Has anyone been able to play a video file and show live camera feed at the same time in separate views on iOS?

Question

I have been trying to do this for a few days now using AVFoundation as well as trying to use MPMoviePlayerViewController. The closest I can get is allowing one to play at a time. I would like to think that this is possible because of Facetime. However, I know this is a little different because there is no separate video file.

Any ideas would help, and thanks.

Answer 1

I'm not sure where this is documented, but to get AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer and MPMoviePlayerViewController to play together at the same time you need to set a mixable audio session category first.

Here's one way to do that:

AVAudioSession* session = [AVAudioSession sharedInstance];
[session setCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error:nil];
UInt32 mixable = 1;
AudioSessionSetProperty(kAudioSessionProperty_OverrideCategoryMixWithOthers, sizeof(mixable), &mixable);
[session setActive:YES error:nil];

See the Audio Session Programming Guide and Audio Session Cookbook for more info.

Answer 2

Have you tried to play video on one thread and recording video on another? That would allow both of them to run while maintaining their separation.