Question

I was under the impression that webm played on Android, but I can’t get the videos to play on my Galaxy Nexus. I haven’t tried in the browser on the phone, just straight up and in the VideoView. Is there some magic combo of settings needed?

Answer 1

Yes, webm plays on android just fine. However, know that HTML5 video is always tricky.

The best way to check is to simply load a webm file in your browser:
http://clips.vorwaerts-gmbh.de/big_buck_bunny.webm

There a number of reasons why the video may not be playing for you including:

• The webm file may not have been encoded correctly
• You are using a video playing application that does not handle webm
  files
• Data integrity was lost when transferring it to your phone
• There may be an issue with the current build of your OS (although if
  you are 2.2 or later there really shouldn’t be)

Play around with an html5 video generator to see which video formats are playing on your phone (webm and mp4 should) http://sandbox.thewikies.com/vfe-generator/