Strange Behavior of Android VideoView - “Can't Play Video”

Question

In my application,showing video from sdcard folder or new taken video from Video intent in a VideoView in different Activity by passing file path of the video selected.

Answer 1

I had this same issue while using VideoView, while i tried to check all things regarding the video the issue was in the AndroidManifest.xml File, It was regarding the permission to use EXTERNAL STORAGE give it a shot it might solve the issue.

Answer 2

If you have mp4 file having H.264 baseline encoding and still you are unable to play video in your android device then it might be problem in .htAccess file on server side. It might be zipping .mp4 file. few devices are able to play video by unzipping it and stream it but not in all device cases. You need to change .htAccess file on server side. Change in output filter and include file format .mp4 to exclude it from being zip at streaming time.

SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png|swf|mp4)$ \ no-gzip dont-vary

Answer 3

For me was a problem with the codec used by video. I installed the Any Video Converter and converted the video using the settings for Google Android (x264). Now I can play on every device.

Answer 4

I faced the same issue once. In My case only issue was fie format. i Just changed the video format to .mp4 and it works like charm on all the devices and emulator i used. my suggestion is to check your video format first and then try other solutions.

Answer 5

I kept getting the same "Can't Play Video" message while trying to play video from the phone itself. First I didn't input good path to a file but there was anther interesting issue.

1. I've type path from the root, example /videoFileName.mp4 and I should have type it with sdcard in between like /sdcard/videoFileName.mp4

2. My Sony Ercisson Xperia Arc was connected as a usb mass device storage at the same time I was running my app through adb, so internal sd card was unmounted and file could not be found. I've discovered this when I tryed same code on Samsung Galaxy S which behaves differently when connected.