Repeating 3 seconds movies for a help view?

Question

We would like to create a short 3-4 seconds movies that repeats, exactly as they do in the Apple Tips app, where you see some example of using the iPhone in a movie that repeats many times.

I guess they are not using animation (and creating many images for it), but using some kind of movie player. My question is, what would be the best player to use - so it would looks like a GIF, without the player tool bar (play/stop/etc) .

Answer 1

Use AVPlayer to play the video continuously, it will look like a gif is playing continuously.

-(void)startPlaybackForItemWithURL{
    // First create an AVPlayerItem
    // Subscribe to the AVPlayerItem's DidPlayToEndTime notification.
    NSString*thePath=[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"vegas" ofType:@"mov"];
    NSURL*theurl=[NSURL fileURLWithPath:thePath];
    AVPlayerItem* playerItem = [AVPlayerItem playerItemWithURL:theurl];
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(itemDidFinishPlaying:) name:AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification object:playerItem];

    player = [[AVPlayer alloc] initWithPlayerItem:playerItem];

    AVPlayerLayer *layer = [AVPlayerLayer layer];

    [layer setPlayer:player];
    [layer setFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 443, 239)];
    [layer setBackgroundColor:[UIColor clearColor].CGColor];
    [layer setVideoGravity:AVLayerVideoGravityResizeAspectFill];

    [viewVideo.layer addSublayer:layer];

    [player play];
    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(itemDidFinishPlaying:) name:AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification object:player];
}