Question

I am using AVFoundation and MacRuby to handle video playback. I have no trouble getting a video to play in my AVPlayer initially using the code below:

    videoWindow.setFrame(@frame, display:true, animate:true)
    @content_view = self.videoWindow.contentView
    @content_view.wantsLayer = true
    asset = AVAsset.assetWithURL(url)       
    item = AVPlayerItem.new
    item.initWithAsset(asset)
    $video = AVPlayer.alloc.initWithPlayerItem(item)
    @player_layer = AVPlayerLayer.playerLayerWithPlayer($video)
    @player_layer.Frame = @frame
    @content_view.layer.addSublayer(@player_layer)
    @player_layer.videoGravity = AVLayerVideoGravityResize
    $video.seekToTime(CMTimeMake(4, 1))
    $video.play

Where I run into trouble is when I am trying to change the playback to a new video. To do this I am trying to use the same AVPlayer object and use the replaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem command. When I try to run this the application stops responding.

    asset2 = AVAsset.assetWithURL(@url2)
    item2 = AVPlayerItem.new
    item2.initWithAsset(asset2)
    $video.pause
    $video.replaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem(item2)

I have also tried performingSelectorOnMainThread but I get the same results.

    $video.performSelectorOnMainThread('replaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem:', withObject:item2, waitUntilDone:true)

I am wondering if there is a way to reuse my AVPlayer object to play new items in?

Answer 1

This is what ended up working:

item = AVPlayerItem.playerItemWithURL(@url)
$video.replaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem(item)

There seemed to be some problem with how I was creating assets. I just skipped the asset and created the item directly.