Docs | Common

PlayKit Basics for OVP Apps

On this page:

• Player interface
  • Methods
  • Properties
• Events
• States
• PlayKit Manager
  • Methods
• Plugins
  • Kava plugin
• Data objects
• Sample code
• Locations
• Additional topics

Player interface

• Android: Player.java (com.kaltura.playkit.Player)
• iOS: Player.swift and BasicPlayer.swift

The methods/properties names sometimes differ between iOS and Android due to platform naming conventions.

Methods

• prepare(): takes a PKMediaEntry objects and make it ready for playback
• play(): start playing the prepared media. If called before the media is ready to play, playback will start when ready.
• pause(): temporarily pause playback
• stop(): stop playback (release resources of current media)
• seek(): seek to a position
• destroy(): release all player resources
• addObserver()/addListener(): add listener to the player’s events.

Properties

• duration
• currentTime/position
• isPlaying
• isLive
• rate

Events

The player sends events to the application. The primary events are:

• canPlay: the player has loaded the media and is ready to play
• durationChanged: the media’s duration is known or has changed
• ended: playback of current media is complete
• play: play was requested
• playing: playback has started
• pause: pause was requested
• seeking: the player started seeking
• seeked: seeking has finished
• stateChanged: the player state has changed

States

At all times the player is in a given state:

• idle: no media loaded (yet)
• ready: ready to play
• buffering: not playing because media is loading
• ended: media playback is complete

PlayKit Manager

Static/singleton class used to load a new Player instance.

Methods

• loadPlayer(): create a new player instance
• registerPlugin(): register a player plugin

Plugins

PlayKit has a built-in plugin system. All plugins implement a PKPlugin interface. The application is responsible for registering them (once, before starting the player for the first time) and setting/updating their configuration.

Kava plugin

Kava is Kaltura’s Advanced Video Analytics service. We provide this plugin with sample code.

There are other analytics plugins, as well as a plugin for displaying video ads.

Data objects

PKMediaEntry holds the information of a specific entry with all of its available sources, ready to be sent to the player. It contains a list of PKMediaSource objects.

PKMediaSource holds the URL and optionally other information required for playback.

Sample code

OVP Starter shows how to use the built-in OVP media providers to load media info from Kaltura API, load a player with Kava plugin, and connect a basic UI.

Android

iOS

Locations

See Components.

Additional topics

Topic	Android	iOS
Casting	Guide :: Sample	Guide :: Sample
Track Selection	Guide :: Sample	Guide :: Sample
Error Handling	Sample	Guide