Tag Archive for 'MPMediaPlayerController'

So you wanna overlay a UIView on MPMoviePlayerController?

Tried


[self.view addSubView:myView];


to no avail, right? The reason that fails is that MPMoviePlayerController actually creates a new window and overlays that on your app. This means you can’t just add a subview — it’ll just be hidden.

Try this oversimplified example:


MPMoviePlayerController *player = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:[NSURL URLWithString:myURL]];

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector: @selector(playerFinishedPlaying:)
name:MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification object:player];

[player play];

UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero];
label.text = @"Hi, I'm on your MPMoviePlayerController";
label.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(M_PI/2.0);
label.frame = CGRectMake(0,0,20,480);

[[[UIApplication sharedApplication] keyWindow] addSubview:label];


Wait, WTF? Clever folks might have tried [player _window], which works great on the simulator but fails to build for the device. The trick here is that the sharedApplication’s keyWindow IS the player’s window once the player is on screen, so adding a subview to that window overlays said view on the player. I did run into a bug where the keyWindow property was nil after the player was shown, so if you want to use that again later, make sure to call:


[self.view.window makeKeyAndVisible];


when the player calls back on your controller handling MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification (in this case, playerFinishedPlaying:).

UPDATE: For iPhone 3.0, I can only get this to work with a bit of a hack — use a timer to show the overlay later. >.< Not sure I like this approach or think it’s reliable but it seems to work. Test it and YMMV for sure.


...

[player play];
[NSTimer scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval:3 target:self selector:@selector(showOverlay:) userInfo:nil repeats:NO];
}

NSArray *windows = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] windows];
UIWindow *mpw = [windows objectAtIndex:1];
[mpw addSubview:label];
}