Supported Media Formats

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 • • Support for mono/stereo/5.0/5.1 content with standard sampling rates from 8 to 48 kHz. • 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+) •
(Android 4.1+)		 •
HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+)   • Support for stereo/5.0/5.1 content with standard sampling rates from 8 to 48 kHz.
AAC ELD (enhanced low delay AAC) •
(Android 4.1+)		 •
(Android 4.1+)		 Support for mono/stereo content with standard sampling rates from 16 to 48 kHz
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 •
(Android 4.1+)		 • 8- and 16-bit linear PCM (rates up to limit of hardware). Sampling rates for raw PCM recordings at 8000, 16000 and 44100 Hz. WAVE (.wav)
Image JPEG • • Base+progressive JPEG (.jpg)
GIF   •   GIF (.gif)
PNG • •   PNG (.png)
BMP   •   BMP (.bmp)
WebP •
(Android 4.0+)
(Lossless, Transparency, Android 4.2.1+) 		•
(Android 4.0+)
(Lossless, Transparency, Android 4.2.1+) 		  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 4.3+)		 •
(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 the H.264 Baseline Profile codec. While table 3 lists examples that the framework supports for playback in the VP8 media codec.

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 CamcorderProfile class, which is available since API level 8.

Table 2. Examples of supported video encoding parameters for the H.264 Baseline Profile codec.

  SD (Low quality) SD (High quality) HD 720p (N/A on all devices)
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

Table 3. Examples of supported video encoding parameters for the VP8 codec.

  SD (Low quality) SD (High quality) HD 720p (N/A on all devices) HD 1080p (N/A on all devices)
Video resolution 320 x 180 px 640 x 360 px 1280 x 720 px 1920 x 1080 px
Video frame rate 30 fps 30 fps 30 fps 30 fps
Video bitrate 800 Kbps 2 Mbps 4 Mbps 10 Mbps

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 ftyp atom.
  • 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.