AVPlayer fails with AVPlayerItemStatusFailed (OSStatus error -12983)

Question

Sometimes AVPlayer fails with AVPlayerItemStatusFailed and after that failure occurred, AVPlayer continues to failed with AVPlayerItemStatusFailed. I tried to clear the AVPlayer instance and create new one, but I cannot achieve AVPlayerItemStatusFailed failure to solve. Also removingFromSuperview UIView with AVPlayer instance and initializing new item with AVPlayer does not solve the problem.

So I figured that out AVPlayer couldn't been cleared completely. Is there anybody suggest anything to try for clearing the AVPlayer completely and make it works after failure?

Error log:

Error Domain=AVFoundationErrorDomain Code=-11800 "The operation could not be completed" UserInfo=0x1a689360 {NSLocalizedDescription=The operation could not be completed, NSUnderlyingError=0x1a688e70 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -12983.)", NSLocalizedFailureReason=An unknown error occurred (-12983)}

UPD. For @matt

playerItem = [AVPlayerItem playerItemWithURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:filePath.path]];

if (!self.avPlayer) {
  avPlayer = [AVPlayer playerWithPlayerItem:playerItem];
}

[avPlayer.currentItem addObserver:self forKeyPath:@"status" options:0 context:nil];

if (self.avPlayer.currentItem != self.playerItem) {
  [self.avPlayer replaceCurrentItemWithPlayerItem:playerItem];
}

AVPlayerLayer *avPlayerLayer = [AVPlayerLayer playerLayerWithPlayer:avPlayer];
avPlayerLayer.frame = self.bounds;
[self.layer addSublayer:avPlayerLayer];

avPlayer.actionAtItemEnd = AVPlayerActionAtItemEndNone;

[avPlayer play];

Jacinto

Show your code - the code that you use to try to play in the first place. – Dorkus

@Dorkus Thanks for your answer, I added my code above. – Jacinto

Any chance that filePath.path is bad? Maybe coming out nil? – Dorkus

@Dorkus The link is always mp4 file, movie always plays on the Web and in the simulator, but not always on the device. – Jacinto

Answer 1

The problem is that this line is unconditional:

[self.layer addSublayer:avPlayerLayer];

Thus you are adding a new player layer every time. Thus you are piling up many player layers. This is wrong. There must be only one. Keep a reference to the old player layer and remove it before adding a player layer, or, if this is the same player as before and it has the associated player layer in the interface already, do nothing.

Dorkus

Also make sure that you are not retaining any object of either AVPlayer, AVPlayerLayer or AVPlayerItem. In my case I was using [player addPeriodicTimeObserverForInterval:] to get periodic intervals. it was retaining AVPlayer. Instead i used an NSTimer and Invalidated it when required – Orthorhombic

I use symbolic breakpoint to ensure that AVPlayer is deallocated properly, and I use only 1 instance of AVPlayerLayer, but that error happens after sometimes (iOS 8 has a bug that it does not resume player, so i must restart the player), why is that – Despotic

Answer 2

Create a sharedInstance of AVPlayer with playerItem = nil. Next time only replaceThePlayerItem.

Gauhati

Answer 3

It sometimes happened in iOS simulator,
try to restart simulator again may will work. :)

Louden