How to play a video in Android

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Here are code snippets that let your application play video files. The first code plays a video from URL or SD card.

Android play video from URL or SD card

    VideoView video = (VideoView)findViewById(R.id.videoView);
	// URL or local path here
	video.setVideoPath("http://download.itcuties.com/teaser/itcuties-teaser-480.mp4");
	video.start();

Check out supported video formats at http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html.

Next snippet lets you play a video that is hosted on the YouTube platform. This code starts a browser or a built in YouTube application that runs the video.

Android play video from YouTube

    Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
	i.setData(Uri.parse("http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdlWPL53PvQ"));
	SelectActivity.this.startActivity(i);

Example

Here is an example usage of the above codes in an application. This application displays two buttons. When you push ‘play from URL’ button application plays the video available at a given URL. When you push ‘play on youtube’ button application start’s a browser navigates to a given YouTube Video URL.

android play video example – select screen

android play video example – play video from URL

Here is an activity code that runs ‘under’ application select screen.

SelectActivity

package com.itcuties.android.videoplayer;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.net.Uri;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.View.OnClickListener;
import android.widget.Button;

/**
 * Select video source activity.
 * 
 * @see ITCuties
 */
public class SelectActivity extends Activity implements OnClickListener {

	private Button playFromUrlButton;
	private Button playOnYouTubeButton;
	
	
	@Override
	protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
		super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

		setContentView(R.layout.activity_select);

		playFromUrlButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.buttonURL);
		playOnYouTubeButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.buttonOnYouTube);

		// Set onClickListener
		playFromUrlButton.setOnClickListener(this);
		playOnYouTubeButton.setOnClickListener(this);

	}

	@Override
	public void onClick(View v) {
		
		// Check which button was clicked
		if (playFromUrlButton.isPressed()) {
			Intent i = new Intent(SelectActivity.this, URLVideoActivity.class);
			SelectActivity.this.startActivity(i);
	        
		} else if (playOnYouTubeButton.isPressed()) {
			Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
	        i.setData(Uri.parse("http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdlWPL53PvQ"));
	        SelectActivity.this.startActivity(i);
	        
		} 
		
	}	
}

Here is an activity code that plays a video from URL.

URLVideoActivity

package com.itcuties.android.videoplayer;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.VideoView;

/**
 * Play Video from URL
 * 
 * @see ITCuties
 */
public class URLVideoActivity extends Activity {

	@Override
	protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
		super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

		setContentView(R.layout.url_activity_video);

		VideoView video = (VideoView)findViewById(R.id.videoView);
		video.setVideoPath("http://download.itcuties.com/teaser/itcuties-teaser-480.mp4");
		video.start();

	}

}

Download this sample code here.

This code is available on our GitHub repository as well.