Objective c - picker to get video path - objective-c

Question

In my app, I allow the user to record videos and I save them in this path:
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *path = [paths[0] stringByAppendingPathComponent:DestFileName];
I want to implement a video picker in my app, but the objective is to get the path of the video. I started with the basic method like this:
UIImagePickerController *videoPicker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];
videoPicker.delegate = self;
videoPicker.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationCurrentContext;
videoPicker.mediaTypes =[UIImagePickerController availableMediaTypesForSourceType:UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary];‌​
videoPicker.mediaTypes = #[(NSString*)kUTTypeMovie, (NSString*)kUTTypeAVIMovie, (NSString*)kUTTypeVideo, (NSString*)kUTTypeMPEG4];
videoPicker.videoQuality = UIImagePickerControllerQualityTypeHigh;
[self presentViewController:videoPicker animated:YES completion:nil];
The first problem is that I can not access to my recorded videos, why?
Then, this picker allows the user to play video, and when I choose one video I think that a compressed video is created and sent to our delegate method (the URL goes to a tmp repository).
I don't want to allow the user to play video and I just want the video path, is it possible with this method?
I can also get the list of files in
NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains
with this:
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *rootPath = path[0];
[[NSFileManager defaultManager] createDirectoryAtPath:rooPath withIntermediateDirectories:YES attributes:nil error:nil];
NSArray* mPaths = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] contentOfDirectoryAtPath:rootPath error:nil];
With this method I can found my recorded videos, but then I have to implement my own custom picker, but it can be difficult and long to implement (need to get the thumbnail for example, possible?).
To summarize:
With the UIImagePickerController, is it possible to prevent the play, to just get the path and to show our recorded videos?
With the NSFileManager, is it possible to easily create a custom video picker with thumbnail, duration etc.)
Thanks for your help

Answer 1

UIImagePickerController is an instance of the iOS Photos App by which you can access all of the Photos/Videos in the Device Gallery and not exclusively those belonging to your App. There is no way to have the UIImagePickerController show only the videos recorded by your App. It is also not possible to have the UIImagePickerController skip the Play/Choose step while picking a File.
Like you mentioned you can definitely write the Video file into the Apps documents directory by means of NSFileManager and hold a reference to the path which you can use for later use. I think you would probably end up creating a Model Class say "Video" with the following attributes;
a) savedPath
b) duration
c) thumbnail etc
You can then use something like a NSKeyedArchiver to encode these objects and store into a File so that you can retrieve this information later.

Answer 2

I finally found the solution using a custom picker, :
To get the list of local videos:
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString* rootPath = paths[0];
[[NSFileManager defaultManager] createDirectoryAtPath:rootPath withIntermediateDirectories:YES attributes:nil error:nil];
NSArray* mPaths = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] contentsOfDirectoryAtPath:rootPath error:nil];
To get the duration and the thumbnail:
NSURL *videoURl = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:mPath];
AVURLAsset *asset = [[AVURLAsset alloc] initWithURL:videoURl options:nil];
AVAssetImageGenerator *generate = [[AVAssetImageGenerator alloc] initWithAsset:asset];
generate.appliesPreferredTrackTransform = YES;
NSError *err = NULL;
CMTime time = CMTimeMake(1, 60);
CGImageRef imgRef = [generate copyCGImageAtTime:time actualTime:NULL error:&err];
UIImage *img = [[UIImage alloc] initWithCGImage:imgRef];
[m_videoFrames addObject:img];
CMTime duration = [asset duration];
int seconds = ceil(duration.value/duration.timescale);
Thanks!