Hi using MPMoviePlayerController to stream video into the app. However, it takes a long time to load and I want to be able to pre-buffer the video. Any suggestions?
Use
[MPMoviePlayerControllerInstance prepareToPlay]
as soon as you know that the user
might start playback of a movie. You
might also want set
MPMoviePlayeController.autoPlay to
something that fits best, depending
on your application.
From Apple's Documentation;
This method is called
automatically when you call the play
method. Calling it before you call
play gives the receiver a chance to
prepare items sooner and may result in
decreased latency when starting
playback. However, calling this method
may also interrupt any active audio
sessions.
Make sure your HTTP stream contains
a low bandwidth alternative using
less than 64Kbps (audio and video combined). Note that the
MPMoviePlayerController usually
starts buffering the low rate
playback index profile before
raising the bar and attempting to
load higher bandwidth profiles. It
will be prepared to play once it has
a few seconds worth of movie data.
Use the
MPMoviePlayerController.movieSourceType
property when initializing your
player to cut down the media
recognition delay.
From the MPMoviePlayerController
Class Reference:
The default value of this property is
MPMovieSourceTypeUnknown. This
property provides a clue to the
playback system as to how it should
download and buffer the movie content.
If you know the source type of the
movie, setting the value of this
property before playback begins can
improve the load times for the movie
content. If you do not set the source
type explicitly before playback, the
movie player controller must gather
this information, which might delay
playback.
Related
I have an app that uses AVPlayer (or AVQueuePLayer) to play local files that were recorded by the App. All works great. But I also want this to work on iPhone when a call is in progress (the videos are event recordings). What I found is that during a phone call, the video feed to avplayerLayer goes blank, AVPlayer rate change to 0 (STOP), and all attempts to change rate to non-zero (PLAY) are ignored (rate stays at 0). There does not appear to be any documentation on this, and the only way to detect this condition in the player, is that player is STOPPED and will not start PLAYBACK. Of course, I also check for audio interruptions, and call center calls in progress.
Obviously, in this case the interruption is caused by a call, so there is always a inactive/resume or a intactive/background/foreground/resume transition. As well as audio route notification, audio interruption. So indirectly I know the condition is probably occurring.
So questions are:
(1) Is there any direct method (specific to AVPlayer,AVPlayerLayer) to be notified that AVPlayer is in this non-playing mode. I now use "avplayer.rate failed to change rate from 0 to non-zero", but this seems hacky (and too much "crossing the streams"!) I want to Notify user that video temporarily can not be played or previewed, so they do not think the App is broken. And also inform them or automatically continue Playback when iPhone call ends. (Without a looping process that keeps trying to start playback every 500ms!)
(2) Can AVPlayer play anything while a iPhone call (Green Bar) is in progress? or is this just the way apple designed the AVPlayer SDK? (If so there is no documentation on this) Obviously, other apps can play video during an iPhone call, but I suspect they are using a lower level SDK and not AVPlayer.
I have used AVPlayer to play videos in slow motion. I am using addPeriodicTimeObserverForInterval: message to get time at specific interval, and checking some condition according to current playback time. once condition is fulfilled, I am calculating rate and using setRate: message of AVPlayer. i.e I am setting rate frequently. but once I have done with this, video is not playing smoothly, it's glitchy.
Can anybody please let me know how can I set setRate: frequently.
Thanks
We were having kind of the same issue. We were using setRate:1 (or 1.5/2.0 depending on what the user chose) to play the video instead of calling play. We have changed to call play then setRate: and the video plays smoothly now.
Is it possible, using javascript, to detect if an embedded youtube video pauses playback in order to let the video buffer? I know that there are events that fire when the user presses pause, but I'm looking for an event that fires when the video pauses due to a slow connection. I'm creating a web application where it's important to have the video play through smoothly. If the video pauses due to a slow connection, I want to detect that.
Use this code player.getPlayerState():Number it seems like you are allowed to ask the player what status it is in so this may help you
https://developers.google.com/youtube/js_api_reference
There is also a state 'buffering' being fired when the player needs to buffer more data..in that case the video stops. I guess also 'error' state might be of help.
The solution I worked out is just to use the javascript API's onStateChange callback (https://developers.google.com/youtube/js_api_reference) to detect when the player is started for the first time and when it finishes playing at the end. When the player is started, I grab the current time. When it finishes, it sees how much time has elapsed. In my application, the user cannot pause the video, so comparing the elapsed time to the video length indicates if it paused for loading.
I am developing an iPhone application in which I play the videos using MPMoviePlayerController. Sometimes, some of the videos does not play immediately after I call play on MPMoviePlayerController.
I have called prepareToPlay and in the notified method of MPMediaPlaybackIsPreparedToPlayDidChangeNotification, I am calling play on MPMoviePlayerController.
How can I identify the problem here?
Try using the property movieSourceType and assign a proper value to it before running prepareToPlay.
From MPMoviePlayerController reference;
The default value of this
property is MPMovieSourceTypeUnknown.
This property provides a clue to the
playback system as to how it should
download and buffer the movie content.
If you know the source type of the
movie, setting the value of this
property before playback begins can
improve the load times for the movie
content. If you do not set the source
type explicitly before playback, the
movie player controller must gather
this information, which might delay
playback.
I am developing an iPhone application in which I play a video using MPMoviePlayerController. I use custom controls to play the video.
I have a slider that shows video time line. Using this user can seek the movie to any time-line of the movie.
When user continuously moves the slider:
Pause the video only for first time; [MPMoviePlayerController-obj pause]
MPMoviePlayerController-obj.currentPlaybackTime = slider.value
When slider action ends:
Play the video; [MPMoviePlayerController-obj play]
This plays the movie from the position where user had left the slider. But, it leads to blank frame when movie completes playing. This defect occurs randomly; i.e not for all the seek'd time.
What is the reason for getting the blank frame? How do I solve this?
I'm not sure if this will work, but try setting the initialPlaybackTime to either the slider.value or to currentPlaybackTime.
For being sure that your content is not flawed, hence possibly triggering that issue, you should try to replicate your faulty MPMoviePlayerController results using Apple's reference video content.
HTTP-Streaming: bipbop.m3u8
Progressive Download & Local
Playback: sample_mpeg4.mp4
I have personally observed many issues in connection with improper encoding. Weird things tend to happen when working with lossy compressed content. This is true for video (i-frames vs. p-frames) as well as audio (variable bitrate).
One being improper playback durations being reported. Such issue may result into an unexpected finished-state. I have seen cases where MPMoviePlayerController still shows a bunch of seconds to play even though the actual video has obviously finished. Those cases occur frequently once the user seeks around within the video.
Once you made sure that the issue occurs using the given sample files as well, you should file a bug-report.