MPMoviePlayerController fullscreen quirk in iPad

Question

I want to show a MPMoviePlayerController in a view controller and let the user toggle full screen with the default controls, like the YouTube app. I'm using the following code in a bare-bones example:

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    self.player = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] init];
    self.player.contentURL = theURL;
    self.player.view.frame = self.viewForMovie.bounds;
    self.player.view.autoresizingMask = UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleWidth | UIViewAutoresizingFlexibleHeight;
    [self.viewForMovie addSubview:player.view];
    [self.player play];
}

This works well until the user makes the video full screen, rotates the device and taps on the screen. The status bar is shown in the wrong position, as shown in the screenshot below.

I'm working with the template Tab Bar Application for iPad. I've only added the viewDidLoad above, the view variables and an UIView in the XIB to show the movie player.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Yeah, I'm experiencing this problem as well. It definitely appears to be a bug in the MPMoviePlayerController itself.

The workaround I've settled on in my application is to just correct the status bar myself when I exit fullscreen mode:

- (void)playerDidExitFullscreen:(NSNotification *)notification {
    MPMoviePlayerController *moviePlayer = (MPMoviePlayerController *) notification.object;

    if (moviePlayer == self.player) {
        UIApplication *app = [UIApplication sharedApplication];
        if (app.statusBarOrientation != self.interfaceOrientation) {
            [app setStatusBarOrientation:self.interfaceOrientation animated:NO];
        }
    }
}

This doesn't fix the problem while in fullscreen mode, but it does fix it afterwards.

Note of course that the function needs to be added to the notification:

[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(playerDidExitFullscreen:) name:MPMoviePlayerDidExitFullscreenNotification object:nil];