Continuous Looping Video in TVOS? - xcode

Question

I'm just getting started with TVOS and was wondering if anyone has addressed looping in TVOS / TVJS / TVML. I'm using this tutorial to create a simple interface for playing videos. My wrinkle is that I want these videos to play in a continuous seamless loop - basically a moving screensaver type effect - see example videos at art.chrisbaily.com.
Is there a simple way to do this, or do I need to build some kind of event listener to do the looping manually? I'd like the videos to be fairly hi res, and the videos would be somewhere between 1 and 3 minutes.

Answer 1

I was looking for an answer for this question as well. And found that the only way this would be possible is to create an event listener and adding a duplicate media item to the playlist. But honestly it is not that hard, given if you followed the tutorial that you listed in your post.
So the code would be something like
player.playlist = playlist;
player.playlist.push(mediaItem);
//Again push the same type of media item in playlist so now you have two of the same.
player.playlist.push(mediaItem);
player.present();
This will make sure that once your first video ends the second one starts playing which is essentially a loop. Then for the third one and on you implement an event listener using "mediaItemWillChange" property. This will make sure that once a video ends a new copy of the same video is added to the playlist.
player.addEventListener("mediaItemWillChange", function(e) {
player.playlist.push(mediaItem);
});
Just put the event listener before you start the player using
player.present();
Note this question and idea of this sort was already asked/provided on Apple's discussion board. I merely took the idea and had implemented it in my own project and now knowing that it works I am posting the solution. I found that if I pop the first video out of the playlist and add then push a new on the playlist as mentioned in the linked thread below, my videos were not looping. Below is the link to the original post.
How to repeat video with TVJS Player?

Answer 2

You could also set repeatMode on the playlist object
player.playlist.repeatMode = 1;
0 = no repeat
1 = repeat all items in playlist
2 = repeat current item

Answer 3

There's really no need to push a second media item onto the. Simply listen for the media to reach its end, then set the seek time back to zero. Here's the code.
Play the media.
private func playVideo(name: String) {
guard name != "" else {
return
}
let bundle = NSBundle(forClass:object_getClass(self))
let path = bundle.pathForResource(name, ofType:"mp4")
let url = NSURL.fileURLWithPath(path!)
self.avPlayer = AVPlayer(URL: url)
if (self.avPlayerLayer == nil) {
self.avPlayerLayer = AVPlayerLayer(player: self.avPlayer)
self.avPlayerLayer.frame = previewViews[1].frame
previewViews[1].layer.addSublayer(self.avPlayerLayer)
avPlayer.actionAtItemEnd = .None
//Listen for AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification
NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self, selector: "playerItemDidReachEnd:", name: AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification, object: self.avPlayer.currentItem)
}
avPlayer.play()
}
Play Again
func playerItemDidReachEnd(notification: NSNotification) {
let item = notification.object as? AVPlayerItem
item?.seekToTime(kCMTimeZero)
}