Question

I want to create an animated logo that serves as the splash screen for my iphone/ipad app.

I’m thinking of showing the default.png, which then transitions to an .mp4 (where the first frame of the .mp4 matches the default.png), plays a 3 second movie, fades out, and loads my application.

Does anyone have any experience with this? And is my idea (using .mp4) the best way to achieve this? Also, is Apple “cool” with this?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Yes you can absolutely do this and yes Apple is cool with it.

You could use MPMoviePlayerController, place it under a UIImageView with the launch image and when the movie is loaded and ready to go remove the UIImageView and play the movie.

But given the sometimes finicky nature of MPMoviePlayerController you need to time things carefully. Here’s a snippet you can use as a starting point:

-(void)setupMovie {
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(movieComplete:)
                                                 name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification object:self.playerView];
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(playMovie:)
                                                 name:MPMoviePlayerLoadStateDidChangeNotification object:self.playerView];
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(showMovie:)
                                                 name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackStateDidChangeNotification object:self.playerView];

    [self.playerView setContentURL:[[NSBundle mainBundle] URLForResource:@"movie" withExtension:@"mov"]];
    [self.playerView prepareToPlay];
}


-(void)playMovie:(NSNotification *)notification {
    if (self.playerView.loadState == MPMovieLoadStatePlayable | MPMovieLoadStatePlaythroughOK) {
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self name:MPMoviePlayerLoadStateDidChangeNotification object:notification.object];
        [self.playerView play];     
    }
}

-(void)showMovie:(NSNotification *)notification {
    if (self.playerView.playbackState == 1) {
        [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackStateDidChangeNotification object:notification.object];
        // should update this to new UIView anim methods
        [UIView beginAnimations:nil context:nil];
        [UIView setAnimationDuration:.2];
        self.splashScreen.alpha = 0;
        [UIView commitAnimations];      
    }
}