Question

I am streaming a movie on the iPad using MPMoviePlayerController.

When the user rotates the device to landscape, I animate it to fullscreen.

If the user then taps ‘exit fullscreen‘ or ‘done’, the movie animates back to its small frame (native behavior), BUT– the top bar (navigation bar) is gone. Also, the visible views have moved upwards, behind and beyond the status bar.

Note that I haven’t touched the top bar whatsoever. I have not manually hidden it.

I have tried regaining the navigation bar by sending setNavigationBarHidden:animated to the current viewcontroller’s navigation controller, as well as to the tabbarcontroller’s navigationcontroller. I put this in response to the MPMoviePlayerDidExitFullscreenNotification (it fires). No effect. If we rotate back to portrait, however, it’s back instantly.

My questions are:

• Why does the top bar not return when full screen is exited by the user?
• How can we get the top bar back?

Best regards,
Timo

P.S. I will proceed to experiment with the weirdnesses described in this SO post. Might be related.

Answer 1

I just found a better way to to this (without the glitch when back from the view controller).
Hiding the navigation bar when entering fullscreen and displaying it again on exit :

// In the view did load for example :
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
     selector:@selector(moviePlayerWillExitFullScreen:) 
    name:MPMoviePlayerWillExitFullscreenNotification 
    object:nil];

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(moviePlayerDidEnterFullScreen:) name:MPMoviePlayerDidEnterFullscreenNotification object:nil];

// And in the ViewController put these methods :
- (void) moviePlayerWillExitFullScreen:(id)sender {
    [self.navigationController setNavigationBarHidden:NO animated:NO];
}

- (void)moviePlayerDidEnterFullScreen:(id)sender {
    [self.navigationController setNavigationBarHidden:YES animated:YES];
}

This will just be a bit more smooth in the animations.