MPMoviePlayerController showing black empty screen

Question

I use MPMoviePlayerController to play a local file in my Application Document folder which have I have downloaded for a server URL:

itemMoviePlayerController = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:fileURL];
 [self.view addSubview:itemMoviePlayerController.view];
 itemMoviePlayerController.fullscreen = YES;
 itemMoviePlayerController.movieSourceType = MPMovieSourceTypeFile;
 itemMoviePlayerController.initialPlaybackTime = -1.0;
 [itemMoviePlayerController play];

When I play .mov file just after I downloaded it, It shows up a black empty screen & app UI is unusable. But if play same local file next time, it plays fine. I even verified playState & localState for MPMoviePlayerController they seems fine. What could be reason for black empty screen?

Answer 1

You need to retain your instance of MPMoviePlayerController i.e. as a property or an instance variable. The reference to the movie player is lost if you do not retain it.

Answer 2

You could try to put [itemMoviePlayerController prepareToPlay]; before the [itemMoviePlayerController play];

The way preferred by Apple to display an only full screen video is to present a modal MPMoviePlayerViewController (as Hollance said). To present it, you should use something like :

 moviePlayerViewController = [[MPMoviePlayerViewController alloc] initWithContentURL:fileURL];
 [self presentMoviePlayerViewControllerAnimated:moviePlayerViewController];
 [itemMoviePlayerController play];

This is documented by Apple here

You can read there that you should keep a reference to your MPMoviePlayerViewController in order to dismiss it later with

[self dismissMoviePlayerViewControllerAnimated:moviePlayerViewController].

Answer 3

I fixed this by putting

@property (strong, nonatomic) MPMoviePlayerController *moviePlayer; 

in my .h file, and calling self.moviePlayer in all my code and it worked!

Answer 4

You need to use MPMoviePlayerViewController instead. Notice the word "View" in there.