I’ve been trying to build a 720p streaming video player in AppInventor, and cannot figure out how to get the video player to do anything remotely like 720p, nor can I figure out how to get it to listen-to / attach -to a UDP video stream on the WIFI.
The doc for the App Inventor video player component is here:
http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/learn/reference/components/media.html#VideoPlayer
The doc for the supported video sizes in android is here:
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html
Reading these docs, I’m left with the impression that
- Android only supports 480 x 360 H.264 video (I’m fine with H.264, but not 480×360) in it’s native widgets.
- App Inventor does not support Streaming.
Has your mileage varied?
Actually there isn’t a spec for what encoding sizes or if hardware acceleration is required of devices so depends on the manufacturer and model. There is however some minimal set of requirements set by Google in their Android Compatibility Definition Document if a manufacturer wants Android Market.
App Inventor is really interesting Google Labs project and realize that it is a ‘Labs’ project so trying build a streaming player with it might be a bit out of scope. I think its more for the hobbyist and education folk (Lego Mindstorm modules) than anything else. Since App Inventor just wraps the Android Framework, you would be better off going straight to the Android SDK and doing it there.
My recommendation, if you are trying to do a streaming app, use Java and the Android SDK.