Playing a .mov file in UIImageView appears to lose frame rate? - ios5

Question

I have a 480p MOV file that looks fantastic (quality wise) in a UiImageView. However, it appears to lose framerate when being played. Is there a better way to play this movie w/out the controls? It needs to play like an animation on top of a UI.
Thanks in advance!
Here's my code:
-(void)imagesExtractionThread {
NSDate * now = [[NSDate alloc] init];
startTime = [now timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate];
do{
[self performSelectorOnMainThread:#selector(setImageToAvatar) withObject:nil waitUntilDone:YES];
usleep(9000);
}while(!closing);}
-(void)setImageToAvatar{
NSDate * now = [[NSDate alloc] init];
NSTimeInterval curTime = [now timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate];
currentTime = curTime - startTime;
if(currentTime>player.playableDuration){
NSLog(#"Current time %lf",currentTime);
currentTime = 0.0;
startTime = curTime;
if(player.playableDuration >0){
closing = YES;
avatar.hidden = YES;
}
}
UIImage *singleFrameImage = [player thumbnailImageAtTime:currentTime
timeOption:1];
//singleFrameImage = [self changeGreenColorWithTransparent:singleFrameImage];
//
/*sourcePicture = [[GPUImagePicture alloc] initWithImage:singleFrameImage smoothlyScaleOutput:YES];
[sourcePicture addTarget:filter];
[sourcePicture processImage];
singleFrameImage = [filter imageFromCurrentlyProcessedOutput];*/
avatar.image = singleFrameImage;}
I start the play process with this code:
player = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL: url];
player.shouldAutoplay = NO;
[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector:#selector(imagesExtractionThread) toTarget:self withObject:nil];

Answer 1

Use AVFoundation framework and AVPlayer class to play the video file. You get free hand to customize the appearance, controls etc. You may hide the controls if you don't want them.