Looping a video with AVFoundation AVPlayer?

Question

You can get a Notification when the player ends. Check AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification

When setting up the player:

ObjC

  avPlayer.actionAtItemEnd = AVPlayerActionAtItemEndNone; 

  [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
                                           selector:@selector(playerItemDidReachEnd:)
                                               name:AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification
                                             object:[avPlayer currentItem]];

this will prevent the player to pause at the end.

in the notification:

- (void)playerItemDidReachEnd:(NSNotification *)notification {
    AVPlayerItem *p = [notification object];
    [p seekToTime:kCMTimeZero];
}

this will rewind the movie.

Don't forget un unregister the notification when releasing the player.

Swift

avPlayer?.actionAtItemEnd = .none

NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self,
                                       selector: #selector(playerItemDidReachEnd(notification:)),
                                       name: .AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTime,
                                       object: avPlayer?.currentItem)

@objc func playerItemDidReachEnd(notification: Notification) {
    if let playerItem = notification.object as? AVPlayerItem {
        playerItem.seek(to: kCMTimeZero)
    }
}

Swift 4+

@objc func playerItemDidReachEnd(notification: Notification) {
    if let playerItem = notification.object as? AVPlayerItem {
        playerItem.seek(to: CMTime.zero, completionHandler: nil)
    }
}

If it helps, in iOS / tvOS 10, there's a new AVPlayerLooper() that you can use to create seamless looping of video (Swift):

player = AVQueuePlayer()
playerLayer = AVPlayerLayer(player: player)
playerItem = AVPlayerItem(url: videoURL)
playerLooper = AVPlayerLooper(player: player, templateItem: playerItem)
player.play()    

This was presented at WWDC 2016 in "Advances in AVFoundation Playback": https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/503/

Even using this code, I had a hiccup until I filed a bug report with Apple and got this response:

The movie file having movie duration longer than audio/video tracks is the problem. FigPlayer_File is disabling gapless transition because audio track edit is shorter than the movie duration (15.682 vs 15.787).

You need to either fix the movie files to have the movie duration and track durations to be same length or you can use the time range parameter of AVPlayerLooper (set time range from 0 to duration of audio track)

It turns out that Premiere had been exporting files with an audio track of a slightly different length than the video. In my case it was fine to remove the audio entirely, and that fixed the problem.

In Swift:

You can get a Notification when the player ends... check AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification

when setting up the player:

avPlayer.actionAtItemEnd = AVPlayerActionAtItemEnd.None

NSNotificationCenter.defaultCenter().addObserver(self, 
                                                 selector: "playerItemDidReachEnd:", 
                                                 name: AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification, 
                                                 object: avPlayer.currentItem)

this will prevent the player to pause at the end.

in the notification:

func playerItemDidReachEnd(notification: NSNotification) {
    if let playerItem: AVPlayerItem = notification.object as? AVPlayerItem {
        playerItem.seekToTime(kCMTimeZero)
    }
}

Swift3

NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self,
    selector: #selector(PlaylistViewController.playerItemDidReachEnd),
     name: NSNotification.Name.AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTime,
     object: avPlayer?.currentItem)

this will rewind the movie.

Do not forget to unregister the notification when releasing the player.

Here's what I ended up doing to prevent the pause-hiccup issue:

Swift:

NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(forName: .AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTime,
                                       object: nil,
                                       queue: nil) { [weak self] note in
                                        self?.avPlayer.seek(to: kCMTimeZero)
                                        self?.avPlayer.play()
}

---

Objective C:

__weak typeof(self) weakSelf = self; // prevent memory cycle
NSNotificationCenter *noteCenter = [NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter];
[noteCenter addObserverForName:AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification
                        object:nil
                         queue:nil
                    usingBlock:^(NSNotification *note) {
                        [weakSelf.avPlayer seekToTime:kCMTimeZero];
                        [weakSelf.avPlayer play];
                    }];

---

NOTE: I didn't use avPlayer.actionAtItemEnd = AVPlayerActionAtItemEndNone as it's not needed.

Swift 5:

I've made some slight adjustments from previous answers like adding the playerItem to the queue before add it to the playerLayer.

let playerItem = AVPlayerItem(url: url)
let player = AVQueuePlayer(playerItem: playerItem)
let playerLayer = AVPlayerLayer(player: player)

playerLooper = AVPlayerLooper(player: player, templateItem: playerItem)

playerLayer.frame = cell.eventImage.bounds
playerLayer.videoGravity = AVLayerVideoGravity.resizeAspectFill

// Add the playerLayer to a UIView.layer

player.play()

And make playerLooper a property of your UIViewController, otherwise the video may only play once.