Animate AVPlayerLayer videoGravity property

Question

I'm trying to copy Apple's behavior in video playback that allows the user to stretch the video image to fill the bounds.

@interface FHVideoPlayerView : UIView
@end
@interface FHVideoPlayerView

+ (Class)layerClass
{
    return [AVPlayerLayer class];
}

- (void)setAspectMode:(FHVideoPlayerAspectMode)aspectMode animated:(BOOL)animated
{
    FHVideoPlayerAspectMode current = [self aspectMode];
    FHVideoPlayerAspectMode final   = aspectMode;

    NSString *fromValue;
    NSString *toValue;

    AVPlayerLayer *layer = (AVPlayerLayer *)[self layer];

    switch (current) {
        case FHVideoPlayerAspectFill:
            fromValue = AVLayerVideoGravityResizeAspectFill;
            break;
        case FHVideoPlayerAspectFit:
            fromValue = AVLayerVideoGravityResizeAspect;
            break;
       default:
           break;
    }

    switch (final) {
        case FHVideoPlayerAspectFill:
            toValue = AVLayerVideoGravityResizeAspectFill;
            break;
        case FHVideoPlayerAspectFit:
            toValue = AVLayerVideoGravityResizeAspect;
            break;
        default:
            break;
    }

    if (toValue != fromValue) {
        if (animated == YES) {
            // Manually added CABasicAnimation based on the understanding the implicit animations are disabled for CALayers that back a UIView
            CABasicAnimation *animation = [CABasicAnimation animationWithKeyPath:@"videoGravity"];
            [layer addAnimation:animation forKey:@"animateVideoGravity"];

            [CATransaction begin];
            [CATransaction setAnimationDuration:0.333];
        }

        [layer setVideoGravity:toValue];

        if (animated == YES) {
            [CATransaction commit];
        }
    }
}

This works just fine when I try and animate a numeric property such as opacity. But, you'll notice from the class reference, AVPlayerLayer's videoGravity property is an NSString. The class reference does points out that it is animatable.

So my question is: How!?

I believe this is probably related somehow to CALayer's content property and possibly contentsGravity.

Answer 1

As voromax pointed out, this is a bug in iOS 5.0. I reverse engineered -[AVPlayerLayer setVideoGravity:] implementation in iOS 5.1 in order to understand how the animation was supposed to work. Here is how to workaround the bug and have a nice animation on iOS 5.0.

@implementation VideoPlayerView

+ (Class) layerClass
{
    return [AVPlayerLayer class];
}

- (AVPlayerLayer *) playerLayer
{
    return (AVPlayerLayer *)[self layer];
}

- (NSString *) videoGravity
{
    return self.playerLayer.videoGravity;
}

- (void) setVideoGravity:(NSString *)videoGravity
{
    self.playerLayer.videoGravity = videoGravity;

    // Workaround a bug in iOS 5.0
    float avFoundationVersion = [[[NSBundle bundleForClass:[AVPlayerLayer class]] objectForInfoDictionaryKey:(NSString *)kCFBundleVersionKey] floatValue];
    if (avFoundationVersion < 292.24f)
    {
        @try
        {
            NSString *contentLayerKeyPath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%1$@%2$@.%3$@%2$@", @"player", [@"layer" capitalizedString], @"content"]; // playerLayer.contentLayer
            CALayer *contentLayer = [self.playerLayer valueForKeyPath:contentLayerKeyPath];
            if ([contentLayer isKindOfClass:[CALayer class]])
                [contentLayer addAnimation:[CABasicAnimation animation] forKey:@"sublayerTransform"];
        }
        @catch (NSException *exception)
        {
        }
        self.bounds = self.bounds;
    }
}

@end

Answer 2

It was a bug in iOS 5.0 and iOS 5.0.1.

After updating to iOS 5.1 the video gravity changing animation begun to work again.