Surface types

This page describes the different types of surfaces that can be used for video playback with Media3, and how to choose the right type for your use case. To find out more about Surface objects in Android, read this graphics documentation.

Choose a surface type for PlayerView

The surface_type attribute of PlayerView lets you set the type of surface used for video playback. The allowed values are:

• surface_view (SurfaceView)
• texture_view (TextureView)
• spherical_gl_surface_view (SphericalGLSurfaceView) - for spherical video playback
• video_decoder_gl_surface_view (VideoDecoderGLSurfaceView) - video rendering using extension renderers
• none - which is for audio playback only and should be used to avoid having to create a surface because doing so can be expensive.

If the view is for regular video playback then surface_view or texture_view should be used. SurfaceView has a number of benefits over TextureView for video playback:

• Significantly lower power consumption on many devices.
• More accurate frame timing, resulting in smoother video playback.
• Support for higher quality HDR video output on capable devices.
• Support for secure output when playing DRM-protected content.
• The ability to render video content at the full resolution of the display on Android TV devices that upscale the UI layer.

SurfaceView should therefore be preferred over TextureView where possible. TextureView should be used only if SurfaceView does not meet your needs. One example is where smooth animations or scrolling of the video surface is required prior to Android 7.0 (API level 24), as described in the following notes. For this case, it's preferable to use TextureView only when SDK_INT is less than 24 (Android 7.0) and SurfaceView otherwise.

Note: SurfaceView rendering wasn't properly synchronized with view animations until Android 7.0 (API level 24). On earlier releases, improper synchronization could result in unwanted effects when a SurfaceView was placed into a scrolling container, or when it was animated. Unwanted effects included the view's contents appearing to lag slightly behind where it should be displayed, and the view turning black when animated. To achieve smooth animation or scrolling of video prior to Android 7.0, use TextureView rather than SurfaceView.

Note: The lifecycle of a SurfaceView's surface is tied to view visibility, whereas a TextureView's surface lifecycle is tied to window attachment and detachment. Therefore, in scrolling UIs that use SurfaceView, starting playback can take longer because the output surface becomes available slightly later. From Android 14 onwards, PlayerView uses SurfaceView.setSurfaceLifecycle(SURFACE_LIFECYCLE_FOLLOWS_ATTACHMENT) to avoid this behavior. If your app uses SurfaceView directly (without PlayerView) then you may want to enable this mode. Before Android 14, it's possible to work around the surface being destroyed by translating views off-screen when recycling them.

Note: Some Android TV devices run their UI layer at a resolution that's lower than the full resolution of the display, upscaling it for presentation to the user. For example, the UI layer may be run at 1080p on an Android TV that has a 4K display. On such devices, SurfaceView must be used to render content at the full resolution of the display. The full resolution of the display (in its current display mode) can be queried using Util.getCurrentDisplayModeSize. The UI layer resolution can be queried using Android's Display.getSize API.

Note: If you are using PlayerView inside of AndroidView, we cannot guarantee compatibility because PlayerView was not made with Compose in mind. One of the common problems for SDK_INT == 34 is a stretched/cropped/leaked Surface that does not match the parent container (AspectRatioFrameLayout) correctly. You can opt into a Compose workaround by calling PlayerView.setEnableComposeSurfaceSyncWorkaround, but note that it causes issues with XML-based shared transitions.

Choose a surface type in Compose

In Compose, the interop solution uses the AndroidView Composable to wrap SurfaceView and TextureView. The two Composables that correspond to that are AndroidExternalSurface and AndroidEmbeddedExternalSurface.

Media3 ui-compose module provides a PlayerSurface Composable that links the Player to a Surface in a lifecycle-aware manner. The surface types in this case are:

• SURFACE_TYPE_SURFACE_VIEW (effectively AndroidExternalSurface)
• SURFACE_TYPE_TEXTURE_VIEW (effectively AndroidEmbeddedExternalSurface)

There is no type none, since that would correspond to not including the PlayerSurface in your Compose UI tree.