How can I add overlay images or text on top of videos in Android?

Question

I'm trying to add overlay images/text on top of mp4 videos inside an Android application. Most solutions point to FFmpeg (or appunits AndroidFFmpeg) but isn't stable and very complicated to maintain. Is there a native way to do this using the Android SDK? (MediaCodec? MediaMuxer?)

Thank you, Ori

Answer 1

There are two ways to understand your question:

1. You want to temporarily superimpose video with additional information. This can be done using the standard layout procedure:

Use the built-in VideoView. You might need to wrap the textView /imageView in an additional layout to push it to the front:

 <VideoView
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:id="@+id/videoView"
    android:background="#00000000"/>
 <LinearLayout
     android:layout_width="wrap_content"
     android:layout_height="wrap_content"
     android:layout_gravity="bottom|center_horizontal"
     android:orientation="horizontal">
     <TextView
         android:id="@+id/txt"
         android:layout_width="wrap_content"
         android:layout_height="wrap_content"
         android:text="Text"/>
 </LinearLayout>

2. You want to add the additional information to the video itself. This is obviously much more difficult. You could use OpenCV for this. For information on OpenCV+Android visit their website.

Update: As pointed out in this answer, the ExtractMpegFramesTest might be interesting for you