I have been streaming music from remote source using AVPlayer. I get URLs, use one to create an AVPlayerItem, which i then associate with my instance of AVPlayer. I add an observer to the item that I associate with the player to observe when the item finishes playing ( AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification
). When the observer notifies me at the item end, I then create a new AVPlayerItem and do it all over again. This works well in the foreground AND in the background on iOS 9.2.
Problem: Since I have updated to iOS 9.3 this does not work in the background. Here is the relevant code:
var portionToBurffer = Double()
var player = AVPlayer()
func prepareAudioPlayer(songNSURL: NSURL, portionOfSongToBuffer: Double){
self.portionToBuffer = portionOfSongToBuffer
//create AVPlayerItem
let createdItem = AVPlayerItem(URL: songNSURL)
//Associate createdItem with AVPlayer
player = AVPlayer(playerItem: createdItem)
//Add item end observer
NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self, selector: "playerItemDidReachEnd:", name: AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification, object: player.currentItem)
//Use KVO to see how much is loaded
player.currentItem?.addObserver(self, forKeyPath: "loadedTimeRanges", options: .New, context: nil)
}
override func observeValueForKeyPath(keyPath: String?, ofObject object: AnyObject?, change: [String : AnyObject]?, context: UnsafeMutablePointer<Void>) {
if keyPath == "loadedTimeRanges" {
if let loadedRangeAsNSValueArray = player.currentItem?.loadedTimeRanges {
let loadedRangeAsCMTimeRange = loadedRangeAsNSValueArray[0].CMTimeRangeValue
let endPointLoaded = CMTimeRangeGetEnd(loadedRangeAsCMTimeRange)
let secondsLoaded = CMTimeGetSeconds(endPointLoaded)
print("the endPointLoaded is \(secondsLoaded) and the duration is \(CMTimeGetSeconds((player.currentItem?.duration)!))")
if secondsLoaded >= portionToBuffer {
player.currentItem?.removeObserver(self, forKeyPath: "loadedTimeRanges")
player.play()
}
}
}
}
func playerItemDidReachEnd(notification: NSNotification){
recievedItemEndNotification()
}
func recievedItemEndNotification() {
//register background task
bgTasker.registerBackgroundTask()
if session.playlistSongIndex == session.playlistSongTitles.count-1 {
session.playlistSongIndex = 0
} else {
session.playlistSongIndex += 1
}
prepareAudioPlayer(songURL: session.songURLs[session.playlistSongIndex], portionOfSongToBuffer: 30.00)
}
I have set breakpoints to see that player.play()
IS being called when in the background. When i print player.rate
it reads 0.0
. I have checked the property playbackLikelyToKeepUp
of the AVPlayerItem and it is true
. I have confirmed also that the new URL is successfully used to create the new AVPlayerItem and associated with the AVPlayer when the app is in the background. I have turned audio and airplay background capabilities on and I have even opened up a finite length background task (in code above as bgTasker.registerBackgroundTask
). No idea what is going on.
I found THIS but i'm not sure it helps. Any advice would be great, thanks