On startup, the client has to:
1. listen on a port
2. push and start the server to the device
3. wait for the server to connect (accept)
4. read device name and size
5. initialize SDL
6. initialize the window and renderer
7. show the window
From the execution of the app_process command to start the server on the
device, to the execution of the java main method, it takes ~800ms. As a
consequence, step 3 also takes ~800ms on the client.
Once complete, the client initializes SDL, which takes ~500ms.
These two expensive actions are executed sequentially:
HOST DEVICE
listen on port | |
push/start the server |----------------->|| app_process loads the jar
accept the connection . ^ ||
. | ||
. | WASTE ||
. | OF ||
. | TIME ||
. | ||
. | ||
. v X execution of our java main
connection accepted |<-----------------| connect to the host
init SDL || |
|| ,----------------| send frames
|| |,---------------|
|| ||,--------------|
|| |||,-------------|
|| ||||,------------|
init window/renderer | |||||,-----------|
display frames |<++++++-----------|
(many frames skipped)
The rationale for step 3 occuring before step 5 is that initializing
SDL replaces the SIGTERM handler to receive the event in the event loop,
so pressing Ctrl+C during step 5 would not work (since it blocks the
event loop).
But this is not so important; let's parallelize the SDL initialization
with the app_process execution (we'll just add a timeout to the
connection):
HOST DEVICE
listen on port | |
push/start the server |----------------->||app_process loads the jar
init SDL || ||
|| ||
|| ||
|| ||
|| ||
|| ||
accept the connection . ||
. X execution of our java main
connection accepted |<-----------------| connect to the host
init window/renderer | |
display frames |<-----------------| send frames
|<-----------------|
In addition, show the window only once the first frame is available to
avoid flickering (opening a black window for 100~200ms).
Note: the window and renderer are initialized after the connection is
accepted because they use the device information received from the
device.
Replace screen_update() by a higher-level screen_update_frame() handling
the whole frame updating, so that scrcpy.c just call it without managing
implementation details.
The video screen size on the client may differ from the real device
screen size (e.g. the video stream may be scaled down). As a
consequence, mouse events must be scaled to match the real device
coordinates.
For this purpose, make the client send the video screen size along with
the absolute pointer location, and the server scale the location to
match the real device size before injecting mouse events.
To control the device from the computer:
- retrieve mouse and keyboard SDL events;
- convert them to Android events;
- serialize them;
- send them on the same socket used by the video stream (but in the
opposite direction);
- deserialize the events on the Android side;
- inject them using the InputManager.
