MPMoviePlayerController sends "end of movie reached" when URL is changed

Question

I'm trying to get a notification from a MPMoviePlayerController when the movie has reached its end. I'm running the player in embedded mode with a local file.

Like the docs suggest, I registered for MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification and check if the MPMovieFinishReason key contains the intValue of MPMovieFinishReasonPlaybackEnded. That's working fine.

But I get the same notification with MPMovieFinishReasonPlaybackEnded when I switch the movie using the contentURL property before it has actually reached its end. So I tried this solution and checked if endPlaybackTime == -1, but that's true in both cases.

The only workaround I found so far is to remove the observer before changing contentURL and then adding it again, but I think there must be a more elegant solution?

Philous

Are you doing that on background? – Coaster

Do you mean on a background thread? No – Philous

Answer 1

It appears to work consistently to simply removeObserver, stop playback/change the Url, then addObserver once more.

Silsbye

Right, it still looks like there is no better solution. I'll accept this answer, although this has been mentioned in the question already ;) – Philous

Answer 2

So, per the documentation, your observed behavior seems to be the correct behavior. I think your solution to quit getting notifications might be a good one. Yeah, it's a little hacky, but it seems like it would work.

Alternatively, what about storing the URL of the movie(s) you're playing and comparing against [moviePlayer contentURL]? You might have to do some timer acrobatics and have a currentMovieURL and a previousMovieURL, but that ought to provide a good way to compare if the movie that ended is the movie you expected to end.

Alternatively to that, what about setting 2 variables: movieStartTime and expectedMovieDuration? Then, you can compare [NSDate date] to [movieStartTime dateByAddingTimeInterval:expectedMovieDuration] and see if it's way off.

Micronucleus