Android VideoView black screen

Question

I have been looking for a way to get rid of the nasty black initial screen on a VideoView before the start() method is run.

I have tried with background image on the widget but it doesn't work as expected at all. I have also tried putting an image of the first frame in the video on top of the VideoView and hiding it after the start() method. Adding an onPrepared listener to start the video and then hide the image. This works but there is a horrible flicker in the transition and I don't know how to get rid of it.

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Adding the MediaController had no effect at all. The problem persists (I still see the black flicker) and I don't want to have the video controls visible at all. My code looks like this:

    VideoView vSurface= (VideoView) findViewById(R.id.surfaceView1);
    vSurface.setVideoURI(Uri.parse("android.resource://com.mypackage/" + R.raw.video1));
    vSurface.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
    vSurface.setOnPreparedListener(this);
    vSurface.setDrawingCacheEnabled(true);
    vSurface.setOnErrorListener(this);

Answer 1

I got the same problem and i found a solution. Its a little bit hacky but it do the trick. So basically you need to put your VideoView into a FrameLayout. Over the videoview you need to add another FrameLayout with the background of your video and when your video is loaded and ready to play you hide the placeholder.

<FrameLayout
  android:id="@+id/frameLayout1"
  android:layout_width="fill_parent"
  android:layout_height="fill_parent"
  android:layout_gravity="center"
  android:layout_marginTop="50dip" >

  <VideoView
    android:id="@+id/geoloc_anim"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="172dip" android:layout_gravity="top|center" android:visibility="visible"/>

  <FrameLayout
      android:id="@+id/placeholder"
      android:layout_width="fill_parent"
      android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:background="@drawable/fondvert_anim">
  </FrameLayout>

In your activity you need to implements OnPreparedListener and add this

//Called when the video is ready to play
public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp) {

    View placeholder = (View) findViewById(R.id.placeholder);

    placeholder.setVisibility(View.GONE);
}

So when the video is ready we hide our placeholder and that trick avoid the black flicker screen.

Hope this help someone.