Android tablet video players that do playlists?
August 22, 2011 10:23 AM   Subscribe

I have my eye on the Acer Iconia A500: it's a snazzy Android tablet at a nice price, with lots of connectivity. The micro HDMI port is a major selling point for me,because I want to use it for playback of video projections for my performances. But before I buy, I need to know that there's a good Android video player app out there that can 1) play videos from a playlist, and 2) transition seamlessly between videos. Any recommendations?

Specifically: I need to be able to line up a list of 5-10 video clips, play them in a defined sequence, and be assured that the transitions between clips will be clean -- i.e., I don't want to see even a momentary flash of the player controls, the tablet home screen, or anything else. (A black screen for up to 5 seconds or so between videos would be fine.) I'll be sending the tablet's video output to a projector, and anything other than black appearing onscreen during the transitions would ruin the vibe I need to create.

If you know of any players that meet these requirements, do tell! Bonus points if you know they actually work on the A500 (which currently runs Android 3.1, I believe). Thanks in advance!
posted by Artifice_Eternity to Technology (7 answers total)
 
Act 1 is probably the best video player out there for Android. Playlists are available, but I haven't used them yet, so I'm not sure about the clean transitions. I believe you can run a trial of it first before buying a license (I think it just runs a "Buy This Soon" line every five minutes or so.
posted by kuanes at 12:28 PM on August 22, 2011


Response by poster: kuanes: Thanks... someone on an Android forum recommended Act1 to me as well. Glad to know about the playlists.

Let me know if you find out what transitions between videos look like.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:33 PM on August 22, 2011


I've just tried Dice player, MX player & Moboplayer on my Asus Transformer, Android 3.2.

Dice player : No playlists but it can be set to play all the files in a specific folder sequentially. The player controls do pop up for a few seconds between each file and I couldn't see any way to disable this.

MX Player : No playlists or whole folder support that I could find. Each file needs to be started manually.

Moboplayer : Playlist support, but as far as I can tell, no auto-advance to next file.

Hope that's saved you some time!
posted by punilux at 1:40 PM on August 22, 2011 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: punilux: Hey, thanks a lot! Your research is appreciated.

I'd be happy with playing files in a folder in sequence, if I could do it without seeing the player controls in between.

It would surprise me if this functionality wasn't available in Android. I can do this with VLC on my laptop, or with my portable DVD player. I'd just rather not lug my laptop to gigs, and I'd rather not have to burn a custom DVD for each show I do.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:57 PM on August 22, 2011


If you know what they are in advance, why not just concatenate them into a single video using whatever transitions you like?
posted by The Monkey at 5:30 AM on August 23, 2011


Best answer: I gave act 1 a quick test on my galaxy s, and inbetween videos there was maybe 0.25 seconds of black screen , but no menu controls - list interface / etc were displayed. One thing that I'll note is that all of the videos were the same display size. Also, the 0.25 seconds of black screen might have been in the beginning of the video (I was using one source clip that I had previously reencoded a number of times with different audio delay to find out what appeared to give sync on my device (thus it had different names and appeared as many different files for the sake of playlists).

In my ~1 minute of play time I didn't see an obvious way to save a playlist, so you might want to investigate if one can pre-create play lists, or if one will need to pick out everything just before starting.
posted by nobeagle at 6:16 AM on August 23, 2011


Response by poster: The Monkey: I'd like to be able to make my video playlist decisions as late in the game as possible, without having to render everything into 1 long video. Along the same lines, I used to use a portable DVD player, and I could still do that, but I'd rather not have to spend the time burning everything to a DVD.

nobeagle: Thanks! It sounds like Act1 may fit the bill. I'm fine with not being able to save a playlist -- I can set it up right before showtime.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:19 AM on August 23, 2011


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