I'm using MPMoviePlayer to stream audio from a podcast and so far it's working great with the exception of the fact that the controls fade out after the audio begins playing as it would when you're watching a movie so I have a few questions:
1) Is it appropriate to use MPMoviePlayer, which seems to really be designed more for video than audio for streaming mp3 files?
2) If so, is there a way to keep the controls from fading out? I'm currently setting the control style:
[player setControlStyle: MPMovieControlStyleEmbedded];
Which appears to be, according to Apple's docs, the correct style to keep the controls on screen.
Is it appropriate to use MPMoviePlayer, which seems to really be designed more for video than audio for streaming mp3 files?
Yes, even though there certainly are other options - have a look at AVPlayer for example. But then again, that won't show any UI at all so the next answer will in any case apply: you will have to build you own UI if you are not satisfied with the one MPMoviePlayerController has to offer (even though in your particular case it is just the fade-out).
If so, is there a way to keep the controls from fading out? I'm currently setting the control style:
No, there is no way to achieve what you are asking for when using the standard UI (no matter if embedded or fullscreen). The only option would be supplying custom controls (while using MPMovieControlStyleNone).
Related
I am working on an app that allows the user to create a sort of dub. There is an audio file playing, and the user can tap at certain moments to insert sound (kind of like a censor button.) I'm wondering how to go about capturing the final product.
Capturing audio directly from the iPhone seems the easiest route, as the user already hears the finished product as it is made. However, I can't find anything on how to do this. If not possible, are there any suggestions?
The best way would probably be to be using the AV Foundation framework for mixing and then buffering the audio as well as playing it. This would allow for a high abstraction level while guaranteeing both played back and saved audio to be equal.
Apart from that: from a How can I achieve this with minimum code-perspective, without more information about your setup, the question is way too broad and/or opinion-based.
You will have to work with buffers. Don't know right now how it is done in Swift but you can implement it in Obj-C and then bridge it out.
You can refer to this answers here in StackOverflow (They are a bit old)
https://stackoverflow.com/a/11218339/2683201
https://stackoverflow.com/a/10101877/2683201
and a project also exists (but is in Obj-C)
https://github.com/alexbw/novocaine
Mainly the idea for your case would be to have 2 separated buffers and your sound effect.
Then, you will be playing from buffer A (your music) and copying played data into buffer B (final Output) unless you are playing the effect. In wich case you will be copying the effect data into your buffer B.
Other option is to do it offline:
Play your music (or audio) and keep a timer running synced with the elapsed time of your "to be censored audio".
Save the timestamp of when you start and end tapping the censor button (for example).
Overlap buffer A with your effect in those recorded (start-end) timestamps.
Save the buffer as a file (or do whatever you need to do with it)
UPDATE:
You should take a look into the Apple implementation of something like this:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/samplecode/AVAEMixerSample/Introduction/Intro.html
Is there any way to add more than 1 video player in a single View? I am getting the .m4v list from server adn have to display that much videos in single page.
It doesnot matter if I play 1 video at a time but which ever video I want must play there itself.
So the videos are placed one below other.
I have tried using mpmoviecontroller but it's drawback is it can have only one instance in the whole applicaiton So if i try to alloc 2 players in a view then the first one does not work and only one player works..
Is there any legal alternate way for the same?
MPMoviePlayerController will allow multiple instances, but only one of them can be playing their movie at any given time.
Please check the link : http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/mediaplayer/reference/MPMoviePlayerController_Class/MPMoviePlayerController/MPMoviePlayerController.html
I used AVPlayer class (which also MPMoviePlayerController uses under the hood) to successfully play multiple videos from multiple source.
The process of using it is more involved than MPMoviePlayerController, but I would say it is definitely worth to look at if you want some customized behavior in your player. The official programming guide is a good start.
I have a portion of my app that simply launches a webview linked to an mp3 file- it opens the file and plays the audio. What I'd like to do is allow that audio to continue playing even if the user locks their iPhone. (As a side note, is there any way to replace the default Quicktime logo that appears in the player? Not that big a deal, just thought I'd ask =)
A third question- I also do the same thing (webview) with an .m3u linked file to stream live audio throughout the week- is it also possible to keep it playing when the iPhone is locked?
Thanks!!
Ben
Quick Edit: The same URLs work great in IOS Safari (locking and unlocking doesn't affect the audio. Just not in my app's webviews.
I did find my answer though, in case anyone comes here looking. Easiest thing in the world too- just add a row to the plist file labeled "Required Background Modes" and under that set item 0's value to "App plays audio". Voila!
Since the audio is in a UIWebView, I don't believe that you'd be able to play it in the background.
EDIT: I was wrong, adding "App Plays Audio" to the UIBackgroundModes will make it work even when audio is in a UIWebView.
Have you thought about just streaming the .mp3 file yourself? Should be easy enough and you'd be able to setup background streaming. To get you started, I'd check out Matt Gallagher's AudioStreamer class which easily allows you to stream .mp3 files and other audio files from the net: https://github.com/mattgallagher/AudioStreamer
So I have an application that can currently capture video with the front facing iphone camera and then do some processing on the video feed real-time. What I'm trying to do, however, is make this process run in the background and put other controls onscreen. So for example, say I'd like to run the camera and process the image feed, but I want the user to see a black screen with some buttons on it. Any ideas on how to do this?
Just so we get terminology right, by "in the background", you mean running the camera capture while your application is in the foreground, but not displaying the actual video feed. This is possible, but I wanted to make clear that if you move your whole application into the background you will not have access to the camera then.
There are a few ways to do this, but the one that I've spent the most time with is grabbing frames of video (or photos) via AV Foundation. Using an AVCaptureDevice and AVCaptureSession, you can grab the frames of video and route them to an encoder for saving to disk or for processing using your own custom code. None of this requires the camera feed to be displayed onscreen, so you can put up whatever interface you like and do this video recording or photo capture without any onscreen indication.
I would caution that you should make it explicit to your users what you are doing, so that you do not run the risk of violating someone's privacy. Apple does not react kindly to those who do this (for good reason).
I encapsulate a lot of this within my open source GPUImage video and photo processing framework, so you could look at the code for the GPUImageVideoCamera class there to see how I configure the capture inputs. I hand the video frames off to OpenGL ES for the application of filters and other processing operations, but you could ignore that portion of it if you just wanted to do your own encoding or processing.
Heres an exemple code from Apple's doc:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#samplecode/PhotoPicker/Introduction/Intro.html
there is also the way to customize the camera interface.
If yes, what movie format has best performance? And how would a simple setup look like? I have some views, and I want to play a short movie inside a view (not fullscreen). The movie is about 5 seconds long.
Looks like the system frameworks only support playing video full screen with the MPMoviePlayerController. Supported formats are basically flavors of H.264 and MPEG-4; more in the documentation.
Theoretically, you might be able to roll your own decoding and playback code, but I doubt you'd get acceptable performance. (And most of the Open Source media player examples I can think of are GPL. Not that I imagine they'd fare much better.)
If it's only 5 seconds long, you can fake it by playing the audio file in the background, and an animated UIImageView at the same time. Lots of apps do this like the ~50 or so baby sign language ones.