I'm developing an Android app which includes a video component; I'm hoping to provide support for subtitles encoded into the stream but I can't find any references to whether they are supported natively within the Android media player. Does anyone here have any experience with this situation?
Android 4.0.x version and below
In case of Android 4.0 version and below, default Media Player did not support subtitles.
It can be done at application layer (using java code) or using native NDK. More details at this white paper on how to support subtitles in Android
Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean - JB)) Onwards
Android JB version has built in support for internal (present in MP4 files) and SRT external subtitles. More details is available at http://developer.android.com/about/versions/android-4.1.html#Multimedia