An AVPlayerItem cannot be associated with more than one instance of AVPlayer

[martaGonz]

I would like to reuse previously downloaded videos in other parts of the app, but I usually get this error. How can avoid this?

[ealeksandrov]

Related to https://github.com/neekeetab/CachingPlayerItem/issues/10.

Do not reuse AVPlayerItem, save and reuse actual data. CachingPlayerItem gives downloaded data to its delegate, but you're the one responsible for actual saving/caching/reusing.

Here is small example of how I do it:

let playerItem: AVPlayerItem
if let cachedAsset = Cache.Video.asset(for: mp4Url) {
    // if cached data found - just play it
    playerItem = AVPlayerItem(asset: cachedAsset)
} else {
    // if no data found - stream it from network and save to cache when it's ready
    playerItem = CachingPlayerItem(url: mp4Url)
    (playerItem as? CachingPlayerItem)?.delegate = self
}

Creating asset with previously cached (saved) data:

class Cache {
    class Video {
        //...
        static func asset(for url: Url) -> AVURLAsset? {
            guard let filePath = ... // use url as a key to find existing file
            return AVURLAsset(url: URL(fileURLWithPath: filePath))
        }
    }
}

Saving data to cache:

func playerItem(_ playerItem: CachingPlayerItem, didFinishDownloadingData data: Data) {
    guard let urlAsset = playerItem.asset as? AVURLAsset, urlAsset.isPlayable else { return }

    Cache.Video.save(data: data, for: urlAsset.url) // use url as a key to save data to file
}

For caching data to file I used Cache, but it's not maintained now, so I can't recommend it and haven't shared library-specific code.

[martaGonz]

Thank you for your well explained reply! and thanks to @neekeetab for making this awesome resource.