Playing a video in VideoView in Android

Example Project

I finally got a proof-of-concept project to work, so I will share it here.

Set up the layout

The layout is set up like this, where the light grey area is the VideoView.

enter image description here

activity_main.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
    android:id="@+id/activity_main"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin"
    android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin"
    tools:context="com.example.videotest.MainActivity">

    <VideoView
        android:id="@+id/videoview"
        android:layout_width="300dp"
        android:layout_height="200dp"/>

    <Button
        android:text="Play"
        android:layout_width="wrap_content"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_below="@id/videoview"
        android:onClick="onButtonClick"
        android:id="@+id/button"/>

</RelativeLayout>

Prepare video clip

According to the documentation, Android should support mp4 H.264 playback (decoding) for all API levels. However, there seem to be a lot of factors that affect whether an actual video will play or not. The most in depth answer I could find that told how to encode the videos is here. It uses the powerful ffmpeg command line tool to do the conversion to something that should be playable on all (hopefully?) Android devices. Read the answer I linked to for more explanation. I used a slightly modified version because I was getting errors with the original version.

ffmpeg -y -i input_file.avi -s 432x320 -b:v 384k -vcodec libx264 -flags +loop+mv4 -cmp 256 -partitions +parti4x4+parti8x8+partp4x4+partp8x8 -subq 6 -trellis 0 -refs 5 -bf 0 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -g 250 -keyint_min 25 -sc_threshold 40 -i_qfactor 0.71 -qmin 10 -qmax 51 -qdiff 4 -c:a aac -ac 1 -ar 16000 -r 13 -ab 32000 -aspect 3:2 -strict -2 output_file.mp4

I would definitely read up a lot more on each of those parameters to see which need adjusting as far as video and audio quality go.

Next, rename output_file.mp4 to test.mp4 and put it in your Android project's /res/raw folder. Create the folder if it doesn't exist already.

Code

There is not much to the code. The video plays when the "Play" button is clicked. Thanks to this answer for help.

MainActivity.java

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    }

    public void onButtonClick(View v) {
        VideoView videoview = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.videoview);
        Uri uri = Uri.parse("android.resource://"+getPackageName()+"/"+R.raw.test);
        videoview.setVideoURI(uri);
        videoview.start();
    }
}

Finished

That's all. You should be able play your video clip on the simulator or a real device now.


My guess is that your video is incompatible with Android. Try it with a different video. This one definitely works used to work with Android (but does not on newer devices, for some reason). If that video works, and yours does not, then your video is not compatible with Android.

As others have indicated, please test this on a device. Video playback on the emulator requires too much power.

UPDATE 2020-02-18: https://law.duke.edu/cspd/contest/videos/Framed-Contest_Documentaries-and-You.mp4 is an MP4 of the same content, but I have no idea if it is the same actual MP4 as I previously linked to.

Tags:

Android

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