How to cache an AVPlayerItem (Video) for reuse in a UITableview

Question

I have a number of videos that I am displaying in a UITableView. The videos are stored remotely on a server. I am able to load the videos into the tableview using some of th

Answer 1

Just worked on this problem with a friend yesterday. The code we used basically uses the NSURLSession built-in caching system to save the video data. Here it is:

    NSURLSession *session = [[KHURLSessionManager sharedInstance] session];
    NSURLRequest *req = [[NSURLRequest alloc] initWithURL:**YOUR_URL**];
    [[session dataTaskWithRequest:req completionHandler:^(NSData * _Nullable data, NSURLResponse * _Nullable response, NSError * _Nullable error) {


        // generate a temporary file URL

        NSString *filename = [[NSUUID UUID] UUIDString];

        NSURL *temporaryDirectoryURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:NSTemporaryDirectory() isDirectory:YES];
        NSURL *fileURL = [[temporaryDirectoryURL URLByAppendingPathComponent:filename] URLByAppendingPathExtension:@"mp4"];


        // save the NSData to that URL
        NSError *fileError;
        [data writeToURL:fileURL options:0 error:&fileError];


        // give player the video with that file URL
        AVPlayerItem *playerItem = [AVPlayerItem playerItemWithURL:fileURL];
        AVPlayer *player = [AVPlayer playerWithPlayerItem:playerItem];
        _avMovieViewController.player = player;
        [_avMovieViewController.player play];



    }] resume];

Second, you will need to set the caching configuration for the NSURLSession. My KHURLSessionManager takes care of this with the following code:

    NSURLSessionConfiguration *config = [NSURLSessionConfiguration defaultSessionConfiguration];
    config.requestCachePolicy = NSURLRequestReturnCacheDataElseLoad;
    _session = [NSURLSession sessionWithConfiguration:config delegate:self delegateQueue:[NSOperationQueue mainQueue]];

Lastly, you should make sure your cache is large enough for the files, I put the following in my AppDelegate.

     [NSURLCache sharedURLCache].diskCapacity = 1000 * 1024 * 1024; // 1000 MB

Hope this helps.