There are significant crash reports coming from iOS 18 users regarding AVKit framework that starts from this line [AVPlayerController _observeValueForKeyPath:oldValue:newValue:] which seems to be coming from iOS internal SDK. There are 2 kinds of crash we found: UI modification on background thread From the stack trace it seems like when AVPictureInPictureController is being deallocated and its view is being removed from superview somehow the code is being executed in background thread because there is this line there _AssertAutoLayoutOnAllowedThreadsOnly highlighted before the crash. But I’ve checked our code that plays around AVPictureInPictureController, in the locations where we would deallocate the object it will always be called on main thread which are insideviewDidLoad and deinit inside UIViewController class. From the log, it seems like the crash happened when user try to open another content when PIP player is active resulting in the current PIP instance will be replaced with a new one. My suspect is the observation logic inside AVPlayerController could be the hint to this issue, probably something broken over there since this issue happened across our app versions on iOS 18 users only. Unfortunately, I was unable to reproduce this issue yet but one of my colleagues reproduced it once but haven’t been able to do it again since. The reports keep raising each day up to 1.3k events in the last 30 days now. Over release object This one has lower reports than the first one but I decided to include it since it might have relevant information regarding the first crash since the starting stack trace is similar. The crash timing seems to be similar to the first one, where we deallocate existing AVPictureInPictureController and later replace it with a new one and also found only in iOS 18 users which also refers to [AVPlayerController _observeValueForKeyPath:oldValue:newValue:]. I also was unable to reproduce this issue so far. Oh, and both of the issues happened on both iPhone and iPad. We’d appreciate any advice on what we can do to avoid this in the future and probably any hint on why it could happened. I have reported this issue with bug number: FB15620734 I also attached one sample crash report for each of the crashes here. non ui thread access.crash over release.crash

We are using AVAssetDownloadURLSession to download content with multiple audio tracks. Still, we are facing an issue where only one audio language is being downloaded, despite explicitly requesting multiple audio languages. However, all subtitle variants are being downloaded successfully. Issue Details: Observed Behaviour: When initiating a download using AVAssetDownloadURLSession, only one audio track (Hindi, in this case) is downloaded, even though the content contains multiple audio tracks. Expected Behaviour: All requested audio tracks should be downloaded, similar to how subtitle variants are successfully downloaded. Please find sample app implementation details: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DLcBGNnuWFYsY0cipzxpIHqZYUDJujmN/view?usp=sharing Manifest file for the asset looks something like below #EXTM3U #EXT-X-VERSION:6 #EXT-X-INDEPENDENT-SEGMENTS #EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="A1",NAME="Hindi",LANGUAGE="hi",URI="indexHindi/Hindi.m3u8",AUTOSELECT=YES,DEFAULT=YES #EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="A2",NAME="Bengali",LANGUAGE="bn",URI="indexBengali/Bengali.m3u8",AUTOSELECT=YES,DEFAULT=YES #EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="A3",NAME="Kannada",LANGUAGE="kn",URI="indexKannada/Kannada.m3u8",AUTOSELECT=YES,DEFAULT=YES #EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="A4",NAME="Malayalam",LANGUAGE="ml",URI="indexMalayalam/Malayalam.m3u8",AUTOSELECT=YES,DEFAULT=YES #EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="A5",NAME="Tamil",LANGUAGE="ta",URI="indexTamil/Tamil.m3u8",AUTOSELECT=YES,DEFAULT=YES #EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="A6",NAME="Telugu",LANGUAGE="te",URI="indexTelugu/Telugu.m3u8",AUTOSELECT=YES,DEFAULT=YES #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=832196,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=432950,RESOLUTION=640x360,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A1",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k360p/360p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=832196,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=432950,RESOLUTION=640x360,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A2",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k360p/360p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=832196,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=432950,RESOLUTION=640x360,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A3",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k360p/360p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=832196,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=432950,RESOLUTION=640x360,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A4",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k360p/360p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=832196,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=432950,RESOLUTION=640x360,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A5",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k360p/360p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=832196,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=432950,RESOLUTION=640x360,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A6",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k360p/360p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1317051,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=607343,RESOLUTION=854x480,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A1",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k480p/480p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1317051,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=607343,RESOLUTION=854x480,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A2",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k480p/480p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1317051,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=607343,RESOLUTION=854x480,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A3",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k480p/480p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1317051,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=607343,RESOLUTION=854x480,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A4",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k480p/480p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1317051,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=607343,RESOLUTION=854x480,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A5",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k480p/480p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1317051,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=607343,RESOLUTION=854x480,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L93.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A6",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k480p/480p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1715498,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=717018,RESOLUTION=1024x576,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L123.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A1",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k576p/576p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1715498,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=717018,RESOLUTION=1024x576,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L123.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A2",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k576p/576p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1715498,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=717018,RESOLUTION=1024x576,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L123.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A3",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k576p/576p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1715498,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=717018,RESOLUTION=1024x576,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L123.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A4",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k576p/576p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1715498,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=717018,RESOLUTION=1024x576,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L123.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A5",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k576p/576p.m3u8 #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1715498,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=717018,RESOLUTION=1024x576,FRAME-RATE=25.0,CODECS="hvc1.2.4.L123.b0,mp4a.40.2",AUDIO="A6",SUBTITLES="subs" index-4k576p/576p.m3u8 #EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=SUBTITLES,GROUP-ID="subs",NAME="English",DEFAULT=YES,AUTOSELECT=YES,FORCED=NO,LANGUAGE="en",URI="subtitle_en/sub_en_vtt.m3u8"

I have a crash related to playing video in AVPlayerViewController and AVQueuePlayer. I download the video locally from the network and then initialize it using AVAsset and AVPlayerItem. Can't reproduce locally, but crashes occur from firebase crashlytics only for users starting with iOS 18.4.0 with this trace: Crashed: com.apple.avkit.playerControllerBackgroundQueue 0 libobjc.A.dylib 0x1458 objc_retain + 16 1 libobjc.A.dylib 0x1458 objc_retain_x0 + 16 2 AVKit 0x12afdc __77-[AVPlayerController currentEnabledAssetTrackForMediaType:completionHandler:]_block_invoke + 108 3 libdispatch.dylib 0x1aac _dispatch_call_block_and_release + 32 4 libdispatch.dylib 0x1b584 _dispatch_client_callout + 16 5 libdispatch.dylib 0x6560 _dispatch_continuation_pop + 596 6 libdispatch.dylib 0x5bd4 _dispatch_async_redirect_invoke + 580 7 libdispatch.dylib 0x13db0 _dispatch_root_queue_drain + 364 8 libdispatch.dylib 0x1454c _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 156 9 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x4624 _pthread_wqthread + 232 10 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x19f8 start_wqthread + 8

Hello, Environment macOS 15.6.1 / Xcode 26 beta 7 / iOS 26 Beta 9 In a simple AVFoundation video-playback sample, I’m seeing different behavior between iOS 18 and iOS 26 regarding AVPlayerItem.didPlayToEndTimeNotification. I’ve attached a minimal sample below. Please replace videoURL with a valid short video URL. Repro steps Tap “Play” to start playback and let the video finish. The AVPlayerItem.didPlayToEndTimeNotification registered with NotificationCenter should fire, and you should see Play finished. in the console. Without relaunching, tap “Play” again. This is where the issue arises. Observed behavior On iOS 18 and earlier: The video does not play again (it does not restart from the beginning), but AVPlayerItem.didPlayToEndTimeNotification is posted and Play finished. appears in the console. The same happens every time you press “Play”. On iOS 26: Pressing “Play” does not post AVPlayerItem.didPlayToEndTimeNotification. The code path that prints Play finished. is never called (the callback enclosing that line is not invoked again). Building the same program with Xcode 16.4 and running it on an iOS 26 beta device shows the same phenomenon, which suggests there has been a behavioral change for AVPlayerItem.didPlayToEndTimeNotification on iOS 26. I couldn’t find any mention of this in the release notes or API Reference. Because the semantics around AVPlayerItem.didPlayToEndTimeNotification appear to differ, we’re forced to adjust our logic. If there is a way to achieve the iOS 18–style behavior on iOS 26, I would appreciate guidance. Alternatively, if this change is intentional, could you share the reasoning? Is iOS 26 the correct behavior from Apple’s perspective and iOS 18 (and earlier) behavior considered incorrect? Any official clarification would be extremely helpful. import UIKit import AVFoundation final class ViewController: UIViewController { private let videoURL = URL(string: "https://......mp4")! private var player: AVPlayer? private var playerItem: AVPlayerItem? private var playerLayer: AVPlayerLayer? private var observeForComplete: NSObjectProtocol? // UI private let playerContainerView = UIView() private let playButton = UIButton(type: .system) private let stopButton = UIButton(type: .system) private let replayButton = UIButton(type: .system) deinit { if let observeForComplete { NotificationCenter.default.removeObserver(observeForComplete) } } override func viewDidLoad() { super.viewDidLoad() view.backgroundColor = .systemBackground setupUI() setupPlayer() } override func viewDidLayoutSubviews() { super.viewDidLayoutSubviews() playerLayer?.frame = playerContainerView.bounds } // MARK: - Setup private func setupUI() { playerContainerView.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false playerContainerView.backgroundColor = .black view.addSubview(playerContainerView) // Buttons playButton.setTitle("Play", for: .normal) stopButton.setTitle("Pause", for: .normal) replayButton.setTitle("RePlay", for: .normal) [playButton, stopButton, replayButton].forEach { $0.titleLabel?.font = .systemFont(ofSize: 16, weight: .semibold) $0.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false $0.contentEdgeInsets = UIEdgeInsets(top: 10, left: 16, bottom: 10, right: 16) } let stack = UIStackView(arrangedSubviews: [playButton, stopButton, replayButton]) stack.axis = .horizontal stack.spacing = 16 stack.alignment = .center stack.distribution = .equalCentering stack.translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints = false view.addSubview(stack) NSLayoutConstraint.activate([ playerContainerView.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.safeAreaLayoutGuide.topAnchor, constant: 20), playerContainerView.leadingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.leadingAnchor), playerContainerView.trailingAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.trailingAnchor), playerContainerView.heightAnchor.constraint(equalToConstant: 200), stack.topAnchor.constraint(equalTo: playerContainerView.bottomAnchor, constant: 20), stack.centerXAnchor.constraint(equalTo: view.centerXAnchor) ]) // Action playButton.addTarget(self, action: #selector(didTapPlay), for: .touchUpInside) stopButton.addTarget(self, action: #selector(didTapStop), for: .touchUpInside) replayButton.addTarget(self, action: #selector(didTapReplayFromStart), for: .touchUpInside) } private func setupPlayer() { // AVURLAsset -> AVPlayerItem → AVPlayer let asset = AVURLAsset(url: videoURL) let item = AVPlayerItem(asset: asset) self.playerItem = item let player = AVPlayer(playerItem: item) player.automaticallyWaitsToMinimizeStalling = true self.player = player let layer = AVPlayerLayer(player: player) layer.videoGravity = .resizeAspect playerContainerView.layer.addSublayer(layer) layer.frame = playerContainerView.bounds self.playerLayer = layer // Notification if let observeForComplete { NotificationCenter.default.removeObserver(observeForComplete) } if let playerItem { observeForComplete = NotificationCenter.default.addObserver( forName: AVPlayerItem.didPlayToEndTimeNotification, object: playerItem, queue: .main ) { [weak self] _ in guard self != nil else { return } Task { @MainActor in print("Play finished.") } } } } // MARK: - Actions @objc private func didTapPlay() { player?.play() } @objc private func didTapStop() { player?.pause() } // RePlay @objc private func didTapReplayFromStart() { player?.seek(to: .zero, toleranceBefore: .zero, toleranceAfter: .zero) { [weak self] _ in self?.player?.play() } } } I would greatly appreciate an official response from Apple engineering on whether this is an intentional change, a regression, or an API contract clarification, and what the recommended approach is going forward. Thank you.

When setting the now playing info for playing media in MPNowPlayingInfoCenter we can set artwork. But it seems the Apple API for creating the artwork is crashing on iOS 18 (FB15145734). On iOS 17 this gave the warning that the completion handler was not run on the main thread. I've tried to seek help here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78989543/swift-data-race-with-appkit-mpmediaitemartwork-function/78990231?noredirect=1#comment139277425_78990231 but it seems that it's not possible to override the completion handler and therefor it's up to Apple to fix this issue. .task { await MainActor.run { let nowPlayingInfoCenter = MPNowPlayingInfoCenter.default() var nowPlayingInfo = [String: Any]() let image = NSImage(named: "image")! // warning: data race detected: @MainActor function at MPMediaItemArtwork/ContentView.swift:22 was not called on the main thread nowPlayingInfo[MPMediaItemPropertyArtwork] = MPMediaItemArtwork(boundsSize: image.size, requestHandler: { _ in // Not on main thread here! return image }) nowPlayingInfoCenter.nowPlayingInfo = nowPlayingInfo } } I'm wondering if there is an alternative method to set the now playing artwork?

Hi all, I'm trying to diagnose and resolve an issue with stuttering video playback using the standard AVPlayer. The video in question is a 4K, 39-second file in *.mov format, being played on an iOS device. It's served via a local HTTP server that proxies requests to a backend to fetch and process the content. The project uses end-to-end encrypted storage, which necessitates the proxy for handling data processing. While playback in offline scenarios is smooth, we are encountering issues with smooth playback during streaming. The same video streams smoothly on other platforms using the same connection, so network limitations are not a factor. On iOS, playback is consistently choppy, with pauses every 1-3 seconds. The video does not appear to buffer adequately for smooth playback. One particularly curious aspect is the seemingly random pattern of Content-Range requests made by the AVPlayer when streaming the video. Below is an example of the range requests:

Our multimedia application Boinx FotoMagico displays media files of various kinds with a Metal rendering engine. At the moment we still use .bgra8Unorm pixel format and sRGB color space and only render in SDR, which is increasingly a problem, as much of the video content is HDR nowadays (e.g. videos shot on an iPhone). For that reason we would like to switch to EDR rendering with .rgba16Float pixel format and extendedLinearDisplayP3 color space. We have already worked out how to do this for HDR image files, but still have a technical problem when rendering HDR video files. We are using AVFoundation to get the video frames as CVPixelBuffers and convert them to MTLTexture using a CVMetalTextureCache. MTLTextures are then further processed in various compute shaders before being rendered to screen. However the pixel values in the texture are not what we expected. Video frames appear too bright/overexposed. In WWDC21 session "Explore HDR rendering with EDR" Ken Greenebaum mentioned: “AVFoundation does not presently decode HDR formats, such as HDR10, to EDR. Consequently, these need to be adapted for use with EDR rendering. This conversion is straightforward and involves two steps. First, converting to linear light by applying the inverse transfer function. And second, dividing by the medium's reference white.” https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10161?time=1498 However, the session does not explain, how to get or calculate the correct value for "reference white". We could not find any relevant info on the web. This is why we need DTS assistance. We need the code that calculates the correct value for reference white for any kind of video, whether it is SDR or HDR, and regardless of codec and encoding. I assume that Ken Greenebaum is the best Apple engineer to ask in this case, because he recorded most of the EDR related WWDC sessions in recent years? We have written a small test app that renders a short sample video (HLG encoding). The window contains two views. The upper view uses an AVPlayerLayer and renders the video natively just like QuickTime Player. The video content looks correct here. BTW, the window background is SDR white, so that bright EDR pixels can be clearly identified, e.g. the clouds just above the mountains in the upper left corner of the sample video. You may need to lower display brightness a bit if these clouds do not appear brighter than the white window background. The bottom view uses a CAMetalLayer and low-level Metal rendering. The CVPixelBuffers we receive from AVFoundation still need to be scaled down so that SDR reference white reaches pixel value 1.0. Entering a value of 9.0 to 10.0 for reference white in the text field makes it look about right on my Studio Display. But that is just experimental for this sample video file. We need code to calculate the correct value for reference white for any kind of video file! We have a couple of questions: SDR videos should probably use 1.0 as reference white, as their encoded pixel values can already be used as is? Is this assumption correct? Different video encoding of HDR video (HLG, PQ, etc) will probably lead to different values for reference white? Is the value for reference white constant throughout a video, or can it vary over time, either scene by scene, or even frame by frame? If it can vary, does the CVPixelBuffer of the current video frame contain all the necessary metadata to calculate the correct value? Does the NSScreen.maximumExtendedDynamicRangeColorComponentValue also influence the reference white value? The attached sample project is structured in a way that the only piece of code that needs to be modified is the ViewController.sdrReferenceWhiteValue() function. Please read the comments and the #warning in this function. This is where the code for calculating the reference white value should be inserted. Here is the download link for the sample project: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4w5gmftav5xhbixu9u6pb/HDRMetalTest.zip?rlkey=n8cm02soux3rx03vplgo6h1lm&dl=0

Our streaming app uses FairPlay-protected video streams, which previously worked fine when using AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate to provide CKCs. Recently, we migrated to AVContentKeySession, and while everything works as expected during regular playback, we encountered an issue with AirPlay. Our CKC has a 120-second expiry, so we renew it by calling renewExpiringResponseData.. This trigger the didProvideRenewingContentKeyRequest delegate and we respond with updated CKC. However, when streaming via AirPlay, both video and audio freeze exactly after 120 seconds. To validate the issue, I tested with AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate and found that I can reproduce the same freeze if I do not renew the key. This suggests that AirPlay is not accepting the renewed CKC when using AVContentKeySession. Additional Details: This issue occurs across different iOS versions and various AirPlay devices. The same content plays without issues when played directly on the device. The renewal process is successful, and segments continue to load, but playback remains frozen. Tried renewing the CKC bit early (100s). I also tried setting player.usesExternalPlaybackWhileExternalScreenIsActive = true, but the issue persists. We don't use persistentKey. Is there anything else that needs to be considered for proper key renewal when AirPlaying? Any help on how to fix this or confirmation if this is a known issue would be greatly appreciated.

I’m encountering a consistent crash in WebKit when using WKWebView to play a YouTube playlist in my iOS app. Playback starts successfully, but the web process terminates during the second video in the playlist. This only occurs on physical devices, not in the simulator. Here’s a simplified Swift example of my setup: import SwiftUI import WebKit struct ContentView: View { private let playlistID = "PLig2mjpwQBZnghraUKGhCqc9eAy0UbpDN" var body: some View { YouTubeWebView(playlistID: playlistID) .edgesIgnoringSafeArea(.all) } } struct YouTubeWebView: UIViewRepresentable { let playlistID: String func makeUIView(context: Context) -> WKWebView { let config = WKWebViewConfiguration() config.allowsInlineMediaPlayback = true let webView = WKWebView(frame: .zero, configuration: config) webView.scrollView.isScrollEnabled = true let html = """ <!doctype html> <html> <head> <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0"> <style>body,html{height:100%;margin:0;background:#000}iframe{width:100%;height:100%;border:0}</style> </head> <body> <iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/videoseries?list=\(playlistID)&controls=1&rel=0&playsinline=1&iv_load_policy=3" frameborder="0" allow="encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; fullscreen" webkit-playsinline allowfullscreen ></iframe> </body> </html> """ webView.loadHTMLString(html, baseURL: nil) return webView } func updateUIView(_ uiView: WKWebView, context: Context) {} } #Preview { ContentView() } Observed behavior: First video plays without issue. Web process crashes when the second video in the playlist starts. Console logs show WebProcessProxy::didClose and repeated memory status messages. Using ProcessAssertion or background activity does not prevent the crash. Only occurs on physical devices; simulators do not reproduce the issue. Questions: Is there something I should change or add in my WKWebView setup or HTML/iframe to prevent the crash when playing the second video in a playlist on physical iOS devices? Is there an officially supported way to limit memory or prevent WebKit from terminating the web process during multi-video playback? Are there recommended patterns for playing YouTube playlists in a WKWebView on iOS without risking crashes? Any tips for debugging or configuring WKWebView to make it more stable for continuous playlist playback? Thanks in advance for any guidance!

Our iOS/AppleTV video content playback app uses AVPlayer to play HLS video streams and supports both custom and system playback UIs. The Fairplay content key is retrieved using AVContentKeySession. AirPlay is supported too. When the iPhone is connected to a TV through the lightning Apple Digital AV Adapter (A1438), the app is mirrored as expected. Problem: when using an iPhone or iPad on iOS 18.1.1, FairPlay-protected HLS streams are not played and a CoreMediaErrorDomain -12035 error is received by the AVPlayerItem. Also, once the issue has occurred, the mirroring freezes (the TV indefinitely displays the app playback screen) although the app works fine on the iOS device. The content key retrieval works as expected (I can see that 2 content key requests are made by the system by the way, probably one for the local playback and one for the adapter, as when AirPlaying) and the error is thrown after providing the AVContentKeyResponse. Unfortunately, and as far as I know, there is not documentation on CoreMediaErrorDomain errors so I don't know what -12035 means. The issue does not occur: on an iPhone on iOS 17.7 (even with FairPlay-protected HLS streams) when playing DRM-free video content (whatever the iOS version) when using the USB-C AV Adapter (whatever the iOS version) Also worth noting: the issue does not occur with other video playback apps such as Apple TV or Netflix although I don't have any details on the kind of streams these apps play and the way the FairPlay content key is retrieved (if any) so I don't know if it is relevant.

I noticed that AVSampleBufferDisplayLayerContentLayer is not released when the AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer is removed and released. It is possible to reproduce the issue with the simple code: import AVFoundation import UIKit class ViewController: UIViewController { var displayBufferLayer: AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer? override func viewDidLoad() { super.viewDidLoad() let displayBufferLayer = AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer() displayBufferLayer.videoGravity = .resizeAspectFill displayBufferLayer.frame = view.bounds view.layer.insertSublayer(displayBufferLayer, at: 0) self.displayBufferLayer = displayBufferLayer DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter(deadline: .now() + 1) { self.displayBufferLayer?.flush() self.displayBufferLayer?.removeFromSuperlayer() self.displayBufferLayer = nil } } } In my real project I have mutliple AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer created and removed in different view controllers, this is problematic because the amount of leaked AVSampleBufferDisplayLayerContentLayer keeps increasing. I wonder that maybe I should use a pool of AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer and reuse them, however I'm slightly afraid that this can also lead to strange bugs. Edit: It doesn't cause leaks on iOS 18 device but leaks on iPad Pro, iOS 17.5.1

Safari is supposed to support animated AVIF images since version 16, but the ones I've tested perform very poorly, even on an M4 Mac Mini running Sequoia 15.1.1. I believe Safari delegates decoding to the operating system itself, so this issue also happens in Live Preview in the finder, when I try to preview a file. Sample file here: https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cdn.paintera.org/test/sample.avif 322KB file, 5 seconds long, 12fps This plays perfectly on Chrome on Mac OS, but is slow and laggy on Safari and Live Preview (it takes about 6.5 seconds to finish the 5 second video). Does anyone know how to fix this or workaround this issue?

Hello Apple Community, We are working on a real-time streaming feature where we receive chunks of raw MP4 data through a custom protocol and store them in a buffer (array). Our goal is to use these data chunks to play a continuous video stream in AVPlayer. What We've Tried: Custom URL Scheme with AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate: We implemented a custom URL scheme (customscheme://) to serve the buffered data using AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate. The method shouldWaitForLoadingOfRequestedResource is called only during the initial allocation. It doesn't get triggered when new chunks are appended to the buffer. Despite appending new data to the buffer, AVPlayer doesn’t request further chunks from the delegate. What We Need: We are looking for a solution where: The player continuously fetches data from the buffer as new chunks are added. The playback remains smooth and uninterrupted, even with real-time data being appended. Ideally, this solution works with AVPlayer while adhering to HLS-like behavior without implementing an HLS server. Questions: Is AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate the right approach for this use case? If so, how can we ensure shouldWaitForLoadingOfRequestedResource is called whenever new data is available in the buffer? Are there alternative APIs or recommended patterns for playing real-time MP4 data chunks in AVPlayer? Would implementing a custom FFmpeg-based player be necessary, or can this be achieved using AVPlayer and its APIs? We appreciate any guidance, suggestions, or examples that can help us achieve this. Thank you!

It's 2025, and I see that trends in video storage and streaming have changed significantly. Nowadays, CDN combined with domain-based video protection is the most popular solution. Does anyone have more insights into this technology or real-world experience with it?

I was advised to post here by a Code-Level Support representative. Below will be a copy of my initial issue report, and my minimally reproductive test project can be found at the following GitHub repository URL... https://github.com/PierceLBrooks/vtUudSeiNalCmake DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM When encoding H264 video codec data using the VTCompressionSession API facilities available through the VideoToolbox framework on MacOS, the resultant bitstream will invariably include Unregistered User Data SEI NAL units that carry the UUID "47564adc-5c4c-433f-94ef-c5113cd143a8". The proprietary decoders we are working with currently struggle with filtering out these NAL units. Can you explain what purpose this serves, what the meaning of the byte-wise unit payloads are, and which configuration settings the VideoToolbox encoder instance specifically depends upon for triggering the insertion of them? STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Invoke the instantiation of a new VideoToolbox H264 encoder object by calling VTCompressionSessionCreate with appropriate configuration flags. 2. Push frames through the encoder, receiving their encoded byte buffer counterparts through an asynchronous callback. 3. Write that encoded data to some buffer which will contain the totality of the encoder's output. 4. Inspect the NAL units of the initial portion of this output bitstream buffer. 5. Observe the presence of at least one Unregistered User Data SEI NAL unit carrying the "47564adc-5c4c-433f-94ef-c5113cd143a8" UUID near the beginning of the output segment.

Is there any way we can detect the status of the Show When Muted and Show on Skip Back device settings in code ?

When using AVSampleBufferDisplayLayer to play uncompressed H.264 and H.265 video with B-frames more than 7, frame drops occur. The more B-frames there are, the more noticeable the frame drops become, for example 15 bframes. Use FFmpeg to transcode a video file with visible timestamps and frame numbers (x264 or x265 ): ffmpeg -i test.mp4 -vf "drawtext=fontsize=45:text=%{pts} %{n}:y=400" -c:v libx264 -x264-params "bframes=15:b-adapt=0" -crf 30 -y x264_bf15.mp4 ffmpeg -i test.mp4 -vf "drawtext=fontsize=45:text=%{pts} %{n}:y=400" -c:v libx265 -x265-params "bframes=15:b-adapt=0" -crf 30 -y x265_bf15.mp4 Use the demo player from this repository to reproduce the issue: https://github.com/msfrms/CustomPlayer frame drops can be observed. And following log can be found in devices console. mediaserverd <<<< IQ-CA >>>> piqca_gmstats_dump: FIQCA(0x1266f4000) recent frames: enqueued: 184, displayed: 138, dropped: 42, flushed: 0, evicted: 3, >16ms late: 2 PS. I was using iphone11 iOS14.6, to replay this issue. May I ask why frame drops occur in this case? Is there any configuration or API usage change that could help fix the frame drop issue? Many thanks!

(This only started happening as of Xcode 26.) I know macOS and watchOS don't support this property, but all other platforms do (did?) up until I upgraded Xcode. Now when I compile I get this: Value of type 'AVPlayerItem' has no member 'externalMetadata'

Hello everyone, I'm looking for a definitive clarification on how to completely disable all video stabilization, including the hardware OIS, using AVFoundation. The goal is to achieve a completely raw, unstabilized video feed, which is crucial when using external equipment like gimbals to avoid conflicting stabilization motions. My research points to using the AVCaptureConnection property preferredVideoStabilizationMode and setting it to AVCaptureVideoStabilizationMode.off. The documentation for the .off case states: A mode that doesn’t stabilize video capture. This description is slightly ambiguous. It's unclear whether this only affects software-level stabilization (EIS, EIS+OIS, etc) or if it guarantees the complete deactivation of the physical OIS module. For professional video applications, this is a critical distinction. So, I'd like to ask the community: Has anyone been able to definitively confirm that setting preferredVideoStabilizationMode to .off also disables the hardware OIS? Are there any known tests or documentation that prove this behavior? Is there an alternative or more direct method to ensure the OIS module is physically inactive during video capture? What is the community's best practice for ensuring absolutely no stabilization is applied to the video pipeline? Any insights or shared experiences on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Hi everyone, I’m exploring using the iPhone 17 Pro with the Blackmagic ProDock in a custom capture app. The genlock functionality seems accessible via AVExternalSyncDevice and related APIs, which is great. I’m specifically curious about external timecode coming in from the ProDock: • Is there a public way to access the timecode feed in a custom app via AVFoundation or another Apple API? • If so, what is the recommended approach to read or apply that timecode during capture? • Are there any current limitations or entitlements required to access timecode from ProDock in a third-party app? I’m excited to start integrating synchronized capture in my app, and any guidance or sample patterns would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance! — [Artem]