AVPlayer layer inside a view does not resize when

Question

I have a UIView which contains an AVPlayer to show a video. When changing orientation, I need to change the size and location of the video.

I'm not very experienced with resizing layers, so I'm having problems making the video resize.

I start by creating the AVPlayer and adding its player to my videoHolderView's layer:

NSURL *videoURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:videoPath];
self.avPlayer = [AVPlayer playerWithURL:videoURL];

AVPlayerLayer* playerLayer = [AVPlayerLayer playerLayerWithPlayer:self.avPlayer];
playerLayer.frame = videoHolderView.bounds;
playerLayer.videoGravity = AVLayerVideoGravityResizeAspect;
playerLayer.needsDisplayOnBoundsChange = YES;

[videoHolderView.layer addSublayer:playerLayer];
videoHolderView.layer.needsDisplayOnBoundsChange = YES;

Then, at a later point, I change the size and location of the videoHolderView's frame:

[videoHolderView setFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 768, 502)];

At this point, I need the avPlayer to resize to these same dimension. This doesn't happen automatically - the avPlayer stays at it's small size within the videoHolderView.

If anyone can help, I'd really appreciate any advice.

Thanks guys.

Answer 1

Found a great article by Marco Santarossa that shows multiple approaches to fixing. https://marcosantadev.com/calayer-auto-layout-swift/

I used his first suggestion to reset the layer frame during viewDidLayoutSubViews() event.

override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() {
    super.viewDidLayoutSubviews()
    playerLayer.frame = view.layer.bounds
}

Answer 2

I had this problem in Swift 2.3, and I solved writing a proper PlayerView class and setting it as subview:

import UIKit
import AVKit
import AVFoundation

class PlayerPreviewView: UIView {

    override class func layerClass() -> AnyClass {
        return AVPlayerLayer.self
    }

    var player: AVPlayer? {
        get {
            return playerLayer.player
        }

        set {
            playerLayer.player = newValue
        }
    }

    var playerLayer: AVPlayerLayer {
        return layer as! AVPlayerLayer
    }

    override init(frame: CGRect) {
        super.init(frame: frame)
        playerLayer.videoGravity = AVLayerVideoGravityResize
    }

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        playerLayer.videoGravity = AVLayerVideoGravityResize
    }

}

In the presenting ViewController:

private func play(asset asset: AVURLAsset){
    let playerItem = AVPlayerItem(asset: asset)

    player = AVPlayer(playerItem: playerItem)
    player?.actionAtItemEnd = .None
    player?.muted = true

    playerPreviewView = PlayerPreviewView(frame: CGRectZero)
    view.addSubview(playerPreviewView)
    playerPreviewView.player = player


    playerPreviewView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false
    view.addConstraints(NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("H:|-0-[subview]-0-|", options: .DirectionLeadingToTrailing, metrics: nil, views: ["subview": playerPreviewView]))
    view.addConstraints(NSLayoutConstraint.constraintsWithVisualFormat("V:|-0-[subview]-0-|", options: .DirectionLeadingToTrailing, metrics: nil, views: ["subview": playerPreviewView]))


    player?.play()

    NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self,
                                                     selector: #selector(SplashScreenViewController.videoDidFinish),
                                                     name: AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification,
                                                     object: nil)
}

Answer 3

To get to playerLayer, you need to loop through videoHolderView.layer.sublayers and change each one.

this is what I did in Swift 2.2

if let sublayers = videoHolderView.layer.sublayers{
    for layer in sublayers where layer is AVPlayerLayer{
        layer.frame.size = ... // change size of the layer here
    }
}

Answer 4

  playerLayer.videoGravity = AVLayerVideoGravityResizeAspectFit;

Answer 5

For those of you who are only concerned with resizing the AVPlayer during device rotation, you can alter your layer frame in the viewWillTransition(to size: CGSize, with coordinator: UIViewControllerTransitionCoordinator) method as shown below.

//Swift 4
//Method in UIViewController
//Variable definitions are:
//self.layer is the AVPlayerLayer
//self.videoPlayerView is the view that the AVPlayerLayer is the sublayer of
override func viewWillTransition(to size: CGSize, with coordinator: UIViewControllerTransitionCoordinator) {
    super.viewWillTransition(to: size, with: coordinator)
    coordinator.animate(alongsideTransition: { context in
        self.layer.layoutIfNeeded()
        UIView.animate(
            withDuration: context.transitionDuration,
            animations: {
                self.layer.frame = self.videoPlayerView.bounds
            }
        )
    }, completion: nil)
}

This will animate your layer frame along with all the other views during the rotation.

Answer 6

First step: check out UIView's autoresizing property in UIVIew.h

@property(nonatomic) UIViewAutoresizing autoresizingMask; // simple resize. default is UIViewAutoresizingNone

This property correspondents to the "springs and struts" controls in IB, though it will take you some experimentation to get the results you want.