This document

describes the media codec, container, and network protocol support

provided by the Android platform.

As an application

developer, you are free to make use of any media codec that is

available on any Android-powered device, including those provided

by the Android platform and those that are

device-specific. However, it is a best

practice to use media encoding profiles that are

device-agnostic.

Network Protocols

The following network

protocols are supported for audio and video playback:

RTSP (RTP, SDP)

HTTP/HTTPS progressive

streaming

HTTP/HTTPS live

streaming draft

protocol:

MPEG-2 TS media files only

Protocol version 3 (Android 4.0 and

above)

Protocol version 2 (Android

3.x)

Not supported before Android

3.0

Note: HTTPS is not supported

before Android 3.1.

Core Media Formats

The table below

describes the media format support built into the Android platform.

Note that any given mobile device may provide support for

additional formats or file types not listed in the table.

Note: Media codecs that are not

guaranteed to be available on all Android platform versions are

accordingly noted in parentheses—for example "(Android 3.0+)".

Table

1. Core media format and codec support.

Type

Format / Codec

Encoder

Decoder

Details

Supported File Type(s) / Container Formats

Audio

AAC LC/LTP

•

•

Mono/Stereo content in any combination of standard bit rates up to

160 kbps and sampling rates from 8 to 48kHz

• 3GPP (.3gp)

• MPEG-4 (.mp4, .m4a)

• ADTS raw AAC (.aac, decode in Android 3.1+, encode in Android

4.0+, ADIF not supported)

• MPEG-TS (.ts, not seekable, Android 3.0+)

HE-AACv1 (AAC+)

•

HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+)

•

AMR-NB

•

•

4.75 to 12.2 kbps sampled @ 8kHz

3GPP (.3gp)

AMR-WB

•

•

9 rates from 6.60 kbit/s to 23.85 kbit/s sampled @ 16kHz

3GPP (.3gp)

FLAC

•

(Android 3.1+)

Mono/Stereo (no multichannel). Sample rates up to 48 kHz (but up to

44.1 kHz is recommended on devices with 44.1 kHz output, as the 48

to 44.1 kHz downsampler does not include a low-pass filter). 16-bit

recommended; no dither applied for 24-bit.

FLAC (.flac) only

MP3

•

Mono/Stereo 8-320Kbps constant (CBR) or variable bit-rate

(VBR)

MP3 (.mp3)

MIDI

•

MIDI Type 0 and 1. DLS Version 1 and 2. XMF and Mobile XMF. Support

for ringtone formats RTTTL/RTX, OTA, and iMelody

• Type 0 and 1 (.mid, .xmf, .mxmf)

• RTTTL/RTX (.rtttl, .rtx)

• OTA (.ota)

• iMelody (.imy)

Vorbis

•

• Ogg (.ogg)

• Matroska (.mkv, Android 4.0+)

PCM/WAVE

•

8- and 16-bit linear PCM (rates up to limit of hardware)

WAVE (.wav)

Image

JPEG

•

•

Base+progressive

JPEG (.jpg)

GIF

•

GIF (.gif)

PNG

•

•

PNG (.png)

BMP

•

BMP (.bmp)

WEBP

•

(Android 4.0+)

•

(Android 4.0+)

WebP (.webp)

Video

H.263

•

•

• 3GPP (.3gp)

• MPEG-4 (.mp4)

H.264 AVC

•

(Android 3.0+)

•

Baseline Profile (BP)

• 3GPP (.3gp)

• MPEG-4 (.mp4)

• MPEG-TS (.ts, AAC audio only, not seekable, Android 3.0+)

MPEG-4 SP

•

3GPP (.3gp)

VP8

•

(Android 2.3.3+)

Streamable only in Android 4.0 and above

• WebM(.webm)

• Matroska (.mkv, Android 4.0+)

Video Encoding Recommendations

Table 2, below, lists

examples of video encoding profiles and parameters that the Android

media framework supports for playback. In addition to these

encoding parameter recommendations, a device's

available video

recording profiles can be used as a proxy for

media playback capabilities. These profiles can be inspected using

the class,

which is available since API level 8.

Table

2. Examples of supported video encoding

parameters.

SD (Low quality)

SD (High quality)

HD (Not available on all devices)

Video codec

H.264 Baseline Profile

H.264 Baseline Profile

H.264 Baseline Profile

Video resolution

176 x 144 px

480 x 360 px

1280 x 720 px

Video frame rate

12 fps

30 fps

30 fps

Video bitrate

56 Kbps

500 Kbps

2 Mbps

Audio codec

AAC-LC

AAC-LC

AAC-LC

Audio channels

1 (mono)

2 (stereo)

2 (stereo)

Audio bitrate

24 Kbps

128 Kbps

192 Kbps

For video content

that is streamed over HTTP or RTSP, there are additional

requirements:

For 3GPP and MPEG-4 containers,

the moov atom

must precede any mdat atoms,

but must succeed the ftypatom.

For 3GPP, MPEG-4, and WebM

containers, audio and video samples corresponding to the same time

offset may be no more than 500 KB apart. To minimize this

audio/video drift, consider interleaving audio and video in smaller

chunk sizes.