I’ve been lately hacking a new app, Fireplace Deluxe for the new Apple TV thingy, and had to deal with looping videos.

The usual way to implement this is getting a notification for AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification and rewind the video. But this introduces some milliseconds of lag and give us some undesired hiccups.

There is not much info about this but a nice way to solve the issue is by using the AVQueuePlayer and inserting videos in the queue indefinitely as long as they are being played.

This will render a nice seamless video loop without annoying hiccups.

#import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
@import AVKit;

@interface VideoViewController : AVPlayerViewController

@end

#import "VideoViewController.h"

@implementation VideoViewController
{
    NSURL* videoURL;
    AVQueuePlayer* queue;
}

- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
    
    NSString *resourceName = @"video.mov";
    NSString* movieFilePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle]
                               pathForResource:resourceName ofType:nil];
    videoURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:movieFilePath];
    
    AVPlayerItem *video = [[AVPlayerItem alloc] initWithURL:videoURL];
    queue = [[AVQueuePlayer alloc] initWithItems:@

];
    video = [[AVPlayerItem alloc] initWithURL:videoURL];
    [queue insertItem:video afterItem:nil];
    
    self.player = queue;
    
    self.showsPlaybackControls = FALSE;

    [self.player play];
    
    NSNotificationCenter *noteCenter = [NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter];
    [noteCenter addObserverForName:AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTimeNotification
                object:nil
                queue:nil
                usingBlock:^(NSNotification *note) {
                    AVPlayerItem *video = [[AVPlayerItem alloc] initWithURL:videoURL];
                    [queue insertItem:video afterItem:nil];
                }];
}

@end

To me, DevOps is a label that describes a situation where there are no walls, no gates, no transitions, and no ceremony between Development and Operations.

They are seamlessly integrated (when viewed from “above”) into a single, value delivering, IT entity. From within, there may be individuals who specialize on “one side or the other,” but even those individuals interface seamlessly and directly without the need for an intermediary.

Most importantly (in my humble opinion) DevOps means that everyone—from Jr Analyst, to Mid Dev, to Sr. Test, to Director of IT—is equally responsible and accountable for the product from inception through retirement, meaning the Devs are just as likely to be maintaining the system in Prod as the Sys Admins are, to be doing configuration testing in the Dev Environment.