android native video playback with alpha channel

Question

Does android support alpha channel in any of its native supported video formats, or does anybody has an idea if it is in the pipeline?

Might be possible in h.264 in android in 3.0 ?

Answer 1

There is no alpha channel in any video codec - It's just not designed to do that and would vastly increase the size of the file (every pixel in every frame would need transparency data stored in some way)

You could place a transparent view above the video, maybe even make the ENTIRE video partial transparent (on some devices)... but you can't make ONLY PART of the video transparent. It would be all or nothing.