Quickstart with Exoplayer

Overview

Exoplayer is an Advanced Video Library by Google that is aimed to be more customizable and flexible than the traditional video_view and MediaPlayer approach. Read more about it here.

Adding it to a project

In your gradle files, add these lines:

//project's build.gradle
repositories {
    google()
    jcenter()
}

//app/build.gradle
android {
    ...
    compileOptions {
        sourceCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
        targetCompatibility JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    }
}

dependencies {
    ...
    implementation 'com.google.android.exoplayer:exoplayer:2.10.5' //current version as of oct,2019
    //there is also an option to import only specific modules
}

Streaming a video via Exoplayer

The basic steps for playing a video(that is available on some server on the internet) via Exoplayer are:

1. add the <player_view> in xml and create its instance: This will be the view on which the video will be rendered.
2. create a Player instance : This will be the main Handler behind all the streaming , decoding and rendering of bitstreams
3. create a MediaSource Instance: This is the Class associated with the Uri of the content you intend to play
4. attach playerView to player
5. start video playback via absPlayerInternal.setPlayWhenReady(true); :this will automatically start playing video as soon as the video is available.( To control playback manually, simply pass false, the playback will then only start when user presses the play button .

In your activity or framgment's xml file, add these lines:

 <com.google.android.exoplayer2.ui.PlayerView
        android:id="@+id/pv_main"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="300dp"
        />
<!-- there are many customization attributes available like app:auto_show="true" or app:ad_marker_color="@color/colorAccent", etc which can be either used via xml or from java -->

In your activity or fragment's java file, add these lines:

     SimpleExoPlayer absPlayerInternal;PlayerView pvMain;

     protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        ...
        
        String CONTENT_URL = "https://www.radiantmediaplayer.com/media/bbb-360p.mp4";
        
        int appNameStringRes = R.string.app_name;

        pvMain = findViewById(R.id.pv_main); // creating player view
        
        TrackSelector trackSelectorDef = new DefaultTrackSelector();
        absPlayerInternal = ExoPlayerFactory.newSimpleInstance(this, trackSelectorDef); //creating a player instance
        
        String userAgent = Util.getUserAgent(this, this.getString(appNameRes));
        DefaultDataSourceFactory defdataSourceFactory = new DefaultDataSourceFactory(this,userAgent);
        Uri uriOfContentUrl = Uri.parse(CONTENT_URL);
        MediaSource mediaSource = new ProgressiveMediaSource.Factory(defdataSourceFactory).createMediaSource(uriOfContentUrl);  // creating a media source

        absPlayerInternal.prepare(mediaSource);
        absPlayerInternal.setPlayWhenReady(true); // start loading video and play it at the moment a chunk of it is available offline

        pvMain.setPlayer(absPlayerInternal); // attach surface to the view
    }

For Pausing Video

    private void pausePlayer(SimpleExoPlayer player) {
        if (player != null) {
            player.setPlayWhenReady(false);
        }
    }

For resuming the video:

    private void playPlayer(SimpleExoPlayer player) {
        if (player != null) {
            player.setPlayWhenReady(true);
        }
    }

For stopping the video:

    private void stopPlayer(){
        pv.setPlayer(null);
        absPlayer.release();
        absPlayer = null;
    }

For seeking the video to some point:

    private void seekTo(SimpleExoPlayer player, long positionInMS) {
        if (player != null) {
            player.seekTo(positionInMS);
        }
    }

Extras

• To silence video's volume, simply do : absPlayerInternal.setVolume(0f)

• The <PlayerView> has a built in Video controller that can be toggled using pvMain.setUseController(/*true or false*/) and other functions. But if you want, you can also add an external exoplayer's controller view called <PlayerControlView>.

• Exoplayer has many useful extensions, some of which are mentioned here .