Viblast PDN iOS Getting Started Guide

Project setup

Let's assume you have an existing (or you've just created) XCode project.

Unzip ...
Drag and drop the unzipped content in your project.
E.g., for your convenience, you can make a group in your project name it VBPlayer, select the unzipped content, that is the VBPlayer.a library and all the header files, and drop it 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 Link Binary With Libraries section add the following frameworks:

• Foundation
• AVFoundation
• VideoToolbox
• CoreGraphics
• CoreMedia

NOTE: If you've followed the previous step the VBPlayer.a lib must already be present there.

Select Build Settings and add the following in Other Linker Flags:

• -lstdc++
• -ObjC

API

VBPlayer is reminiscent of Apple's AVPlayer. Much simpler though.

Currenty, you can initialize the player just by providing it with HLS or DASH stream, like so:
_player = [[VBPlayer alloc] initWithCDN:@"www.mycdn.com/playlist.m3u8"];

The player has a status property which you can observe.
When the player status is changed to VBPlayerStatusReadyToPlay you can invoke the player's play method

If you want to stop the player you just have to release it, like so:
_player = nil;

If you want to restart it you just have to reinitilize it, like so:
_player = [[VBPlayer alloc] ... ];

If the player fails for some reason, i.e when it's status become VBPlayerStatusFailed you can examine it's error property for more information about the failure.

Usage example

So 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 class VBPlayerLayer, i.e it must have it's +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 without or with 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/playlist.m3u8"];
  [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 it's 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 it's output.
        [(VBPlayerLayer *)[self.playerView layer] setPlayer:self.player];
        [self.player play];
      break;
      }
      case VBPlayerStatusFailed: {
        NSError *error = self.player.error;
        NSLog(@"Player failed: %@", error);
        break;
      }
    }
  }
}