Disabling user interaction in an app while the media is still loading

Q:  I am creating a MPMoviePlayerController object and calling the play method, but playback doesn't always begin right away when streaming media on a slow network. How can I prevent the user from continuing to work with my application while the media is loading?

A: To prevent the user from interacting with the application while the media is still loading, after calling the MPMoviePlayerController play method you can set the attribute userInteractionEnabled = NO on your view. This will cause user events to be ignored by the view. Once the actual movie playback begins, MPMoviePlayerController will put the movie player window and controls on top of your view, allowing the user to interact with the movie controls. When the movie playback finishes (or the user presses the Done button), you will get the MPMoviePlayerPlaybackDidFinishNotification notification, at which time you can set the attribute userInteractionEnabled=YES on your view to allow the handling of user events again.

Alternately, just after calling the MPMoviePlayerController play method you can add a new view with attribute userInteractionEnabled = NO on top of your regular application user interface . This will also prevent any user interaction with your application. Then once the movie finishes playing, simply remove the view.

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