I have a couple of views that access the movie player. I've put the following code in a method in AppDelegate for these views. They send in the filename to play. The code works fine but I know a release is required somewhere. If I add the last line as a release or autorelease, the app will crash once the user presses done on the movieplayer.
MPMoviePlayerController *moviePlayer = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc]
initWithContentURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:moviePath]];
moviePlayer.movieControlMode = MPMovieControlModeDefault;
[moviePlayer play];
//[moviePlayer release];
I get this error:
objc[51051]: FREED(id): message videoViewController sent to freed object=0x1069b30
Program received signal: “EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION”.
How should I be releasing the player?
What I've found is that the MPMoviePlayerController has to be sent the stop message before you can safely release it. So I do it in handlePlaybackEnd - first I stop it, then I autorelease it. Calling release doesn't seem to work too well:
- (void) moviePlayBackDidFinish : (NSNotification *) notification
{
VideoPlayerController * player = notification.object;
[player stop];
[player autorelease];
}
The whole thing becomes a bit trickier in that the MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification can get sent more than once, but calling stop/autorlease twice won't do you any good either. So you need to guard against that somehow.
Lastly, it seems to take a few iterations of the main run loop until you can safely create a new MPMoviePlayerController instance. If you do it too quickly, you'll get sound but no video. Great fun, huh?
To answer 4thSpace's comment on the answer above, you can remove the notification observer so you don't receive it multiple times:
- (void)moviePlayBackDidFinish:(NSNotification *)notification {
MPMoviePlayerController *theMovie = [notification object];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self
name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification
object:theMovie];
[theMovie stop];
[theMovie release];
}
for iphone os 3.2
you need to call
[moviePlayer pause];
before calling
[moviePlayer stop];
Stopping and releasing was not enough for me if the player did not reach to its end.
My solution is setting the moviePlayer.initialPlaybackTime = -1
at the moviePlayBackDidFinish:
before releasing it:
-(void)playMovie: (NSString *)urlString{
movieURL = [NSURL URLWithString:urlString];
moviePlayer = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:movieURL];
moviePlayer.initialPlaybackTime = 0;
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(moviePlayBackDidFinish: ) name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification object:moviePlayer] ;
moviePlayer.scalingMode = MPMovieScalingModeAspectFit;
moviePlayer.movieControlMode = MPMovieControlModeDefault;
moviePlayer.backgroundColor = [UIColor blackColor];
[moviePlayer play];
}
-(void)moviePlayBackDidFinish: (NSNotification*)notification{
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification object:moviePlayer] ;
moviePlayer.initialPlaybackTime = -1;
[moviePlayer stop];
[moviePlayer release];
}
I had the same problem and I just realized I set the notification method with object:nil (it was a copy paste).
I was having multiple notifications although I shouldn't have had any notifications at all.
Here is my new notification set up code that fixed all (see the object:moviePlayer):
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:@selector(moviePlaybackDidFinish:)
name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification
object:moviePlayer];
Hope that helps. Now all my code is working properly.
This seemed to reduce the memory significantly. However for IOS 4.1 it seems fine.
- (void)videoFinishedCallback:(NSNotification *)aNotification
{
thePlayer = [aNotification object];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter]
removeObserver:self
name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification object:thePlayer];
thePlayer.initialPlaybackTime = -1;
#if __IPHONE_OS_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED >= 30200
[thePlayer pause];
#endif
[thePlayer stop];
[thePlayer release];
}