Mute audio tracks of live streams using AVPlayer

Question

I am using AVPlayer to play live stream (m3U8 file). It plays perfectly using AVPlayer but I am not able to mute it.

I am using following code to mute the audio.

Answer 1

Your assumption is correct. You cannot mute a player that is playing an HTTP Live Stream. I have filed a RADAR on this.

In my app we control the streams, so we produced a stream with no audio, and an identical stream with audio, and switch between the 2 to turn on and off the sound. It's the best you can do.

The AVAudioMix solution doesn't work on live streams. I tried. Look at the note on the bottom that says it only works on file based assets: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#qa/qa1716/_index.html

It looks like Mac Developers get a mute property on their AVPlayer, but iOS doesn't have it yet.

For now, you will have to work around the problem in your streams, if you can.

Answer 2

As a workaround you may use the MPVolumeView class to adjust the volume of any video. This will allow the user to mute the video if they desire. But unlikely you can't customize this slider's appearance without using the undocumented API.

MPVolumeView *volumeView = [[[MPVolumeView alloc] initWithFrame: CGRectMake(10, 37, 260, 20)] autorelease];

UIAlertView *volumeAlert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Volume" message:@"" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil];

[volumeView sizeToFit];
[volumeAlert addSubview:volumeView];
[volumeAlert show];
[volumeAlert release];