MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification fires when presenting another view controller

Question

I have created my own MoviePlayerViewController derived from MPMoviePlayerViewController, I present it using the standard presentMoviePlayerViewController method - all works fine. On top of the movie player controller, I present another ShareThisMovie view controller when the user clicks some button (after I pause the movie). I do this using presentViewController.

I don't know why but as soon as the new VC comes up, the underlying MoviePlayerViewController immediately fires MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification, which I respond to by dismissing the entire VC hierarchy, so the user does not have a chance to interact with the ShareThisMovie controller.

Even if I ignore the notification, still the fact that the movie player fires it means that once the ShareThisMovie controller closes, the movie STARTS OVER FROM THE BEGINNING. This is clearly not what I want...

Why is the MoviePlayerController firing this event? How do I ensure it doesn't, or how to I workaround this? I tried storing the last playback location before showing the ShareThisVideo controller, and setting it back afterwards, but it still plays from the beginning...

tnx

Answer 1

This is happening because when you moving from MoviePlayerViewController to another view controller the MPMoviePlayer stops it playing...so your MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification Delegate is calling.

you can not continue playing MPMoviePlayer when you are on another ViewController.

one solution is insted of presenting ShareThisMovieviewcontroller, you can simply add UIView for sharing on top of MPMoviePlayer in same controller. this will prevents the MPMoviePlayer to stop.

Answer 2

Not exactly an answer rather than a workaround, but I ended up changing the design: instead of deriving from MPMoviePlayerViewController, I derived from the standard UIViewController, and embedded an MPMoviePlayerController inside it. For some reason, when doing this, the player did not raise a didFinish event when I presented some other VC on top of my player view controller...

Guess my conclusion for now is not to derive a VC from MPMoviePlayerViewController...