No video display when playing an mp4 file on Android

Question

I try to render an mp4 file I added to my android ressources in res/raw like so:

public class Main extends RoboActivity
{
    @InjectView(R.id.introVideo)
    private VideoView introVideo;

    private MediaPlayer player;

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
    {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        requestWindowFeature(Window.FEATURE_NO_TITLE);
        getWindow().setFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN,
                WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);

        player = MediaPlayer.create(this, R.raw.intro_video2);
        SurfaceHolder holder = introVideo.getHolder();
        player.setDisplay(holder);
        player.start();

        player.setOnCompletionListener(new OnCompletionListener() {
            public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer mp)
            {
                startActivity(new Intent(Main.this, Story.class));
                releasePlayer();
            }
        });
    }

    @Override
    protected void onPause()
    {
        super.onPause();
        releasePlayer();
    }

    @Override
    protected void onDestroy()
    {
        super.onDestroy();
        releasePlayer();
    }

    private void releasePlayer()
    {
        if (player != null)
        {
            player.release();
        }
    }
}

but all I experience is the sound of the video, the screen keeps blank on my Samsung GalaxyTab. The source file is an mp4 file (H.264 AVC, 960x640, 30fps) and can be played perfectly fine with Quicktime and VLC.

I tried to downscale and resize the original video with Handbrake, down to 480x320 and 25fps, I tried several settings in handbrake, everything without success.

Is there anything obviously wrong with my code or is it the video format or something else - what am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance, Thomas.

I tried to use different test media files from support.apple.com/kb/HT1425 in the mean time and none showed video (some even crashed, mov and mpeg2), so I suspect something has to be wrong with my code, sigh — Thomas Keller

Thomas Keller Thomas Keller · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-08T21:29:23

I couldn't get the above way to work, but I found that it worked when I solely used the provided functionality of Android's VideoView like this:

...
String videoUri = "android.resource://my.package.path/raw/intro_video";
introVideo.setVideoURI(Uri.parse(videoUri));
introVideo.start();
...

No video display when playing an mp4 file on Android

2 Answers