Android - Different ways of playing video

Question

I just came across the limitation of VideoView of not being able to play mp4 video files that are wider than 320 pixels. I was wondering how can we overcome these limitations. I am trying to make my app as forgiving as possible, so other than using VideoViews is there another way to play these mp4 videos?

Chris

Answer 1

I am not aware of a 320px wide limit on VideoView, though I haven't tried it.

You can use MediaPlayer and a SurfaceView to play back videos. In fact, that's pretty much all VideoView is. Last I looked at the VideoView source code, it was only ~200 lines.

Here is a sample project that implements a video player using MediaPlayer and SurfaceView, with screen taps to bring up some pop-up panels (e.g., timeline).