AmpCore

AmpCore is the main module for the Akamai Adaptive Media Player, it takes the AVPlayer and augments its functionality to provide proper event notifications, using a well defined and documented protocol stating what events exist and what they are all about. It also ships with a default UI. Akamai AMP can manage several different plugins, please refer to the menu on the left for a full list of the plugins.

If you desire to check out a basic implementation please refer to our application samples:

Adding AmpCore to the Xcode project

Manual Installation

To manually install AmpCore you’ll need to download our latest distribution and look for the AmpCore.xcframework.

After aquiring the framework you can just drag it to you Xcode project directory.

manual installation 1

The last step, is to mark every imported framework for Embed & Sign in the project’s general tab.

manual installation 2

CocoaPods

If you don’t have CocoaPods installed, refer to the CocoaPods documentation. To use CocoaPods, first create a Podfile in the directory containing the Xcode project. For AmpCore, the Podfile should look like this:

target "ProjectName" do

  use_frameworks!

  pod 'AmpCore'

end

Once you have added the Podfile just run the command pod install --repo-update in the directory it’s located. Once the command has been completed you should se a new .xcworkspace file in your folder. Now you can start integrating the library.

Implementation

Follow these steps to have a working implementation of the AmpPlayer:

Import

The first step is to import the AmpCore.

import AmpCore

Instantiating the AMP player

To use AmpCore you should first initialize it. Add the AMP Player variable to your View Controller.

let ampPlayer: AmpPlayer!

Use the AMP player variable to instantiate the player. At this point you also need to set its license.

ampPlayer = AmpPlayer(parentView: parentView)
ampPlayer.setLicense(license)
A valid license is always required for AMP to play content. Licenses and trial licenses are provided by the Akamai AMP team.

Playing content

To enable playback, use the play method; by either passing the playback URL or the AVURLAsset as parameter.

ampPlayer.play(url: YOUR_VIDEO_URL)

// or

ampPlayer.play(asset: AVURLAsset)
The play method works for both Live and On Demand content.

Setting Autoplay

Autoplay can be enabled or disabled by setting the autoplay attribute to true or false respectively. The following code enables autoplay

ampPlayer.autoplay = true

For more details on managing playback with AMP please refer to our Playback management documentation

Listening to Events

To listen to AMP player events, make sure to implement the PlayerEventObserver protocol on your View Controller

class ViewController: UIViewController, PlayerEventObserver {

Then, register the current class as the Observer

ampPlayer.registerObserver(self)

Once registered the observer, the PlayerEventObserver callbacks will track the player events.

Use onBufferingStateChanged to make decisions when the buffer changes its state. The possible states are:

  • .ready when the buffer is ready and playback can start

  • .delayed when the buffer is not full (player is still loading content)

  • .unknown when loading has not started or there has been an error

The code below, for example, is an alternative for enabling autoplay by instructing AMP to start playback as soon as the buffer is ready.

func onBufferingStateChanged(_ ampPlayer: AmpPlayer) {
    if ampPlayer.bufferingState == .ready {
        ampPlayer.play()
    }
}
Please notice the difference between play(url: YOUR_VIDEO_URL) and play() as the first is usted to set up the video resource to be played by AMP and the second to start video playback.

onPlaybackStateChanged callback

With onPlaybackStateChanged the decisions can be made based on the playback status instead. The possible states are:

  • .playing when the content is being played.

  • .paused when content is paused.

  • .stopped when playback is stopped.

  • .ended when playback has ended by reaching the end of the stream

  • .failed when playback failed to start or there has been an error

Please bear in mind that live streams do not have an end, therefore they will not transition to the .ended state. To handle the scenario where an end user exits live playback, use the .stopped playback state or the WillStop callback.

The following code will enable an infinite loop, by replaying content once playback has reached the end of the video.

func onPlaybackStateChanged(_ ampPlayer: AmpPlayer) {
    if ampPlayer.playbackState == .ended {
        ampPlayer.replay()
    }
}

For a comprehensive list of Callbacks usable with hte PlayerEventObserver, please refer to our PlayerEventObserver Callbacks page

Enabling DRM

To play DRM content, just provide the credentials for the content in a FairplayConfiguration object and load the stream with this configuration.

let configuration = FairplayConfiguration(
    provider: .azure,
    serverURL: "DRM_SERVER_URL",
    certificateUrl: "DRM_CERTIFICATE_URL")

ampPlayer.play(url: YOUR_DRM_URL, configuration: configuration)

Additional Information

This guide was written on 4/27/2020 and it’s last revision was made on 7/18/2024. If you need any additional support please contact us through our offical support email.