MPMoviePlayerController causing leak - ios

Question

I am developing a very video heavy iPad only iOS app which uses ARC but it appears that I have a leak when I try using MPMoviePlayerController, instruments throws a memory leak on the line of code that allocates the memory for the video player object, any ideas? also the clean up of the video player doesn't seem to be happening when the videos completes playback.
Any help would be very much appreciated, been looking everywhere for an answer for this as you can tell the problem is very much an show stopper with the nature of the application.
the code:
#interface ViewController ()
#property(nonatomic,strong) MPMoviePlayerController * vidPlayer;
#end
#implementation ViewController
#synthesize vidPlayer;
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
#autoreleasepool {
[super viewDidLoad];
// Do any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
[self playVideoForFile:#"01_intro"];
}
}
-(void)playVideoForFile:(NSString*)p_fileName
{
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:p_fileName ofType:#"mp4"];
NSURL *tempURI = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];
vidPlayer = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:tempURI];
[vidPlayer setControlStyle:MPMovieControlStyleNone];
[vidPlayer setAllowsAirPlay:NO];
[vidPlayer.view setFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, [[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds].size.height,[[UIScreen mainScreen] bounds].size.width)];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:#selector(vidFinishedCallback:) name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification object:vidPlayer];
[vidPlayer play];
[self.view addSubview:vidPlayer.view];
}
-(void)vidFinishedCallback:(NSNotification*)aNotification
{
[vidPlayer pause];
vidPlayer.initialPlaybackTime = -1;
[vidPlayer stop];
vidPlayer.initialPlaybackTime = -1;
[vidPlayer.view removeFromSuperview];
vidPlayer = nil;
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification object:vidPlayer];
}

Answer 1

I tried
MPMoviePlayerController *movieController = [notification object];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self
name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification
object:movieController];
movieController = nil;
and this seems to work.

Answer 2

This is a hunch, but try calling removeObserver before vidPlayer is destroyed. The docs specify that you should "Be sure to invoke removeObserver: or removeObserver:name:object: before notificationObserver or any object specified in addObserver:selector:name:object: is deallocated." --NSNotification Center
Also, you may try removing the explicit autoreleasepool in viewDidLoad. It should not be necessary if it's just one vidPlayer per view, and there have been some recent issues discovered with ARC and autoreleasepools. See this bugfix

Answer 3

I had this problem and it was sending me grey! Every time a new video was instantiated, it was never released (using ARC) and as more instances of the viewController were created it eventually caused a clunky crash.
I too checked all the MPMoviePlayer calls ensuring it had stopped and set to nil.
The problem wasn't in the allocation and release of the MPMoviePlayerController, but in the delegate that was used to pass the view controller details.
In the child view controller, I had a delegate to check for the passed model data from a tableViewController:
#property (strong, nonatomic) id<MyViewControllerDelegate> delegate;
The assignment as a strong pointer caused a huge memory leak. By assigning this as 'weak' it cleared the problem up.
#property (weak, nonatomic) id<MyViewControllerDelegate> delegate;
As a general rule, for view controllers delegates, assign them as a weak property pointer.
Good luck. Hope this clears the leak up!