VPlayer is fast becoming my favorite video player for Google Android. The app supports a wide range of video formats including DiVX, Xvid, WMV, M4v, FLV, AVI, MKV, MOV, and MP4. But while the app can handle almost any video I throw at it, when I first installed VPlayer alpha a few months ago the user interface was a bit spartan.

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Now the developer has released a Beta version of VPlayer, with a couple of major changes.

First up, there’s support for gestures. You can adjust the size of a video by using two fingers to pinch and zoom. If you scroll your finger up and down on the right side of the display you can adjust the volume, while swiping up and down the left side will adjust the screen brightness. You can also seek by swiping from left to right along the bottom of the display.

Second, there’s now a preferences menu where you can adjust things like the video aspect ratio, video quality, toggle gesture support, or change the root folder to make finding your video files easier.

There are three video quality settings: High speed, Medium, and High Quality. If you select High speed, the app should attempt to play any videos at all, even if they have high bit rates or HD resolutions. This may mean that you’ll see some distortion, but the frame rate shouldn’t drop. You can improve overall video quality by selecting the High quality setting, but some videos may not play smoothly.

That said, I still wasn’t able to play 720p HD DiVX files on my Google Nexus One without some severe audio/video sync issues. You may have better luck with different video formats.

VPlayer Beta is available as a free download from the Android Market. The app supports Android 2.1 and up.

You can find more screenshots after the break.

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Update: Check out our list of 13 of the best video players for Android

There was a time… just a few short months ago, when it was incredibly difficult to find a media player for Google Android which could handle video formats such as DivX, Xvid, MKV, WMV, FLV and RMVB. Basically the default Android video player could handle H.264 and MP4 files, as well as any other formats natively supported by your phone, and that was it.

Now there are a number of third party apps that support a wide range of video formats, including Rockplayer, arcMedia, and now a new app called VPlayer, which uses FFmpeg to decode videos.

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VPlayer is still technically in alpha testing, but it works great on my Google Nexus One. The app is about as simple as can be. Upon launch you’re presented with a file browser. Find the video file you want to play and click it to start playback. If your phone runs Android 2.1 and up, and has a fast enough CPU, it can probably handle most formats.

In the video window you can tap the screen to bring up a timeline and play/pause button. When you drag your finger along the timeline, the actual time will show up in large characters in the middle of the screen, making it very easy to jump to a specific point in a video.

When you hit the Home button to leave the app, playback will pause — and the video will resume as soon as you return to the app.

The only thing I’d really like to see added to VPlayer is a more robust file browser allowing you to access videos stored on a home network drive. The developer also plans to add support for subtitles. But overall I’m already very impressed with VPlayer.

VPlayer is available as a free download from the Android Market.

After taking CineXPlayer for a disappointing test drive this morning I decided to see if I could find another app that would let me watch Xvid and DivX movies on my iPod touch. I was pleasantly surprised to discover OPlayer, an app which not only handles those formats, but also MKV, WMV, and other video formats.

Even better, unlike CineXPlayer, OPlayer offers a free, ad-supported version of its app so you can try it out without spending any money before deciding whether to plunk down $2.99 for the full version. (The iPad version of OPlayer costs $4.99).

The video quality was pretty good with a few Xvid and WMV files I tried… but you’ll have best results with standard definition video. I tried a few HD DivX files and playback was a little choppy. That makes sense, since the iPhone and iPod touch feature hardware acceleration for H.264 video playback, but not for the other formats OPlayer can handle.

If video playback is choppy, you can enable a Skip Frame feature which may improve performance. You can also adjust the screen aspect ratio in the settings, although there’s no simple way to adjust the aspect ratio while a video is playing, which means you might have to spend a little time going back and forth until you get things right.

Still, for now OPlayer is hands down the best third party video player for the iPhone and iPod touch available today, at least when it comes to support for a wide range of video codecs.

The app also supports MKV, RMVB, MOV, and 3GP video files and lets you transfer files to your device either using iTunes or using the OPlayer tools including a feature that lets you download videos from the web or an FTP server. You can also transfer files to your mobile device over a WiFi connection.

You can check out a few more screenshots after the break.

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Most Android devices support a handful of media codecs out of the box, including H.264 and MP4. But there are a ton of formats that aren’t typically supported, including MKV, DiVX, Xvid, and WMV. And RockPlayer can handle them all.

The RockPlayer user interface couldn’t be much simpler. When you fire up the app, you’ll see a file browser. Just scroll around until you find the video you want to watch, tap it, and odds are it will start playing.

There are a handful of on-screen controls, including fast forward and rewind buttons, a play/pause button, and a zoom button. Clicking on zoom once will increase the size of the video, while hitting it twice will stretch the video to fit the size of your display — which works pretty well if you have a video that’s formatted with a 16:9 aspect ration, but not so well with 4:3 videos. You can tap anywhere on the video to make the controls go away.

Because most Android devices don’t have hardware decoding support for DiVX, WMV, and many other codecs, RockBasePlayer can be somewhat taxing on the CPU. You’ll probably have best results using a device with a fairly speedy CPU. I had no problems watching videos on a Google Nexus One.

Up until now the best app I’d found for playing DiVX and Xvid movies was Wuzhenhua Player. RockBasePlayer blows that app out of the water when it comes to ease of use, codec support, stability, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to watch videos in landscape mode.

Update: RockPlayer remains one of the best media players for Android with support for a wide range of video files. But since this article was originally published a number of excellent alternatives have arrived on the scene. Check out our list of 13great video players for Google Android.