Is this possible to play Video File synchronous downloading with Almofire? - ios

Question

I try to download file using Alamofire and I done that with progress. What I am trying to do now is building a type of local stream from video URL.
Alamofire store the downloaded file at destination.
let destination = Alamofire.Request.suggestedDownloadDestination(directory: .DocumentDirectory, domain: .LocalDomainMask)
This destination is not valid to play in my case. eg.
if totalBytesRead >= 51831 {
let player = AVPlayer(URL: NSURL(fileURLWithPath: "\(destination)"))
let playerController = AVPlayerViewController()
playerController.player = player
self.presentViewController(playerController, animated: true) {
player.play()
}
}
Is there another way to do this ? OR can I store downloaded bytes to an array/buffer ?
Thanks

Answer 1

You don't need Alamofire in order to stream content which is in your case a video.
You can actually utilize existing Apple's classes such as:
AVPlayerItem
AVPlayerLayer
AVPlayer
Using those 3 classes you can create your own class like VideoPlayer that will use them for streaming.
Here's a code snip for the constructor to get you started:
playerItem = AVPlayerItem(URL: videoURL)
player = AVPlayer(playerItem: self.playerItem!)
playerLayer = AVPlayerLayer(player: self.player)
playerLayer?.frame = newFrame
playerLayer?.videoGravity = AVLayerVideoGravityResizeAspect
Now, you can use this class inside another View Controller:
self.containerView.layer.addSublayer(self.videoPlayer.playerLayer)
This will add the video player class you created and now you only need to play the video:
// Of type AVPlayer
player.play()
This is the easy part, if you want you will have to to implement your own buffer & rate and of course implement an observer to observe the rate and buffer:
// Observe the Rate of the player. when the video playing or paused
player.addObserver(theSelf, forKeyPath: "rate", options: .New, context: nil)
// Observe when the Video player Buffer is empty
playerItem.addObserver(theSelf, forKeyPath: "playbackBufferEmpty", options: .New, context: nil)
// Observe the loaded Buffer of the video
playerItem.addObserver(theSelf, forKeyPath: "loadedTimeRanges", options: NSKeyValueObservingOptions.New, context: nil)
Also, don't forget to remove them when you are done with them.
EDIT:
As asked, if you need to switch to a better quality during run time you will first need to observe the user's internet speed. After you solved this issue you will now need to stream the high quality video by for example adding another VideoPlayer layer on top of the current layer but only do it if your new high quality video buffer has at least 5 secs or so, so the user won't notice the change.
Good luck.