When defining the formats that ExoPlayer supports, it's important to note that
"media formats" are defined at multiple levels. From the lowest level to the
highest, these are:
The format of the individual media samples (such as a frame of video or a frame
of audio). These are
sample formats
. Note that a typical video file will
contain media in at least two sample formats; one for video (for example, H.264) and
one for audio (for example, AAC).
The format of the container that houses the media samples and associated
metadata. These are
container formats
. A media file has a single container
format (for example, MP4), which is commonly indicated by the file extension. Note
that for some audio-only formats (for example, MP3), the sample and container formats
may be the same.
Adaptive streaming technologies such as DASH, SmoothStreaming and HLS. These
are not media formats as such, however it's still necessary to define what
level of support ExoPlayer provides.
The following sections define ExoPlayer's support at each level, from highest to
lowest. The last two sections describe support for standalone subtitle formats
and HDR video playback.
Adaptive streaming
ExoPlayer supports DASH with multiple container formats. Media streams must be
demuxed, meaning that video, audio, and text must be defined in distinct
AdaptationSet
elements in the DASH manifest (CEA-608 is an exception as
described in the table below). The contained audio and video sample formats must
also be supported (see the
sample formats
section for details).
SmoothStreaming
ExoPlayer supports SmoothStreaming with the FMP4 container format. Media streams
must be demuxed, meaning that video, audio, and text must be defined in distinct
StreamIndex elements in the SmoothStreaming manifest. The contained audio and
video sample formats must also be supported (see the
sample formats
section for details).
ExoPlayer supports HLS with multiple container formats. The contained audio and
video sample formats must also be supported (see the
sample formats
section for details). We strongly encourage HLS content producers to generate
high quality HLS streams, as described
in this blog post
.
Progressive container formats
Streams in the following container formats can be played directly by ExoPlayer.
The contained audio and video sample formats must also be supported (see the
Sample formats
section for details).
For image container and format support, see
Images
.
* Seeking is unsupported because the container does not provide metadata (for example,
a sample index) to allow a media player to perform a seek in an efficient way.
If seeking is required, we suggest using a more appropriate container format.
** These extractors have
FLAG_ENABLE_CONSTANT_BITRATE_SEEKING
flags for
enabling approximate seeking using a constant bitrate assumption. This
functionality is not enabled by default. The simplest way to enable this
functionality for all extractors that support it is to use
DefaultExtractorsFactory.setConstantBitrateSeekingEnabled
, as described
here
.
*** The
FLAC library
extractor outputs raw audio, which can be handled
by the framework on all API levels. The
ExoPlayer library
FLAC extractor outputs
FLAC audio frames and so relies on having a FLAC decoder (for example, a
MediaCodec
decoder that handles FLAC (required from API level 27), or the
FFmpeg library
with FLAC enabled). The
DefaultExtractorsFactory
uses the
extension extractor if the application was built with the
FLAC library
.
Otherwise, it uses the
ExoPlayer library
extractor.
ExoPlayer supports both live and on demand RTSP. Supported sample formats and
network types are listed below.
Supported sample formats
H264 (the SDP media description must include SPS/PPS data in the fmtp
attribute for decoder initialization).
AAC (with ADTS bitstream).
Supported network types
RTP over UDP unicast (multicast is not supported).
Interleaved RTSP, RTP over RTSP using TCP.
Sample formats
By default ExoPlayer uses Android's platform decoders. Hence the supported
sample formats depend on the underlying platform rather than on ExoPlayer.
Refer to
Supported media formats
for
documentation on sample formats supported by Android devices. Note that
individual devices may support additional formats beyond those listed.
In addition to Android's platform decoders, ExoPlayer can also make use of
software decoder extensions. These must be manually built and included in
projects that wish to make use of them. We currently provide software decoder
libraries for
AV1
,
VP9
,
FLAC
,
Opus
,
FFmpeg
,
MIDI
,
IAMF
and
MPEG-H
.
FFmpeg library
The
FFmpeg library
supports decoding a variety of different audio
sample formats. You can choose which decoders to include when building the
library, as documented in the library's
README.md
. The
following table provides a mapping from audio sample format to the corresponding
FFmpeg decoder name.
ExoPlayer supports the following image formats. See
Image Loading Libraries
for how to integrate with external libraries that may provide support for a
different set of formats.
* The video part of HEIC motion photos can be obtained with
MetadataRetriever
and played as a standalone file.
Standalone subtitle formats
ExoPlayer supports standalone subtitle files in a variety of formats. Subtitle
files can be side-loaded as described on the
media items page
.
ExoPlayer handles extracting high dynamic range (HDR) video in various
containers, including Dolby Vision in MP4 and HDR10+ in Matroska/WebM. Decoding
and displaying HDR content depends on support from the Android platform and
device. See
HDR Video Playback
to learn about checking for HDR decoding/display capabilities and limitations of
HDR support across Android versions.
When playing an HDR stream that requires support for a particular codec profile,
ExoPlayer's default
MediaCodec
selector will pick a decoder that supports that
profile (if available), even if another decoder for the same MIME type that
doesn't support that profile appears higher up the codec list. This can result
in selecting a software decoder in cases where the stream exceeds the
capabilities of a hardware decoder for the same MIME type.
Content and code samples on this page are subject to the licenses described in the
Content License
. Java and OpenJDK are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Last updated 2025-03-28 UTC.
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