Handling interruption for multiple AVAudioPlayers - iphone

Is it possible to handle interruption by AVPLayer delegate when I have more then one AVPlayer?
I have tried few things to start again two AVPlayer after phone call, but still only one respond and started, the second one was paused and did nothing.

My guess is that you need to keep an array of your players so that you can poll through them and pause/start each one. You can add each to an array when you create the player which you can access in audioPlayerBeginInterruption: and audioPlayerEndInterruption:
Apple's docs imply that the interruptions only handle one player ...if the class had stated a method input of players instead of player then I would have said you could have just done a for loop to poll through them like the code below:
AVAudioPlayer *player;
for (player in players) {
[player pause];
//or [player play];
}
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/AVFoundation/Reference/AVAudioPlayerDelegateProtocolReference/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/occ/intfm/AVAudioPlayerDelegate/audioPlayerBeginInterruption:

I'm sure you've solved this already, but just wanted to log my answer anyway. I've just tested this on an IPhone (4.3.2), my application is playing two different sounds with two different AVAudioPlayers. When receiving a phone call I DO get an interruption for each player, for both interruption methods:
- (void)audioPlayerBeginInterruption:(AVAudioPlayer *) player;
- (void)audioPlayerEndInterruption:(AVAudioPlayer *) player;
So you can easily re-start both players:
- (void) audioPlayerEndInterruption:(AVAudioPlayer *) player {
NSLog (#"Interruption ended. Resuming audio playback.");
[player prepareToPlay];
[player play];
}

Related

AVAudioPlayer's method 'play' does not work inside a while loop

i would like to play sound in a loop, with AVAudioPlayer, just like in metronome app, from ios examples. I have the following code:
BOOL continuePlaying = YES;
while(continuePlaying){
[_audioPlayer play];
...do some other stuff
}
The problem is, that sound plays only once- during the first iteration. In next iterations play method doesn't seem to do anything. I would be grateful for any suggestions on what could be wrong.
PS: I know that AVAudiopoayer has numberOfLoops property, but in this case i want to do some other stuff between each plays, so i have to use a loop (i would like to create a metronome app).
Instead of playing while loop, capture delegate when ur sound finish playing
- (void)audioPlayerDidFinishPlaying:(AVAudioPlayer *)player successfully:(BOOL)flag
You can start playing sound again and do other stuff you would like to do.
Looping in case of playing sound seems illogical since you are firing multiple play and that wont work,
Check with this code, It worked for me:
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(0, 0), ^{
while (continuePlaying)
{
[player play];
//do your stuffs here
}
});

Play overlapping sound in iOS

I'm using AVAudioPlayer to play a little shot sound when a user clicks a button. The sounds lasts about 3 seconds and I want that, if a user hit a button multiple times, the shot should sound multiple times. If the user clicks twice in 2 seconds, then the second sound should overlap the first shot.
My problem is that the shot only sounds every 3 seconds (if the user clicks rapidly) instead of every hit of the button.
Inside ViewDidLoad
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"shot" ofType:#"caf"];
urlShotCaf = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];
player = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:urlShotCaf error:nil] ;
[player prepareToPlay];
And when a person clicks the shot button
- (IBAction)tap:(id)sender {
clicks++;
[player play];
}
Can I do this with AVAudioPlayer? Should I use another framework?
As stated in reference here:
Play multiple sounds simultaneously, one sound per audio player, with precise synchronization
I guess you need a AVAudioPlayer for every sound you want to play simultaneously. Otherwise you could use any simple library like CocosDenshion that is really simple, easy to embed and powerful (it resides on OpenAL).
Just do
[SimpleAudioEngine sharedEngine] playEffect:#"yoursound.wav"];
and you are done.
Please try this. It works for me.
- (IBAction) tap:(id)sender {
if ([player isPlaying]) {
[player stop];
[player setCurrentTime:0.0];
}
[player play];
}
If high level frameworks fail, then you can dip down to AUSampler - an AudioUnit sample player (typically used for playback of sampled instruments, drum sounds, and so on). This should have very fast response times and support multiple active notes. Configure the sample's playback as one-shot. When the button is pressed, simulate a note on event. You could also map different samples (audio recordings) to different notes and velocity ranges.

Proper way to quickly switch between videos

I am creating an application which displays a certain video based on an external event, which may require the playing video to change quickly - once per second or more. However, there must not be a gap or lag between the videos.
What is the best way to do this? There are only four videos, each about two megabytes.
I was considering creating four MPMoviePlayerControllers, and have their views added to the main view but hidden, and switching by pausing and hiding the current video, then unhiding and playing the next video. Is there a more elegant solution?
Edit
Here's some more information for my exact sitaution:
The different video frames share mostly common pixels- so it's OK for a frame to stick during switch, but NOT okay for black frames to appear.
Each video is only about ten seconds long, and there are only four videos. The general state transitions are 1<->2<->3<->4->1.
The video playback should compatible with simultaneous AVAudioRecorder recording. As far as I can tell, MPMoviePlayerController is not.
You'll need to set up and prebuffer all the video streams to avoid hiccups, so I don't think your multiple MPMoviePlayerController solution is too far off the mark.
However, that specific solution is potentially problematic because each movie player has its own UI. The UIs do not synchronize with each other, so one might be showing the control bar, another not; one might be in full screen mode, etc. Switching among them will cause visual discontinuities.
Since it sounds like your video switching is not necessarily user-initiated, I'm guessing you don't care too much about the standard video player UI.
I would suggest dropping down to the underlying layer, AV Foundation. In theory, you can just create an AVPlayerItem for each video. This is a stream-management object with no UI overhead, so it's perfect for what you're doing. You could then -- again, in theory -- create one AVPlayer and one AVPlayerLayer to handle the display. When you wanted to switch from one AVPlayerItem stream to another, you could call the AVPlayer's replaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem: message to swap out the data stream.
I made a little test project (GitHub) to verify this, and unfortunately the straightforward solution isn't quite perfect. There is no video flow glitching, but in the transition from AVPlayer to AVPlayer, the presentation layer seems to briefly flash the previous movie's last-seen frame at the size appropriate to the next movie. It seems to help to allocate separate AVPlayer objects for each movie and switch among them to a constant player layer. There still seems to be an instantaneous flash of background, but at least it's a subtle defect. Here's the gist of the code:
#interface ViewController : UIViewController
{
NSMutableArray *players;
AVPlayerLayer *playerLayer;
}
#property (nonatomic) IBOutlet UIView *videoView;
- (IBAction) selectVideo:(id)sender;
#end
#implementation ViewController
#synthesize videoView;
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
NSArray *videoTitles = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:#"Ultimate Dog Tease",
#"Backin Up", #"Herman Cain", nil];
players = [NSMutableArray array];
for (NSString *title in videoTitles) {
AVPlayerItem *player = [AVPlayer playerWithURL:[[NSBundle mainBundle]
URLForResource:title withExtension:#"mp4"]];
[player addObserver:self forKeyPath:#"status" options:0 context:nil];
[players addObject:player];
}
playerLayer = [AVPlayerLayer playerLayerWithPlayer:[players objectAtIndex:0]];
playerLayer.frame = self.videoView.layer.bounds;
playerLayer.videoGravity = AVLayerVideoGravityResizeAspect;
[self.videoView.layer addSublayer:playerLayer];
}
- (void) observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath ofObject:(id)object
change:(NSDictionary *)change context:(void *)context
{
[object removeObserver:self forKeyPath:#"status"];
for (AVPlayer *player in players) {
if (player.status != AVPlayerStatusReadyToPlay) {
return;
}
}
// All videos are ready to go
[self playItemAtIndex:0];
}
- (void) playItemAtIndex:(NSUInteger)idx
{
AVPlayer *newPlayer = [players objectAtIndex:idx];
if (newPlayer != playerLayer.player) {
[playerLayer.player pause];
playerLayer.player = newPlayer;
}
[newPlayer play];
}
- (IBAction) selectVideo:(id)sender
{
[self playItemAtIndex:((UILabel *)sender).tag];
}
#end
Half the code is there just to observe the state of the players and make sure that playback doesn't start until all videos have been buffered.
Allocating three separate AVPlayerLayers (in addition to three AVPlayers) prevents any sort of flash. Unfortunately, an AVPlayer connected to an undisplayed AVPlayerLayer seems to assume that it doesn't need to maintain a video buffer. Every switch among layers then produces a transient video stutter. So that's no good.
A couple of things to note when using AV Foundation are:
1) The AVPlayer object doesn't have built-in support for looped playback. You'll have to observe for the end of the current video and manually seek to time zero.
2) There's no UI at all other than the video frame, but again, I'm guessing that this might actually be an advantage for you.
The MPMoviePlayerController is a singleton. Four instances will share the same pointer, the same view, etc. With the native player, I think you have only two alternatives: one is to change the contentURL property when you want a transition. If the latency this way unacceptable, the other alternative is to produce a longer video with the shorter clips concatenated. You can create very quick jumps within the single, longer clip by setting currentPlaybackTime.

AVAudioPlayer prepareToPlay callback in iPhone

Is it possible to know when an AVAudioPlayer is ready after a call to prepareToPlay?
If not, is there any other class that provides this functionality?
I would like to implement something like this:
- (void) prepare {
[audioPlayer prepareToPlay];
// Update UI to indicate that the audio is being prepared
}
- (void) onAudioReady {
// Update UI to indicate that the audio is ready
}
There is this class that can help to initialize the audio and then play it instantly in your onAudioReady method.
https://github.com/nicklockwood/SoundManager
with reference to this post: https://stackoverflow.com/a/10417762/1474080
OR
you can check for the BOOL result from [audioPlayer prepareToPlay] to see if the audio hardware has been initialised according to the documentation. If the result is YES, you could generate some UI for user to see.
prepareToPlay
Prepares the audio player for playback by preloading its buffers.
(BOOL)prepareToPlay Return Value Returns YES on success, or NO on failure.
Discussion Calling this method preloads buffers and acquires the audio
hardware needed for playback, which minimizes the lag between calling
the play method and the start of sound output.
Calling the stop method, or allowing a sound to finish playing, undoes
this setup.

Playing sounds in iPhone games - slowdowns

I'm using the AVAudioPlayer to play sound FX on a separate thread in my app. Right now my app is fairly simple, I have a UIScrollView for a scrolling background, and a couple of CALayers that represent a player and an enemy in a simple side-scroller type game (think Mario or Kung Fu or whatnot)...I can move the player left and right, with the view scrolling appropriately with no problems. I have an "attack" button that's playing a sound effect...and many times when I play the sound effect, I get a little bit of a hitch, graphically. Is this just par for the course on the iPhone using Quartz? Is there some way to have this perform a little more smoothly without starting to investigate OpenGL?
Use NSData dataWithContentsOfMappedFile instead of dataWithContentsOfFile.
Also AVAudioPlayer handles it's own threading, you don't need to create one. [AVAudioPlayer play] returns after it started playing, not after it is done playing.
And don't forget to release your AVAudioPlayer when you no longer need it, for example if you only want to play a sound onces, implemement the audioPlayerDidFinishPlaying:successfully: delegate and release it in there.
How are you playing the sound? If I was to make a guess it would be that each time the sound is played the OS is actually loading it from disk as well as playing it.
Update:
Ok, you really don't need to be creating a new thread to play a sound. This alone could cause a stutter in a game and is also redundant - The AVAudioPlayer play method is asynchronous - it returns immediately and not when the sound ends.
I had the same problem with slowdown. To solve it, I first play and pause the sound when it first loads at volume 0 - this works better than prepareToPlay which still seems to result in slowdown:
player.volume = 0.0;
[player play];
[player pause];
player.volume = 1.0;
When it comes time to play a sound I just [player play];. Then every update cycle I loop through all my active sounds and catch ones that are about to end and rewind them instead of letting them expire - this avoids the overhead and slowdown of starting up the sound from scratch. The example here stops the sounds 1/15th of a second from the end of the sound:
for ({each player in active sounds})
{
if ((player.duration - player.currentTime) <= (1.0/15.0))
{
[player pause];
player.currentTime = 0.0;
}
}
Now it's ready to go for the next play. Seems to work fine!
Update: Turns out I was still getting some pauses the very first time the sound was played. I think playing it at zero volume wasn't actually doing anything, but I changed it to play at 0.0001 volume and then pause - it's inaudible but seems to do the job of prepping the sound.
Had the same problem at first. Per documentation you need to call "prepareToPlay" every time a sound has finished playing. Adopting the AVAudioPlayerDelegate protocol and adding the following method will do this.
-(void)audioPlayerDidFinishPlaying:(AVAudioPlayer *)player successfully:(BOOL)flag{
[player prepareToPlay];
}
(Using an answer rather than a comment for length and so I can show code):
My sound playing method is as follows:
- (void)playSoundThreaded:(id)soundPlayer
{
if(soundPlayer == nil)
return;
NSAutoreleasePool* pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
[(AVAudioPlayer*)soundPlayer play];
[pool release];
}
- (void)playSound:(AVAudioPlayer*)player
{
if(player == nil)
return;
[NSThread detachNewThreadSelector:#selector(playSoundThreaded:)
toTarget:self withObject:(id)player];
}
And the sound is loaded up as follows:
fxPlayer = [[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithData:
[NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:
[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"voicehiya" ofType:#"caf"]] error:NULL];
We've had some inkling that the sound is being reloaded from disk every time...but have no idea as to why that is or how to prevent it.
I think the thread is over complicating your player. Try this for a go:
/* setup the sound player */
AVAudioPlayer *player1=[[AVAudioPlayer alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:audioFilePath] error:NULL];
player1.numberOfLoops = 0;
player1.volume=1.0f;
[player1 prepareToPlay];
and then playSound becomes
[player play];
And don't forget to have the AudioSession category set correctly too.
Why not just use AudioServicesPlaySystemSound? This is well suited to sound effects.
I use it in my game (vConqr) which is also based on a UIScrollView, with numerous other views (so all having their own CALayer), and it doesn't significantly impact performance.
I've been investigating this for a few days now thanks to a project I'm on at work. I added some home-rolled profiling to my code and found that the calls to play sounds were causing frame rate issues in my OpenGL game. I've got a few recommendations for you based on what I've found:
Use an AVAudioPlayer playing an mp3 for your background music.
Use OpenAL for your sound effects.
For sound effects, use the audio converter command line tool from apple to get your sounds to .caf format. This is an uncompressed format that doesn't require the CPU to decompress your sound to memory before sending it to the sound card. It can go directly, saving you time. Instructions on using the tool can be found HERE. (scroll to the very bottom of the page)
Use the lowest bit depths that still sound good. You don't really need 128 kbps - you can probably get away with 20 for a lot of things. Lower bit rate = less processing = faster sound.
I'll let you know if I find anything else that's useful! Good luck!