Objective C How to to present AVPlayer with multiple filePath possibilities - ios

Question

I am using AVPlayer to load up with no controls and act as an animation. With the background presenting the first and last screen of the animation.
When the AVPlayerController is presented, the screen flashes black for a split second as the controller loads up with the corresponding video.
The obvious answer would be to preload the AVPlayerController as soon as possible i.e. when the page loads.
However, my problem is that depending on what button the user clicks, the video must correspond correctly. Therefore, I can't preload as it is undetermined which video the user will need to see.
The function playAnimation gets called with the corresponding filePath of the video.
AVPlayer *player;
AVPlayerViewController *playerViewController;
- (void) playAnimation: (NSString*)filePath {
NSURL *videoURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:filePath];
//filePath may be from the Bundle or from the Saved file Directory, it is just the path for the video
player = [AVPlayer playerWithURL:videoURL];
playerViewController = [AVPlayerViewController new];
playerViewController.player = player;
playerViewController.showsPlaybackControls = false;
[self presentViewController:playerViewController animated:false completion:^{
[playerViewController.player play];//Used to Play animation
}];
Would there be any way to load this video controller in the viewDidLoad before hand and then change its source and play upon request without affecting smoothness?

Answer 1

I worked it out!
I created an AVPlayerLayer and then attached this to a UIView, the reason it works without causing a flash of black screen and looking a lot smoother to transition is because it gets initialised first with the correct video file path, then added as a subLayer onto a UIView and then I call to play the video.
Here is the code I used in the end. It may be helpful for anyone also wondering how to attach an AVPlayer to a UIView.
AVPlayerLayer *playerLayer = [AVPlayerLayer playerLayerWithPlayer:player];
CGFloat width = self.view.frame.size.width;
CGFloat height = self.view.frame.size.height;
playerLayer.frame = CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height);
The following code adds the AVPlayerLayer to the UIView but also adds it into an array of layers which I can use when I need to call removeFromSuperlayer in order to dismiss once it has finished playing.
[self.videoView.layer addSublayer:playerLayer];
[arrayOfLayers addObject:playerLayer];
[playerViewController.player play];
To dismiss the view once it has played, I then add a notification observer
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:#selector(playBackFinished:) name:AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification object:playerItem];
AVPlayerItem *playerItem = player.currentItem;
And this is the function that gets called to dismiss the view...
-(void)playBackFinished:(NSNotification *) notification {
[arrayOfLayers makeObjectsPerformSelector:#selector(removeFromSuperlayer)];
}