Using Ti.Media.VideoPlayer video does not loop on iPhone 4 - iphone

Having a weird problem with my app.
Trying to play a video in a loop (see the code below). VideoPlayer repeatMode is set to Ti.Media.VIDEO_REPEAT_MODE_ONE.
Works in simulator, works on iPhone 4s, works on iPad Air... does not work on iPhone 4 (all of them running iOS 7.1.1 apart from simulator - 7.1).
Exact symptoms: after one play, video should restart from beginning, but it stops. If controls are available, I can press play to start playing it again, then after reaching the end it stops again.
I could swear that it worked on iPhone 4 before the 7.1 upgrade, but somehow it stopped.
Anyone could replicate this issue? Or have any idea?
Sys info:
Titanium SDK: Tested with 3.2.3.GA; 3.2.2.GA; 3.2.1.GA; 3.2.0.GA
Platform & version: iOS 7.1.1 (11D201)
Device: works on iPhone 4s, iPad Air, simulator; fails on iPhone 4
Host Operating System: OSX 10.9.2
Titanium Studio: 3.2.3.201404181442
Xcode: 5.1.1 (5B1008)
Alloy: 1.3.1
Code for basic Alloy project to replicate:
index.js
var videoPlayer = Titanium.Media.createVideoPlayer({
autoplay : true,
fullscreen : false,
mediaControlStyle : Titanium.Media.VIDEO_CONTROL_DEFAULT,
repeatMode: Ti.Media.VIDEO_REPEAT_MODE_ONE,
scalingMode : Titanium.Media.VIDEO_SCALING_ASPECT_FIT
});
//Video is 12s long so it is easy to notice that it does not loop.
videoPlayer.url = "video/candles.mp4";
$.index.add(videoPlayer);
$.index.open();
index.xml
<Alloy>
<Window class="container">
</Window>
</Alloy>
I would appreciate any suggestions.

I have done some research and played around with the Titanium.Media.VideoPlayer and managed to work around the issue. Below you can find the solution in case anyone else encounter this problem.
First of all, some info on the problem.
I have found some forum boards where developers were having very similar problem with MPMoviePlayerController on iPad 1st gen. Looped video was less or more randomly freezing on loop. So I think there is a problem with the Apple video player on some devices, and not necessary with Titanium implementation.
My first approach was to try replay video on complete event that is fired when video stops playing, instead of using repeatMode.
So far so good. It worked on the first time, yay! But the happiness was rather short. During an hour of test of videoPlayer.play() on event complete, the video sometimes was repeating 10-30 times fine and then suddenly was freezing. What gives? Turns out the video player had some sort of a hiccup.
Normal sequence of events was as follows:
video ends, playbackstate changes to 2,
complete event is fired
I restart video on complete
playbackstate changes to 1, video is playing until the end.
For a mysterious reason once in a while this sequence got additional something happening:
video reaches the end - playbackstate changes to 2,
complete event is fired.
video gets restarted on complete
playbackstate changes to 1, video starts playing
suddenly playbackstate changes to 1, video stops, without firing complete event.
Solution
So, knowing all this, I have set up listeners to listen to playbackstate instead of complete and when I hear playbackstate: 1 then I restart video and tadaaa! Everything works!.
Caveat: not 'everything' unfortunately. I am using custom video controls, so I have lost pause, and stop ability (every time video playback state changes to 'stopped' I restart it forcefully). To make it work I have to remember to remove listener every time I press 'pause/stop' buttons and then reattach it afterwards.
Hope that helps someone.

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Thanks
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This solution works for me.

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My App plays music from the iPod library and when the music is playing it auto-locks regardless of the above setting. But once you unlock it, it then doesn't auto-lock again unless you play music again, in which case it locks again after the iPhone auto-lock time setting.
I'm amazed no-one else has come across this as I imagine it would affect a large number of Apps.
Just to clarify:
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Our app uses the MPMediaPLayer. We also had the idleTimerDisabled=YES code in the ApplicationFinishedLaunching, which works EXCEPT if untethered, and there is already a current nowPlayingItem which is left playing (or unpaused, if paused at app startup). Obviously this is all with the Settings -> General -> Autolock set to some timed value.
By adding idleTimerDisabled=NO, immedately followed by idleTimerDisabled=YES in one of the other bits of code AFTER we had figured out what bit of music we would get playing seemed to solve the problem. Just setting it to YES was insufficient.. and subsequent queries had always indicated the correct value (YES).. so it appears the Apple code ignores the setting of the value IF there is a current piece of music and that is not changed by your code.. but does notice a change of value.
This is all under iOS 3.0.
Even in 2015, using iOS 8.2, this bug is still alive and kicking.
Here's my solution, using XCode 6.2.
iPhone - phone goes to sleep even if idleTimerDisabled is YES
Basically, even now, in 2015, the only way to safely make sure that the device doesn't go to sleep is to repeatedly call a piece of code to keep the device awake.
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Sounds like a bug, file with Radar - I am not too surprised this has not been seen much as there are probably not a lot of apps that try to lock the screen open and play music.
Having same issue. It does work when the device is plugged in. You can press lock button on top, and my NSTimer fires later and causes a vibrate. However if the device is not plugged in pressing the lock button puts the device to sleep. Any solution would be greatly appreciated.
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I develop Seconds - Interval Timer for iPhone and iPod touch and I've had no end of trouble with this. The idea of my app is that people create timers based on a number of intervals where each interval can have it's own playlist or track played.
In iOS3 I had the problem that I couldn't disable the idle timer by just setting idleTimerDisabled = YES. In the end I came up with the same solution as Neil whereby I would periodically set it to NO, then immediately to YES again. This seemed to work.
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Overall, the implementation of this seems flakey at best.