How to stop video playing in YTPlayerView inside UICollectionViewCell when scrolled?

Question

I am using YTPlayerView inside UICollectionView(Horizontal scroll) with one item visible at a time on the screen. I have added a UIView inside custom cell and changed the class name to YTPlayerView in Identity inspector.

For YTPlayerView I have enabled AutoPlay and it is playing well. But, when I scroll to next or previous item I want to stop the player. I tried stopping the player in 'didEndDisplayingCell' by getting custom cell object with NSIndexPath. But YTPlayerView instance with custom cell object returns (null) in 'didEndDisplayingCell'. So I am not able to stop video play. How can I stop video play when scroll to next / prev item?

And I have 3 different custom UICollectionView cells to display text, images and videos (YTPlayerView or AVPlayer).

EDIT I tried to get the custom video cell object in 'cellForItemAtIndexPath' by saving previous visible cell indexpath. And I am able to get the custom cell object, but when I try to get the instance of YTPlayerView it is returning new object for YTPlayerView.

Can anyone suggest me the right way to handle youtube videos in UICollectionView.

In your UICollectionViewCell, in prepareForReuse, can you stop the player? — Larme
Do you have a custom UICollectionViewCell class? If yes, you can override prepareForReuse. — Larme
prepareForReuse not getting called because I have 3 different cells 1) Image 2)Text 3)Youtube video. Can u pls suggest any other option @Larme — SriKanth
prepareForReuse is going to get called if you subclass your YouTube video cell — Lefteris
yes, prepareForReuse is getting called if I have Youtube videos (Custom video cells) continuously without any text or images cells. YTPlayerView automatically stopped the previous video if the next/prev cell also displays youtube video otherwise it is not stopping to play. @Lefteris — SriKanth

Lefteris Lefteris · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-19T08:52:42

Ok,

Now I've understood the problem, however when I try my self, I get a perfectly valid cell reference in the - (void)collectionView:(UICollectionView *)collectionView didEndDisplayingCell:(UICollectionViewCell *)cell forItemAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath delegate.

It shouldn't be null there. You should be getting this each time a cell disappears, where you should check the type of the cell that is hiding!

If the cell is a type of your YouTube cell then only stop the video playback. Here is a rough sample:

- (void)collectionView:(UICollectionView *)collectionView didEndDisplayingCell:(UICollectionViewCell *)cell forItemAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
    if ([cell isKindOfClass:[YouTubeVideoCell class]]) {
        YouTubeVideoCell *youtubeCell = (YouTubeVideoCell*)cell;
        [youtubeCell stopVideo];
    }
}

Where YouTubeVideoCell should be your custom YTPlayerView cell subclass and stopVideo should be a public method of the cell where inside it you stop the YTPlayerView video.

How to stop video playing in YTPlayerView inside UICollectionViewCell when scrolled?

1 Answers