MPMediaPickerController for selecting video files

Question

I want to enable the user to select a video file from the on-device iPod library (so that I can play it in my own app). Is that possible? I was thinking on using MPMediaPickerController but I am not sure if it is able to select video files or just audio files.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Answer 1

The picker has a property called mediaTypes, this is an enumeration declared here, like this:

enum {
   // audio media types
   MPMediaTypeMusic        = 1 << 0,
   MPMediaTypePodcast      = 1 << 1,
   MPMediaTypeAudioBook    = 1 << 2,
   MPMediaTypeAnyAudio     = 0x00ff,

   // generic media type
   MPMediaTypeAny          = ~0
};

As you can see nothing indicates beeing something non-audio, except MPMediaTypeAny but the docs say

MPMediaTypeAny If set, the media item contains an unspecified type of audio.

That means only audio, sorry. :(

Answer 2

It seems this is possible in iOS 5 with MPMediaPickerController, which now allows setting these types:

  // video media types
  MPMediaTypeMovie        = 1 << 8,
  MPMediaTypeTVShow       = 1 << 9,
  MPMediaTypeVideoPodcast = 1 << 10,
  MPMediaTypeMusicVideo   = 1 << 11,
  MPMediaTypeVideoITunesU = 1 << 12,
  MPMediaTypeAnyVideo     = 0xff00,

Which are os 5 only.

Once you have your collection of items, you'll need to access the url:

MPMediaItem * item = ....
NSString *url = [item valueForProperty:@"MPMediaItemPropertyAssetURL"];

And this url can only be used with AV Foundation, so use AVPlayer, not MPMoviePlayerController.

From the docs:

MPMediaItemPropertyAssetURL
A URL pointing to the media item, from which an AVAsset object (or other 
URL-based AV Foundation object) can be created, with any options as desired. 
Value is an NSURL object.
The URL has the custom scheme of ipod-library. For example, a URL might look 
like this:
     ipod-library://item/item.m4a?id=12345
Usage of the URL outside of the AV Foundation framework is not supported.
Available in iOS 4.0 and later.

Answer 3

Do it like this:

IImagePickerController *imagePicker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];
    imagePicker.delegate = self;
    imagePicker.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeSavedPhotosAlbum;
    // UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeSavedPhotosAlbum;// UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary
    imagePicker.mediaTypes = [UIImagePickerController availableMediaTypesForSourceType:imagePicker.sourceType];
    imagePicker.allowsEditing = NO;