The Android platform has limited support for video formats besides H.264 in a .mp4 container. Since most video is not originally in this format it must be re-encoded to view on your Android device. Then along comes RockPlayer which handles a wide variety of audio and video containers including: avi mkv rmvb mp4 mov wmv asf wma wav mpg ts mpa dvd au mp3 mid ivf aiff ogm ogg cda flic d2v aac roq flac drc dsm swf pls pmp. And it supports the following formats: AAC AC3 DTS FLV4 LPCM ALAW ULAW MPEG Audio MPEG-1 MPEG-2 RealVideo RealAideo Vorbis AVC VC1 XVID DIVX SVQ Theora Bink. Basically RockPlayer will play whatever you happen to throw at it.
RockPlayer has a slick interface and comes in either a free ad supported version which is fully functional, or a paid version for $9.99. The ad supported version shows ads while the controls are displayed but not in fullscreen, unfortunatly it displays the RockPlayer icon in the upper left at all times. Upon startup it also asks you to purchase the application. Overall these are relatively small issues if you decide to go the free route.
RockPlayer uses the open source FFmpeg library to handle video decoding which is why it can handle so many formats or codecs. You can also take advantage of two playback modes Normal or System. Normal mode uses RockPlayers built-in decoding engine and supports almost every format, or you can use the Android System mode whose decoding engine takes advantage of certain processor optimizations but lacks support for most formats.
Features include original, full-screen original aspect, and zoom viewing formats. Tapping the screen will bring up the video controls as well as show battery life remaining as well as the time. Another handy feature is that RockPlayer keeps track of where you left off in a specific video allowing you to resume from that exact point at a later time.
The player comes in 3 versions which make specific optimizations depending on which processor your Android device is equipped with. You can find RockPlayer in the Android market but only the least optimized but most compatable V6 version which should work on most any device. If you have a newer phone you should go to the developer’s site below and download the correct version for your device.
