Seamless movie playback on iOS

[Greg Roach]

Hey there-

I'm building an iPad app and I need to have a seamless transition between two video clips.

So when one clip finishes playing the next one plays with no visual disturbance.

At the moment always get a brief flash of black as the new clip starts.

I've tried a dozen different methods: some using MOBGui's movie player, other using iphoneControlCreate "player" to hand create the player, the content, switch between the clips, etc.

I've tried switching movie files inside a single player object, creating/destroying player objects, switching cards, etc...

Any thoughts or ideas? I could also make it work with a still frame that was part of background layer that showed through briefly during the transition. So manipulating the movie file might also be part of the solution.

Thanks for the help!

[Nikovash]

I don't think this is possible because of the limitation of the built in player. Or another way to look at it, the video player can only play one video at a time on iOS, so the glitch you are noticing is the delay from one video stopping and the next playing. The only work around I could foresee is making the video one piece instead of many?

[Greg Roach]

It's not practical to rework it into a single video file that uses callbacks, etc. It's a large project that's already been built and deployed a desktop application and it uses dozens and dozens of clips to create a seamless interactive experience. So not only would the effort of joining all the video into a single file be huge, it would require basically reprogramming a very complex, and large, existing structure.

Each juncture point has been carefully edited/manipulated so that the visual transition between clips (content clip -> loop that plays during choice moment -> branching result clip) is always seamless.

One thing that would work would be to place a graphic element that matches the in-between frame (that each clip leads into/out of), and briefly set the opacity of the player to zero as the video starts up, then making the player object opaque again as soon as the clip actually begins playing.

Using MobGUI I can adjust the opacity of the player using the settings panel, but I can't get it to respond to script control. Using "hand-rolled" low level routines for creating the iOS player object, I can't find a legal parameter for adjusting opacity (based on the iOS release notes).

If I can figure out how to adjust the opacity under script control to reveal the underlying match-frame graphic I can make it all work. It's the drop to black as the clips starts that destroys the sensation of a seamless experience.

Thanks for the help & input.

[Nikovash]

Yeah I don't think I can help you there, there is one thing to also be aware of. if the "user" puts the video into fullscreen mode, you also lose some of the player objects controls, and you would always see the glitch you are referring to, because for the most point at that time you are really using the (lack of a better term) "other" video player, and not the iOS player object. At least that is how my tests came out to be, good luck though!

[Greg Roach]

Thanks for info. These videos have the controller hidden and full-screen option disabled. We're basically creating an interactive video simulation with a branching structure - which is why the seamlessness is an issue. The Mac/PC version works great. It's very disappointing how video/sound are implemented on iOS. Anyway, thanks for the help.