Change the view that a video is playing on

Question

In my app the user can play a video and leave the screen and it will continue to play in the background (just the audio). They can then return to continue to watch the video. This means that the view the video is in is destroyed and then recreated at a later point. Whenever the view is recreated and the player is set on it's AVPlayerLayer there is a noticeable lag in the video and more importantly the audio.

Does anyone know how to eliminate this lag?

Answer 1

The key to making this work without any lag / delay in the audio or video is to store the view with the AVPlayerLayer outside of the view. When reloading the controller, instead of creating a new view and assigning its player to the same player, simply attach the old view to the new view controller's view.

The view stays in memory as long as the video is still playing, that way a new AVPlayerLayer is not created and assigned to. It is the reassigning that causes the lag.