten half of the entire pizza... it means of the pizza that is gone, you've had half and I've had half.

Really wish Android could come up with a less "alarming" way of presenting this information.

Now, if you'll excuse, I'm going back for more pizza before CB snarfs it all down

 

[Chocoburger]

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

Lots of fantastic info here, thanks guys (and gals?).

I charged my N7 to 100%, hit refresh and then took it off the charger. I will drain it down to roughly 2% and I will NOT(?) hit the refresh button a single time. At roughly 2% I shall take a screenshot of my battery stats. That should finally help show off the correct stats on what I may have initially screwed up last time.

If I should hit refresh at any point, let me know.

 

[Chocoburger]

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

Well guys and gals, here are my updated stats for fun. Typically I use the N7 frequently, but over the past four days, I hadn't touched it much, so I will say this is over the course of 'light usage' (hence I reached 4 days). There are two pictures this time, hmm, let's see what's up! Note that my screen brightness is almost always at the lowest setting but sometimes rarely at 10%-15% brightness setting so to maximize my battery life.

Now here's what to keep in mind, I took screenshot #1 at 1% battery life, then I hit refresh immediately after and took screenshot #2. Take a look at these stats.

PICTURE 1
4d 5h 50m

PICTURE 2
4d 6h 38m (I hit refresh and so I'm guessing this is the real number.)

These two pictures were taken within 5 seconds of each other.
For both pictures battery total % shown in statistics is 98% used + 1% remaining so 99% total. There seems to be a margin of error trend or a designated 1% for the OS to shut itself down properly when it reaches the true 1% battery life remaining. Just a personal guess, since I know my iPod does an actual last-resort save when the battery dies out on me, so maybe Android devices do as well.

I'm a little confused by these battery statistics. I played an hour of the game Roboto, which had to have taken around 7% of my battery, as well as Captain America, and other games. Yet they used to show up on the list, but after awhile they stopped appearing on the list. So I have no idea how these statistics work since clearly nearly half the battery usage doesn't even show up on the list.

One guess would be, when you're done playing a game, after a long while, the OS 'converts' its battery stats simply to 'Screen' and 'Mediaserver' categories? If so this would finally make perfect sense of the whole ordeal. if Roboto and Captain America and Grand Theft Auto III are now lumped into 'Mediaserver' and 'Screen' that would explain why their numbers are the highest.

Furthermore, Google Play Music is shown taking 10% BUT I never used it to listen to music even once. I just entered the app to look at my purchased music for a couple of minutes. This is baffling how scrolling through an app's menus for maybe 5 minutes takes up 10% of the battery. No way.

Finally I had listened to about 5 hours of music on my tablet, so Rocket Player 7% sounds fair (and some of that 28% of Mediaserver is used in conjunction with Rocket Player). It's ironic now that Mediaserver isn't an issue but there are other inconsistencies with these battery statistics.

So yes, if my guess is correct that pretty much anything app-wise after awhile gets converted to 'Mediaserver' these numbers make a lot of sense, but I'd prefer if Google had each app in its own separate category so we can see the true numbers properly. Instead of lumping things together.

I think I've finally figured it all out except for the Google Play Music 10% stat... With all that said, battery life is very good on this tablet, Google just needs to update some aspects about it, so that battery life statistics are properly registered.

 

[ejfiii]

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

If I got 4 days out of a charge (don't care if i used it or not) the last thing I would do is post questions about battery use.

For reference I took my n7 off the charger this morning, did two hours of email and internet and have had it in standby most of the rest of the time. I am at 62% available (38% used) and 3% Mediaserver of this 38%.

 

[Chocoburger]

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

If I got 4 days out of a charge (don't care if i used it or not) the last thing I would do is post questions about battery use.

For reference I took my n7 off the charger this morning, did two hours of email and internet and have had it in standby most of the rest of the time. I am at 62% available (38% used) and 3% Mediaserver of this 38%.

I am learning a lot from this thread, from others experiences and my own. It's a good idea to ask questions, this is how I as well as others learn more about our favorite mobile OS.

Two hours of email and web surfing taking up 38% of your battery? That's a bit too much unless if you have the screen set on high brightness.

Note that my screen brightness is almost always at the lowest setting but sometimes rarely at 10%-15% brightness setting so to maximize my battery life.

I should also add that Asus rated this device to have 300 hours of standby, so if you think 4 days of standby (assuming you did nothing else but standby) is good, then nope, it's not good.

 

[ejfiii]

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

Yup, full brightness.

I have learned from the original Incredible and then the TBolt and now my GNex that you always need a changer near you (car, work, home, bedside, briefcase). While the N7 isn't nearly as bad as those hogs, I am always near a charger and use it when needed.

My comment was tongue in cheek and I agree about asking questions. I just don't see a concern to your battery consumption.

 

[cammykool]

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

no mediaserver here but MY GOD you use the hell out of your nexus.. haha

 

[Adamd1169]

I just wonder how you can stand having your notification bar loaded up like that. That would drive me nuts....

Sorry for being so far off topic.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

 

[John-Smith]

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

My nexus was running fine and then I turned it on and it said 6% battery remaining. I charged it for a bit and went to check what drained my battery and found the media server taking a nice portion.

All I used the tablet for yesterday was to play about 2 games of baseball, definitely less than an hour. No music or anything else.

Really weird...I use my n7 everyday and this is a first.

 

[aq79]

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

Hey all,

Its been a while since you all got this problem, but still i am adding this information in case someone like me who recently came across this issue will be able to get some more information

It seems like Mediaserver is actually a process which is running in background it has been found that when Mediaserver is running it consumes high CPU which causes the battery to drain. There is an issue filed against this problem on Google code. check this out
Issue 6765 - android - "Mediaserver" consuming ~100% CPU time after failing to play streaming videos - Android - An Open Handset Alliance Project - Google Project Hosting

The issue occurs when media file is corrupted, it could be music, video or image.
I have same issue, when I recorded a video with camcoder but recorded video was corrupt, although i deleted the video but its thumbnail might be there and it could also be corrupt. I'm not sure if there are other corrupt media files in my sdcard.

since my battery was drained to 3% in few hours, I am charging my phone. . I will try rebuild the dalvik cache and deleting application cache once its charged, I have explicitely closed Mediasever process from running services, I will check it out after charging weather it is also launching itself on rebooting the phone.

 

[bigibomb]

Its not that app I don't have and the media server has drained like 42% of my battery
:-\

 

[Alex Ford]

I think one important thing many people are missing here is this:

When it says "App X..............38%" it does not mean that App X used 38% of your battery.

It means, of the % of battery that has been used so far, App X has contributed 38% of that usage.

So if you have used 4% of your battery, then "App X..................38%" means that App X has used 38% of that 4% that is used. 38% of 4% is 1.5%, that is the actual amount of battery usage.

So yes, all the percentages will add up to 100% on the battery usage screen, but if you've used 4% of your battery then that 100% is just 100% of 4%.

I hope that clarifies some things.

 

[Michael Morris2]

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

That pretty much sums up my situation as well. I store a lot of magazines, music and podcasts on my phone?s memory and that constitutes a big part of my phone usage every day, my battery is pretty good but looked at this thread because I?m always trying to make it better and media server is 2nd in usage. Sounds like media server having high usage is good because on a per song basis playing from local storage probably uses less battery than streaming over Pandora or google music.

 

[redswitch]

I help people collect measurement data from all kinds of sensors for a living.
What matters is RATE of usage over time for mediaserver. The battery usage tool shows the momentary power usage. ie at this moment the power usage is 37%. (but if we had refreshed a split second sooner it might have said 3%)
If the AVERAGE percent of power usage OVER TIME was 37%., then we would be justified in wondering why it is such a hog compared to the screen. Instantaneous spikes of usage are not as scary as they look.
If the graph at the top of the the battery usage tool slopes sharply downward then the rate of all your applications combined are sucking the power at a high rate. If the graph us fairly level then nothing
A very useful tool would be one that collects power usage on a suspected process for a user specified period of time.
One trick you can do is click on mediaserver in the battery usage tool to see how many minutes of processor time has been used. Compare this to minutes of processor used by the display. It is not as good as a graph of percentage of use over time would be, but its better than instantaneous usage.
~Red~

 

[kory007]

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

hi,
I had the same problem, mediaserver was always in the top 3 in the battery usage list
I have downloaded an app called: wakelog detector, there I could see under the mediaserver the AudioOut_2 was the ?subprocess? keeping the pone awake. other posts suggested this could be caused by viber. And bingo, without Viber problem is gone! but all my friend are crazy about Viber, so I played with the config, and there is a setting in Viber for the wifi sleep policy. select "use device policy" instead of always on. now Viber behave nicely

 

[contrive]

Bravo, (or brava depending on your gender). Yours was the first reply I saw that actually addressed the question and answered it concisely. I'm not flaming anyone else. I just so much time scrolling through responses without getting a clear idea of what the software actually did. Thanks for your explanation. Now, whether or not it was germane or correct is for others to explore.

 

[sdmarathe]

HURRAY!! Found the problem

The media server drain is due to Google Crapware - Google play music. Once I disabled Play Music, Books, Magazines and Movies/TV, - Mediaserver stayed steady. Prior to that it was sucking the life out of it.

 

[Groid]

I'm glad your problem has been fixed, but I doubt it was because of the Google Play apps. If it were, everyone would have had your problems. I have no Google apps frozen, disabled, or uninstalled and have never had media server drain. I really suspect it was a setting that was causing your drain.

 

[Sandro Abitante]

It seems to me that the Media Server has problems to scan files on the external memory card. When I realize that my phone gets hot I look in the process list and appears Media Server eating my battery.

Going on:

Settings -> Storage -> Unmount SD Card

Solves the problem. However it is a workaround because when the active SD card bug back again.

[Motorola Razr I | Android 4.1.2]