Question

I am trying to play a video clip that loops indefinitely. I am doing this the way Apple recommends; by setting up a notification that gets triggered by AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification:

@property(nonatomic) AVPlayer *videoPlayer;
@property(nonatomic) AVPlayerItem *videoPlayerItem;

-(void)loadVideo
{
    NSURL *url = [[NSBundle mainBundle] URLForResource:filename withExtension:extension];
    AVURLAsset *asset = [AVURLAsset URLAssetWithURL:url options:nil];
    NSString *tracksKey = @"tracks";

    [asset loadValuesAsynchronouslyForKeys:@[tracksKey] completionHandler:
    ^{
        dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(),
        ^{
            NSError *error;
            AVKeyValueStatus status = [asset statusOfValueForKey:tracksKey error:&error];

            if (status == AVKeyValueStatusLoaded)
            {
                [self setVideoPlayerItem:[AVPlayerItem playerItemWithAsset:asset]];
                [videoPlayerItem addObserver:self forKeyPath:@"status" options:0 context:&ItemStatusContext];
                [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
                                                         selector:@selector (videoPlayerItemDidReachEnd:)
                                                             name:AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification
                                                           object:videoPlayerItem];
                [self setVideoPlayer:[AVPlayer playerWithPlayerItem:videoPlayerItem]];
                [scenePlayerView setVideoPlayer:videoPlayer];
            }
        });
    }];
}

When triggered, this calls my method to effectively rewind and play the clip again:

-(void)videoPlayerItemDidReachEnd:(NSNotification *)notification
{
    [videoPlayerItem seekToTime:kCMTimeZero];
    [videoPlayer play];
}

The problem is, there is a brief but visible pause in the video playback every time it hits this method and loops back to the beginning.

The video clips are H.264 and have been tested in other players to ensure that they have no visible “skips” in their content. This is all happening under iOS6 both in the Simulator and on an iPad2 and iPad3.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Unfortunately it appears this actually is not currently possible using AVPlayer as it stands- there is an unavoidable hiccup upon beginning playback in an AVPlayer in every case. So “messier” hacks appear to be the only way to solve this, using multiple AVPlayers, etc.