Can't play this video Xamarin.Android

Question

I need to play video from sdcard on VideoView and always getting "Can't play this video message". I am testing on physical device. File is on external storage, and can be played by build in phone apps with no problem.

I have read some topics before and tried changing file format and resolution with no effect.

Second guess was path to the file so tried to change it multiple times in many variants using Android.OS.Environment.ExternalStorageDirectory.AbsolutePath, creating File variable and getting path from File.Path.

Got the TextView where I put path every time and it is always correct.

I have no idea why it does not work.

Code:

Java.IO.File file = new Java.IO.File (Android.OS.Environment.ExternalStorageDirectory.AbsolutePath + "/myimage/", "video.mp4");

tView.Text = file.Path;

MediaController mediaController = new MediaController(context: this);
vView.SetMediaController(mediaController);
mediaController.SetAnchorView(vView);
vView.SetVideoPath(file.Path);
vView.Start();

File.Path value:

"/storage/emulated/0/myimage/video.mp4"

EDIT: I have created "raw" folder in resource putted file there and then used following path:

vView.SetVideoPath("android.resource://" + PackageName + "/" + Resource.Raw.video);

It works, but if anyone know how to get the proper path to folder on sdCard?

Answer 1

Finally I figured it out. The problem was that my phone mounted card at path /storage/xxxx-xxxx/ my research revealed that the dir's name come from volume serial number(where android automatically mount card) and ExternalStorageDirectory refers to other locations in each android device. Sometimes it's internal sometimes usb mass storage.

Anyway didn't manage to find any method that returns the path so created following method:

string GetCardMountPoint()
    {
        string[] listOfDirs = Directory.GetDirectories("/storage/");
        string path = null;

        foreach ( string dir in listOfDirs)
        {
            if(dir.Contains('-'))
            {
                path = dir;
            }
        }

        return path;

It's not much of sophisticated solution but it works for now.