How to play movie with a URL using a custom NSURLProtocol?

Question

As you know,play a movie with MPMoviePlayerController object using

[[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL: aURL];

now ,i want

Answer 1

@property AVPlayerViewController *avPlayerVC;
@property NSData *yourDataSource

// initialise avPlayerVC
    NSURL *dummyURL     = [NSURL URLWithString:@"foobar://dummy.mov"];// a non-reachable URL will force the use of the resourceLoader
    AVURLAsset *asset   = [AVURLAsset assetWithURL:dummyURL];
    [asset.resourceLoader setDelegate:self queue:dispatch_get_global_queue(QOS_CLASS_USER_INTERACTIVE, 0)];

    AVPlayerItem *item = [AVPlayerItem playerItemWithAsset:asset];

    self.avPlayerVC.player = [AVPlayer playerWithPlayerItem:item];
    self.avPlayerVC.player.actionAtItemEnd  = AVPlayerActionAtItemEndNone;



// implement AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate

- (BOOL)resourceLoader:(AVAssetResourceLoader *)resourceLoader shouldWaitForLoadingOfRequestedResource:(AVAssetResourceLoadingRequest *)loadingRequest {

    loadingRequest.contentInformationRequest.contentType    = (__bridge NSString *)kUTTypeQuickTimeMovie;
    loadingRequest.contentInformationRequest.contentLength  = self.yourDataSource.length;
    loadingRequest.contentInformationRequest.byteRangeAccessSupported   = YES;

    NSRange range = NSMakeRange((NSUInteger)loadingRequest.dataRequest.requestedOffset, loadingRequest.dataRequest.requestedLength);
    [loadingRequest.dataRequest respondWithData:[self.yourDataSource subdataWithRange:range]];

    [loadingRequest finishLoading];
    return YES;
}

Notice the use of a dummy URL to force AVPlayer to use the AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate methods instead of accessing the URL directly.

Answer 2

UPDATE: I spoke to Apple about this and it's not possible to use MPMoviePlayerController with a NSURLProtocol subclass at the moment!

---

Hej,

I am not sure but it could be possible. I am currently working on something similar but haven't got it fully working. What I have found out is that MPMoviePlayerController interacts with my custom NSURLProtocol subclass BUT it seems to be important to take the HTTPHeaders of the NSURLRequest into account because they define a range of bytes the MPMoviePlayerController needs.

If you dump them in your NSURLProtocol subclass you will get something like this twice for the start:

2011-01-16 17:00:47.287 iPhoneApp[1177:5f03] Start loading from request: {
Range = "bytes=0-1";

}

So my GUESS is that as long as you can provide the correct range and return a mp4 file that can be played by the MPMoviePlayerController it should be possible!

EDIT: Here is a interesting link: Protecting resources in iPhone and iPad apps

Answer 3

The solution is to proxy requests through a local HTTP server. I have accomplished this using CocoaHTTPServer.

Look at the HTTPAsyncFileResponse example.

Answer 4

There is one more solution as of iOS 7. You can use a AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate for AVAssetResourceLoader. But this will only work with AVPlayer then.

There is a demo project by apple called AVARLDelegateDemo have a look at it and you should find what you need. (I think linking to it isn't a good idea, so just search for it in the Developer Library on developer.apple.com) Then use any custom URL scheme (without declaring a NSURLProtocol) and handle that URL scheme in the AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate.

If there is a huge interest I could provide a proof of concept gist.