AVQueuePlayer/AVPlayer loading notification? - objective-c

Question

I have an AVQueuePlayer (which obviously extends AVPlayer) that loads a playlist of streaming audio. Streaming is all working fine, but I'd like to have an activity indicator to show the user audio is loading. Trouble is, I can't seem to find any such Notification in AVQueuePlayer (or AVPlayer) that would indicate when the audio buffer has finished loading/is ready to play (nor does there appear to be a delegate method). Any thoughts?

Answer 1

You will have to use KVO to get this done.
For each item you are adding to the queue, you may setup observers like this:
item_ = [[AVPlayerItem playerItemWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://somefunkyurl"]] retain];
[item_ addObserver:self forKeyPath:#"status" options:0 context:nil];
[item_ addObserver:self forKeyPath:#"playbackBufferEmpty" options:0 context:nil];
Now you can evaluate the status of that item within the observer method;
- (void)observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath ofObject:(id)object change:(NSDictionary *)change context:(void *)context
{
if ([object isKindOfClass:[AVPlayerItem class]])
{
AVPlayerItem *item = (AVPlayerItem *)object;
//playerItem status value changed?
if ([keyPath isEqualToString:#"status"])
{ //yes->check it...
switch(item.status)
{
case AVPlayerItemStatusFailed:
NSLog(#"player item status failed");
break;
case AVPlayerItemStatusReadyToPlay:
NSLog(#"player item status is ready to play");
break;
case AVPlayerItemStatusUnknown:
NSLog(#"player item status is unknown");
break;
}
}
else if ([keyPath isEqualToString:#"playbackBufferEmpty"])
{
if (item.playbackBufferEmpty)
{
NSLog(#"player item playback buffer is empty");
}
}
}
}