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..

Preload video on Android

I'm building an interactive movie of some sort , having more video clips that need to load between interactive scenes. The problem is there is a slight delay when starting the video which I believe it could be fixed by preloading the clip right before the previous one finishes. I've tried to start() the video and then stop() it, also seekTo() but i'm no getting the desired result.
Also I need to mention I'm using several VideoViews in the same Activity so I display the appropriate one.
The video files are loaded from the raw folder using the following code
videoView1 = new VideoView(this);
mediaController1= new MediaController(this);
mediaController1.setMediaPlayer(videoView1);
mediaController1.setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);
Uri uri = Uri.parse("android.resource://" + getPackageName() + "/" + R.raw.sa1);
videoView1.setMediaController(mediaController1);
videoView1.setVideoURI(uri);
videoView1.requestFocus();
videoView1.start();
Thank you.

You can handle the loading in another thread with using, for example, AsyncTask while the user watches the pervious video.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/AsyncTask.html

VideoVIew from resource

Dear All;
I am new in android app;
I try to play video from my resource , but no idea how to do it...
any help??
regards..

I think the following can help (that's the way I implement it):
VideoView vd;
vd = (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.VideoView);
Uri uri = Uri.parse("android.resource://org.android.Test.Test/raw/vid"); vd.setVideoURI(uri);
vd.start();
where Test.Test is the name of my package.
Remark: You didn't ask it, but some video files do not work on emulator (you hear only
the music, but see no picture). In this case debug it on your phone.

Video Streaming and Android

Today for one of my app (Android 2.1), I wanted to stream a video from an URL.
As far as I explored Android SDK it's quite good and I loved almost every piece of it.
But now that it comes to video stream I am kind of lost.
For any information you need about Android SDK you have thousands of blogs telling you how to do it. When it comes to video streaming, it's different. Informations is that abundant.
Everyone did it it's way tricking here and there.
Is there any well-know procedure that allows one to stream a video?
Did google think of making it easier for its developers?

If you want to just have the OS play a video using the default player you would use an intent like this:
String videoUrl = "insert url to video here";
Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
i.setData(Uri.parse(videoUrl));
startActivity(i);
However if you want to create a view yourself and stream video to it, one approach is to create a videoview in your layout and use the mediaplayer to stream video to it. Here's the videoview in xml:
<VideoView android:id="#+id/your_video_view"
android:layout_width="wrap_content"
android:layout_height="wrap_content"
android:layout_gravity="center"
/>
Then in onCreate in your activity you find the view and start the media player.
VideoView videoView = (VideoView)findViewById(R.id.your_video_view);
MediaController mc = new MediaController(this);
videoView.setMediaController(mc);
String str = "the url to your video";
Uri uri = Uri.parse(str);
videoView.setVideoURI(uri);
videoView.requestFocus();
videoView.start();
Check out the videoview listeners for being notified when the video is done playing or an error occurs (VideoView.setOnCompletionListener, VideoView.setOnErrorListener, etc).

I want to play a video from my assets or raw folder

I want to play a video from my assets or raw folder in my app in Android
using VideoView I am getting the error as video cannot be played
please anyone give me a solution.
Here is the code I used
VideoView vd = (VideoView)findViewById(R.id.Video);
Uri uri = Uri.parse("android.resource:" + R.raw.video);
MediaController mc = new MediaController(this);
vd.setMediaController(mc);
vd.setVideoURI(uri);
vd.start();

A few things to note:
You must copy the video into your project's res/raw folder.
It must be in a supported format (3gp, wmv, mp4 ) and named with lower case, numerics, underscores and dots in its filename: my_video_file.mp4
When you work with this resource in code, you will reference through the generated R statics - it will have the file extension removed: R.raw.my_video_file
The Activity class has a helper method getPackageName() which can be used by your code when constructing the correct URI to your video.
VideoView vv = (VideoView)this.findViewById(R.id.videoView)
String uri = "android.resource://" + getPackageName() + "/" + R.raw.my_video_file;
vv.setVideoURI(Uri.parse(uri));
vv.start();
There is more information on this here.

You must include the package name in the uri:
Uri uri = Uri.parse("android.resource://[package]/raw/video")
or
Uri uri = Uri.parse("android.resource://[package]/"+R.raw.video);
Also, check out these examples.

There are so many ways to go wrong with VideoView ! Mainly because the logcat gives you no help, always giving error UNKNOWN.
I found this link was by far the best way to get started...
A complete description so you can't go wrong. Thanks go to the author...
http://androidexample.com/Play_Video_File_-_Android_Example/index.php?view=article_discription&aid=124&aaid=144

When we include a video resource in /resource/raw/ or assets/, by default, it looks for the .mp4 format, it won't accept .wmv files. If you read video file from external locations(like: /mnt/sdcard/demo.wmv) then it'll accept them.

Try:
AssetFileDescriptor afd = getAssets().openFd(fileName);
player.setDataSource(afd.getFileDescriptor(),afd.getStartOffset(), afd.getLength());

Make sure to write the file video name without extension.