Nova Video Player

What is Nova Video Player?

NOVA is an opeN sOurce Video plAyer designed for Android devices (tablets, phones and TVs).
This application is based on a fork of Archos Video Player open-source release, intended to support new features with an enhanced stability.

NOVA is published on GooglePlay or on Amazon Appstore or on Huawei AppGallery or on F-Droid or directly on github. Latest changes are tracked here.

Please note that NOVA is free and consists in a small community effort done on personal time.

I have just downloaded Nova Video Player and it shows no video.

On a fresh start, the discovery process for videos stored on local storage can take some time.
Nova Video Player is just a video player and does not point to any streaming service. If you do not have already video content on your device no videos will be displayed.

Network shares can also be added as video sources.

What is the difference between passthrough mode 1 and passthrough mode 2?

Audio passthrough amounts to transmit through HDMI interface compressed sound channels directly to your AV receiver that will perform the decoding and rendering. It is thus a feature targeted for Android TV or TV boxes.
On Nova Video Player, two experimental audio passthrough modes are supported:

You might have to try the two modes and figure out what suits you best depending on the multi-channel audio codec used in your video files.

Note that:

More details are available here.

Some videos play really slowly on my device.

Nova Video Player relies on the hardware acceleration capabilities of the product it runs on. For instance some products do not support HEVC(H.265) hardware decoding and revert to software decoding yielding to a choppy video playback.

In any case please make sure that you have not forced software decoding in the settings of Nova Video Player (Settings/Software decoding).

What are the network share protocols supported by Nova?

Several network share protocols are supported by Nova:

What is the best network protocol to play high bitrate video files?

According to benchmarks, sftp and webdav are the best network protocols to play high bitrate video files (e.g. large 4k).

Current SMB implementation is known to have difficulties to play 30Mbps videos.

Since nova version 6.2.x, you can select in nova settings another SMB implementation that supports higher throughput. Note that this option limits SMB operation to SMB servers with protocol version higher than 2, i.e.: SMB1 will not work.

I cannot connect to a webdav server

When adding/browsing a webdav network shortcut, you need to fill the following dialog inputs:

How multimedia information is retrieved?

Nova relies on external services to retrieve multimedia information (descriptions and posters/backdrops) based on your video collection:

If you experience issues in the automatic scrape process, please check that it is not a backend service issue by directly seaching your movie/show on the TheTVDB or TMDB.

More details are availble here and here.

Note that on Sony Android TVs, a rescan of USB disk is triggered at each power up/return from suspend and it is a Sony bug (cf. here).

Nova Video Player can’t find information on some of my videos, I’d like to add them manually.

Nova Video Player supports NFO file description format that follows the Kodi specification.Advanced users can manually create them or use a dedicated tool for this task. More details are available here.

What type of subtitles are supported?

SRT, SUB subtitles are supported. SSA support is rudimentary. PGS subs are not yet supported.

Which network shares are supported?

Nova Video Player supports adding videos on network shares using SMB, SFTP, FTP and FTPS protocols. Note that:

Blue screen starting nova

If you get an empty blue screen at application start, just reboot your device to get in a sane state.

Resume points not working

Please check if you have enabled private mode which prevents resume points to be recorded.

What are the different play modes

Nova is able to play video files sequentially by choosing a play mode. This option is selectable when playing the video in one of the accessible menus. The various available play modes are:

Trakt complains about no Internet connection

Trakt can report that there is no Internet connection when you use specific adblocking or a Pi-hole. In order to overcome this issue you need to whitelist these domains:

static.criteo.net www.google-analytics.com stats.g.doubleclick.net

Dolby Vision and HDR

Dolby Vision and HDR support on AndroidTV depends on your TV capabilities, AV receiver passthrough compatibility and TV box hardware specification. This multifactor dependency is prone for confusion.

Note that specific patches have been integrated in Nova v6.0.33 to improve DOVI support.

Dolby Vision requires specific HW support and TV box constructor in certain cases have to pay a specific license to benefit from this feature. This is the case for Amlogic S905Xx based hardware. Cheap chinese non certified hardware might not fullfil this requirement.

Adaptive refresh rate on fire tv stick

In order to get adaptive refresh rate on Amazon fire tv stick you need to enable it in fireOS settings -> display & sounds -> Display, put video resolution to auto (up to 4k ultra hd); -> match original frame rate ON; -> dynamic range settings disable HDR or set it to adaptive. If you do not do this you will only have a restrictive set of refresh rates available. Note that choosing adaptive for dynamic range setting, your UI will be 1080p, and disabled will enable a 4k UI.

Visibility of external USB drive after Nvidia Shield Android 11+ update

In order to identify multimedia files, Nova relies on Android media scanning for local storage and USB storage. On latest version of the OS, Nvidia shield disables external storage Android indexing for performance enhancements. In order to get back external storage video files visibility, you need to enter Android settings/Device Preferences/Storage and enable Scan for media automatically option.

Alternatively you can expose in the same setting the local USB drive via SMB (Mount network storage option) and then use Nova SMB network shares indexing.

Nova shuts down my Wi-Fi

On some devices due to some manufacturer Wi-Fi driver instability (e.g. Fire 10 HD), Nova's UDP SMB discovery process may cause Wi-Fi to switch off. In order to avoid this issue, select "Disable SMB UDP discovery" in Nova settings.

Pre-releases and Nova v5.xx to v6.xx migration

Nova v6.xx pre-release is available on Github:

I’d like to request a new feature.

Feel free to join our Reddit community or open a feature request on github project issue .

I'd like to report a bug

When discussing an issue on reddit, it is best also to report it on github project issue with details about your specific configuration/setup/hardware/Android version and if possible a way or link or sample to reproduce the problem. It is also best to include logs to help figuring out the problem (debugging procedure).

How can I contribute in the development?

Source code is available on github and pull requests are welcome.

The application does not support my language, how can I help?

You are welcome to contribute to the translation of the application via crowdin service

Where to find Nova Video Player application privacy policy?

Nova application privacy policy can be found here.

I want to sponsor Nova.

You are always welcome to show your gratitude and appreciation to the developers of this application through a donation via liberapay or github sponsor or opencollective.