How can I stop video when user is scrolling

Question

I have a tableView which gets data from the database. Some of the cells in my TableView contain videos in them and when we come across a video it displays properly.

My issue is that if someone keeps scrolling then that video still keeps playing. I would like to change that and if the user watches part of a video then keeps scrolling then I would like to end the video right there. I think I'm close to solving that issue but not quite there yet.

This is my code:

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {

    let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "Home", for: indexPath) as! Home
    let filename = streamsModel.video_image[indexPath.row] as NSString
    if filename.pathExtension == "mov" {
        let movieURL = URL(string: streamsModel.video_image[indexPath.row])

        cell.videoCapHeight.constant = CGFloat(Float(cell.pic_height!))
        cell.playerView = AVPlayer(url: movieURL!)
        cell.MyAVPlayer.player = cell.playerView
        cell.MyAVPlayer.showsPlaybackControls = false
        cell.MyAVPlayer.view.frame = cell.videoView.bounds
        cell.videoView.addSubview(cell.MyAVPlayer.view)
        controller.addChildViewController(cell.MyAVPlayer)
        cell.playerView?.isMuted = false
        cell.MyAVPlayer.player?.play()

    }
    return cell
}

That code above simply checks to see if the streamsModel.video_image has a .mov extension (JSON). If it does, then it gets the movie/video and displays it in a AVPlayer.

As you can see from the code, the Play() method is used so videos start playing automatically. The problem is that if a video is, for instance, 1 minute long and you watch 20 seconds of it and you scroll down, you still hear that video playing and I would like to stop the video as soon as the user scrolls away.

This is my scrollView code now I just need to stop the videos here on scroll or maybe in UITableViewCell:

func scrollViewDidScroll(_ scrollView: UIScrollView) {
    if (self.lastContentOffset > scrollView.contentOffset.y + 0) {
        print("scrolling up")
    }
    else if (self.lastContentOffset < scrollView.contentOffset.y) {
        print("scrolling down")
    }
    self.lastContentOffset = scrollView.contentOffset.y
}

user_757214 · Answer

Dan's suggestion of using the table view's delegate method would work well for you here meaning you can pause the video as the cell moves off screen.

Something like this should work:

func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, didEndDisplaying cell: UITableViewCell, forRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) {
    // Dequeue the cell
    let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "Home", for: indexPath) as! Home
    // Check the player object is set (unwrap it)
    if let player = cell.MyAVPlayer.player {
        // Check if the player is playing
        if player.rate != 0 {
            // Pause the player
            player.pause()
        }
    }
}

I would suggest that automatically pausing and playing again could be a little bit laggy depending on if there is buffering going on etc... so you may want to consider allowing the user to play the videos on a tap.

How can I stop video when user is scrolling

1 Answers