BubblePixel

Playing videos from within an Android application is relatively straightforward.  Using the VideoView you can play any video supported by the device within your application.  Videos can be stored in the resources folder, on the devices internal or external storage; you can even stream videos over the Internet.

For this tutorial I will use the simple method of storing the video we want to play within the application itself in the resources.  To do this first create a folder named ‘raw’ within the ‘res’ directory in your application code.  Then place a video of a suitable format within the new ‘raw’ folder.

As you can see from the image to the left, the video files I have used in my app are all mp4 format.  This is the most widely supported video format on android devices – more information regarding video formats can be found on the Android Developer website.

Once you have added the video to the applications resources you will need to create a layout containing a VideoView for the application.  The sample below shows a layout that will display your video full screen:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<FrameLayout xmlns:android=”http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android”
android:keepScreenOn=”true”
android:layout_width=”fill_parent”
android:layout_height=”fill_parent”
android:orientation=”vertical” >

<VideoView
android:id=”@+id/videoView1″
android:layout_width=”fill_parent”
android:layout_height=”fill_parent”
android:layout_gravity=”center” />

</FrameLayout>

All thats is left to do know is right the code that will intitialise the VideoView and play your video;  there are five steps:

1. Get a reference to the VideoView.
2. Set a URI with the details of the video you wish to play.
3. Pass the VideoView the URI of the video.
4. Ready the VideoView by calling requestFocus().
5. Start the video.

The four steps are shown in the code fragment below:

VideoView vidView = (VideoView)findViewById(R.id.videoView1);

Uri videoToPlay = Uri.parse("android.resource://"+getPackageName()+"/"+ R.raw.vid1);

vidView.setVideoURI(video);

vidView.requestFocus();

vidView.start();