Viblast Player iOS SDK plays HLS and MPEG DASH streams using the iOS devices’ hardware decoders for video and audio. The API is similar to Apple's AVPlayer, but much simpler and can be easily integrated into existing projects using the AVPlayer. The Player can be easily configured to use Viblast PDN and enable P2P delivery.
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Let's assume you have an existing XCode project or you've just created one.
Drag and drop the library and it's headers (e.g. VBPlayer.a and VBPlayer.h) in your project.
For example, you can make a group, name it
VBPlayer, select the aforementioned files and drop them inside.
When XCode asks you to choose options for added files, don't forget to mark
the 'Copy items if needed' option.
Notice that VBPlayer.a is a fat library, i.e. it is built for both 32bit
and 64bit architectures.
Now go to the project's build target.
Select Build Phases and under the Link Binary With Libraries section add the following frameworks:
- Foundation
- AVFoundation
- VideoToolbox
- CoreGraphics
- CoreMedia
NOTE: If you've followed the previous steps, the VBPlayer.a lib should
already be there.
Select Build Settings and add the following in Other Linker Flags:
- -lstdc++
- -ObjC
VBPlayer is reminiscent of Apple's AVPlayer, but much simpler.
Currenty, you can initialize Viblast Player just by providing it with an HLS or DASH stream, for example:
_player = [[VBPlayer alloc] initWithCDN:@"www.mycdn.com/manifest.mpd"
enabledPDN:NO
licenseKey:nil];
The player has a status property which you can observe.
When the player status is changed to VBPlayerStatusReadyToPlay you can safely assume that play will start the playback simultaneously.
If you want to restart the player, you just have to reinitilize it, like this:
_player = [[VBPlayer alloc] ... ];
If the player fails for some reason, i.e when its status becomes
VBPlayerStatusFailed, you can examine its error property for more information
about the failure.
API is pretty self-explanatory and you can use comments in VBPlayer.h for more information.
The first thing you need to do is to provide or create a UIView, which will
display the output of the player. The views's layer must be of VBPlayerLayer class, i.e it must have its +layerClass method overridden:
// PlayerView.m
#import "VBPlayer.h"
@implementation PlayerView
+ (Class)layerClass {
return [VBPlayerLayer class];
}
@end
Now let's assume all the action will happen in a view controller named PlayerViewController:
// PlayerViewController.m
#import "VBPlayer.h"
#import "PlayerView.h"
// We will use custom observe context for the player's status.
// You can observe it with or without different context. It's up to you.
static void *PlayerStatusObserveCtx = &PlayerStatusObserveCtx;
@interface PlayerViewController()
@property (nonatomic, strong) VBPlayer *player;
@property (nonatomic, strong) PlayerView *playerView;
@end
@imlementation PlayerViewController
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
self.playerView = [[PlayerView alloc] initWithFrame:self.view.bounds];
// An important step is to set the appropriate resize mask so the video
// can be properly displayed when the device is rotated.
self.playerView.autoresizingMask = (UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth
| UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight);
[self.view addSubview:self.playerView];
self.player = [[VBPlayer alloc] initWithCDN:@"www.mycdn.com/manifest.mpd"
enabledPDN:NO // Use the player only for playback i.e., without p2p
licenseKey:nil];
[self.player addObserver:self
forKeyPath:@"status"
options:(NSKeyValueObservingOptionNew|NSKeyValueObservingOptionInitial)
context:PlayerStatusObserveCtx];
}
- (void)observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath
ofObject:(id)object
change:(NSDictionary *)change
context:(void *)context {
if (context = PlayerStatusObserveCtx) {
// NOTE: The player will dispatch KVOs about its status on the main queue.
VBPlayerStatus status = (VBPlayerStatus)[change[NSKeyValueChangeNewKey] integerValue];
switch (status) {
case VBPlayerStatusUnknown: {
// Not ready yet
break;
}
case VBPlayerStatusReadyToPlay: {
// The player is ready to play and we can display its output.
[(VBPlayerLayer *)[self.playerView layer] setPlayer:self.player];
[self.player play];
break;
}
case VBPlayerStatusFailed: {
NSError *error = self.player.error;
NSLog(@"Player failed: %@", error);
break;
}
}
}
}