Develop Reference

Android SDK - Media Player Video from URL

I've tried to find a simple tutorial which explains how to load a video from a URL into the android media player but unfortunately I couldn't find any!
I have tried several things to try get it working but still no luck.
What is the best way to have a MediaPlayerActivity just load a video from a URL?
Thanks
EDIT:
I have tried the following code as suggested:
VideoView videoView = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.your_video_view);
MediaController mediaController = new MediaController(this);
mediaController.setAnchorView(videoView);
videoView.setMediaController(mediaController);
videoView.setVideoURI(Uri.parse("url-here"));
videoView.start();
It just crashes when I go to this activity.

You can use a VideoView. Here is an example:
VideoView videoView = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.videoView);
//Use a media controller so that you can scroll the video contents
//and also to pause, start the video.
MediaController mediaController = new MediaController(this);
mediaController.setAnchorView(videoView);
videoView.setMediaController(mediaController);
videoView.setVideoURI(Uri.parse(videoUrl));
videoView.start();
EDIT
You should provide the URI (having a String url variable, where it has the url of the video) with this code Uri.parse(url). And also be sure if the url is appropriate. Also, have you provided the appropriate permissions to your app, as AkashG suggested, (since it uses the internet you will need to add <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" > in your app's Manifest.xml)? Finally you should define your activity MediaPlayerActivity in in your app's Manifest.xml
End of EDIT
You can also use MediaPlayer. The Android developers site has a good tutorial here.

you can load video from url as:
VideoView videoView = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.view);
MediaController controller = new MediaController(this);
videoView.setVideoPath("url of the video");
videoView.setMediaController(controller);
videoView.start();
Add internet permission in manifest file.

I think you can find useful thinks Here.. about playing video from different sources.
If your using Emulator ,
First, do not use the emulator for testing video playback. Its ability to handle video playback is very limited. Use an actual Android device.
Second, always check LogCat (adb logcat, DDMS, or DDMS perspective in Eclipse) for warnings when you run into multimedia problems. OpenCORE -- the multimedia engine used by Android -- has a tendency to log error-level conditions as warnings.
For example, your video file may not be set up for progressive download, which is required for HTTP streaming. On Linux, you can patch up MP4 videos for progressive download by installing MP4Box and running MP4Box -hint .
Hope this explanation works for you..

Media player using YouTube?

I am developing a sample application using MediaPlayer.By using the raw resources folder,the video can be played.But I want to play through URL.How can I achieve this?
My code is:
VideoView videoView = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.VideoView);
MediaController mediaController = new MediaController(this);
mediaController.setAnchorView(videoView);
// Set video link (mp4 format )
Uri video = Uri.parse("http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Wgp3mLa_E");
videoView.setMediaController(mediaController);
videoView.setVideoURI(video);
videoView.start();

You need to get the correct streaming(rtsp) url rather than the link to the player page you are using. You can get this programmatically using the google data api
Once you have done that you would simply replace
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Wgp3mLa_E"
with "rtsp://v8.cache1.c.youtube.com/CiILENy73wIaGQnxa4t5p6BVTxMYESARFEgGUgZ2aWRlb3MM/0/0/0/video.3gp"
in your existing code and it should work.
Note: The quality of video, when streaming to your own videoview, can be very poor compared to how it looks when played on the youtube site or player app.

You have to rtsp links from gdata api :gdata api with this: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?&max-results=20&v=2&format=1&q="+ URLEncoder.encode(activity.criteria)
Element rsp = (Element)entry.getElementsByTagName("media:content").item(1);
String anotherurl=rsp.getAttribute("url");
In gdata api only we are getting this type of links : rtsp://v3.cache7.c.youtube.com/CiILENy73wIaGQlOCTh0GvUeYRMYDSANFEgGUgZ2aWRlb3MM/0/0/0/video.3gp
These are playing in VideoView.
My answer link :RTSP Links

In order to get better quality videos, I checked what these guys did. It helped me very very much!
I'm posting the link so you can checkout their project and use their code.

Issue on Android Video View its not working

I'm playing YouTube from URL, but when I play the video it shows the following error:
unable to open video
I'm using this code:
video =new VideoView(this);
video.setVideoURI(path);
System.out.println("my path"+path);
ctlr = new MediaController(this);
ctlr.setMediaPlayer(video);
video.setMediaController(ctlr);
video.requestFocus();`
The path is correct. I checked on the Web also. Why am I getting an error like that?
The links are like: http://www.youtube.com/v/8B-Vu94Sd4M?f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

You can't simply give the VideoView a Youtube URL and expect it to play the video. This seams to be impossible at all (see here).
However, you might want to use a YouTube Intent and let the System handle it: Link

VideoView on Archos 5 (Android 1.6) doesn't work

I'm developing an app for the Archos 5 Internet Tablet. (With Android 1.6)
I want to start a video in a VideoView within my app. On my Android emulator the following code works fine but on my Archos 5 I always get an error:
Cannot play video
Sorry, this video cannot be played.
//get current window information, and set format, set it up differently, if you need some special effects
getWindow().setFormat(PixelFormat.TRANSLUCENT);
//the VideoView will hold the video
VideoView videoHolder = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.VideoView01);
//MediaController is the ui control hovering above the video (just like in the default youtube player).
videoHolder.setMediaController(new MediaController(this));
//assing a video file to the video holder
videoHolder.setVideoURI(Uri.parse("android.resource://mypackage/" + R.raw.testmovie));
//get focus, before playing the video.
videoHolder.requestFocus();
if(autoplay){
videoHolder.start();
}
Is there a way to run a VideoView on a archos 5?
I also tried to play the movie with the archos player. With the following code I get the error: "Cannot find the media file!".
String ACTION_LAUNCH_AVOS = "android.intent.action.LAUNCH_AVOS";
String avosCommand = "ACTION:video_play,url=videoentries:Video/testmovie.wmv,etype=resume";
final Intent startAvos = new Intent(ACTION_LAUNCH_AVOS,Uri.parse(avosCommand));
startAvos.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_NEW_TASK );
startActivity(startAvos);
I put the video in the Video folder of the Archos. The video runs when I open it with the file browser.
I always get the error "Cannot find the media file!", no matter what url I use.
Is there a certain folder where I have to put the video so that it can be found? And how do I get the url to that certain folder?
It would be great if you could help me!
Thanks and BR,
Thomas

Android not playing Video .mp4

I have prepared a code to just play a simple mp4 file from my res folder. The coding is something like this:
public class VideoPlayer extends Activity {
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.video);
VideoView video = (VideoView)findViewById(R.id.VideoView);
Uri uri = Uri.parse("android.resource://company.software.myapp/"
+ R.raw.myvideo);
MediaController mc = new MediaController(this);
video.setMediaController(mc);
video.setVideoURI(uri);
//video.requestFocus();
video.start();
}
}
Now though there is no error in playing. The activity automatically generates a dialog saying "sorry this video cannot be played", but I can hear the audio and it plays till end. What is the problem?

Thanx a lot commonsware.com... but i found the solution to the problem... And astonishingly its the PC processor which is the culprit... I checked n a higher configuration and guess wat... it worked perfectly fine... though sometimes if we do some processing in the background the dialog box does come up but on clicking ok it starts playing the video after some time...
But i confirm that this technique of playing file from resource is ok as far as i know...
sorry to waste ur precious time in a mundane hardware problem... but hope it'll be useful for other people who get this problem...

Android supports 3gp and mp4 format, but still sometimes there are problems in playing an mp4 content.
one thing what I have found out from my research is that, this might be because the resolution problem with the video.
I think that you should re-size the resolution of your mp4 video. This might help.

I have not attempted to play a video clip out of a resource, and I am not certain that it works.
As a test, put the video clip on the SD card and use that as the source of your video.
If you get the same symptoms, then either the MP4 file has issues or it is something with your test environment (e.g., you are using the emulator and don't have a quad-core CPU).
If the SD card test works, though, then I suspect the problem is packaging it as a resource.