Feature Request: Play video on Phone from Kodi Library

[kirbyzhou]

Now, Kore for Android can play video on Phone from Kodi Library.
Can Official-Kodi-Remote-iOS also add this feature?

[wutschel]

There was an unfinished attempt to play file via VLC, the code got removed. Adding this feature is not on my agenda yet, but I understand this can be useful. Any help to add this is appreciated.

[wutschel]

Just did a quick hack, and this already plays my flac audio files, but it refuses to play the mpg and mkv files I have. I guess AVPlayer does have limited support for A/V formats.

https://github.com/wutschel/Official-Kodi-Remote-iOS/tree/local_playback

Edit: Also confirmed this works with 3pg videos.

[kambala-decapitator]

I guess AVPlayer does have limited support for A/V formats.

yes, you're right.

I think it'd be better to add a Share button sending video URL or so that can be transferred to an external video player app capable of handling such format.

[wutschel]

Why not. Added the long press action "Share" which for now only allows to copy-to-clipboard.

https://github.com/wutschel/Official-Kodi-Remote-iOS/tree/share_url

Screenshot: https://abload.de/img/bildschirmfoto2022-10olfus.png

Is it possible to let iOS select which apps are relevant for the file type the URL points to?

[kambala-decapitator]

Is it possible to let iOS select which apps are relevant for the file type the URL points to?

I think not, unfortunately. But please test with a few video player apps and sharing video links from other apps.

On the commit:

• you can also show thumbnail/metadata via activityViewControllerLinkMetadata if desired, but you'll need to implement UIActivityItemProvider manually
• not sure why you're also sharing empty string
• I wouldn't disable mail/message/airdrop
• sourceRect must be in sourceView's coordinate system iirc => use bounds
• defining completionHandler for UIActivityViewController would probably be a good idea

[wutschel]

Thanks for your comments. I just started to play around with this a bit and will improve this further. Finally I need to test on my phone as on simulator I don't have any other apps running.

[wutschel]

Updated the implementation, mainly addressing the origin and not disabling mail/message/airdrop. Can you help with how to update icon? I did not find reference obj c code around activityViewControllerLinkMetadata and UIActivityItemProvider.

[kambala-decapitator]

here's a URL wrapper from one of my projects, hope this would be sufficient to get the idea:

// .h
@interface SharingActivityItemSource : NSObject <UIActivityItemSource>
- (instancetype)initWithUrlString:(NSString *)urlString;
@end

// .m
@import LinkPresentation;

@interface SharingActivityItemSource ()
@property (nonatomic, copy) NSURL *url;
@end

@implementation SharingActivityItemSource

- (instancetype)initWithUrlString:(NSString *)urlString {
    if (self = [super init]) {
        self.url = [NSURL URLWithString:urlString];
    }
    return self;
}

- (id)activityViewControllerPlaceholderItem:(UIActivityViewController *)activityViewController {
    return self.url;
}

- (id)activityViewController:(UIActivityViewController *)activityViewController itemForActivityType:(NSString *)activityType {
    return self.url;
}

- (LPLinkMetadata *)activityViewControllerLinkMetadata:(UIActivityViewController *)activityViewController API_AVAILABLE(ios(13.0)) {
    __auto_type meta = [LPLinkMetadata new];
    meta.originalURL = self.url;
    meta.URL = meta.originalURL;
    meta.title = @"Artikel";
    meta.imageProvider = [[NSItemProvider alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:NSBundle.mainBundle.appIconURL];
    return meta;
}

@end

and then you pass an instance of this class instead of plain URL to activityItems.

iirc there're more fields in LPLinkMetadata, please check its doc/header.

[wutschel]

Thanks, tried to add this to my best knowledge (see https://github.com/wutschel/Official-Kodi-Remote-iOS/tree/share_url), but this crashes with "*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[SharingActivityItemSource copyWithZone:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x600001b00620'". If I implement it crashes with the next unrecognized selector. Did I miss something?

[kambala-decapitator]

you made a mistake: activityItems must be an array :)

[wutschel]

That was it :)

[kambala-decapitator]

and now with LPLinkMetadata you can control title (Down and out instead of IP), possibly display album cover image etc.

[wutschel]

and now with LPLinkMetadata you can control title (Down and out instead of IP), possibly display album cover image etc.

Yep, next step. But this might be a viable overall solution. Still need to test how this behaves when sharing the URL with other apps. Do you have by chance the possibility to test?

[kambala-decapitator]

yes, will try on iPad, have a few video players there

[wutschel]

Updated, but now sometimes not showing up on iPad. Will be related to the ctrl which shows the popup. Need to dig into this later.

[kambala-decapitator]

tested on iPad: seems to work, opening the URL in VLC works as well. Unfortunately, plain URL can't be sent to video players out of the box, probably unless they implement a share extension.

dummyView - please don't do that. Simple download can be done with NSURLSession.

But now I see that thumbnails are usually unavailable, I'd avoid delays in showing the sharing view as it's a rather bad UX (at first I thought that sharing simply doesn't work and tried it a couple of times). Can be shown only if already available in local cache (if there's such thing in the Remote).

[wutschel]

dummyView was just to play with this -- I still see this as kind of prototyping. Yes, there is a thumbnail cache (see updated code on the branch). If I use this, the behaviour is different of course -- if cached, the thumbnail is shown; if not, the app icon is shown.