71.1 Introducing the Android VideoView Class

By far the simplest way to display video within an Android application is to use the VideoView class. This is a visual component which, when added to the layout of an activity, provides a surface onto which a video may be played. Android currently supports the following video formats:

•H.263

•H.264 AVC

•H.265 HEVC

•MPEG-4 SP

•VP8

•VP9

The VideoView class has a wide range of methods that may be called in order to manage the playback of video. Some of the more commonly used methods are as follows:

•setVideoPath(String path) – Specifies the path (as a string) of the video media to be played. This can be either the URL of a remote video file or a video file local to the device.

•setVideoUri(Uri uri) – Performs the same task as the setVideoPath() method but takes a Uri object as an argument instead of a string.

•start() – Starts video...