Our multimedia application Boinx FotoMagico displays media files of various kinds with a Metal rendering engine. At the moment we still use .bgra8Unorm pixel format and sRGB color space and only render in SDR, which is increasingly a problem, as much of the video content is HDR nowadays (e.g. videos shot on an iPhone). For that reason we would like to switch to EDR rendering with .rgba16Float pixel format and extendedLinearDisplayP3 color space. We have already worked out how to do this for HDR image files, but still have a technical problem when rendering HDR video files. We are using AVFoundation to get the video frames as CVPixelBuffers and convert them to MTLTexture using a CVMetalTextureCache. MTLTextures are then further processed in various compute shaders before being rendered to screen. However the pixel values in the texture are not what we expected. Video frames appear too bright/overexposed. In WWDC21 session "Explore HDR rendering with EDR" Ken Greenebaum mentioned: “AVFoundation does not presently decode HDR formats, such as HDR10, to EDR. Consequently, these need to be adapted for use with EDR rendering. This conversion is straightforward and involves two steps. First, converting to linear light by applying the inverse transfer function. And second, dividing by the medium's reference white.” https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2021/10161?time=1498 However, the session does not explain, how to get or calculate the correct value for "reference white". We could not find any relevant info on the web. This is why we need DTS assistance. We need the code that calculates the correct value for reference white for any kind of video, whether it is SDR or HDR, and regardless of codec and encoding. I assume that Ken Greenebaum is the best Apple engineer to ask in this case, because he recorded most of the EDR related WWDC sessions in recent years? We have written a small test app that renders a short sample video (HLG encoding). The window contains two views. The upper view uses an AVPlayerLayer and renders the video natively just like QuickTime Player. The video content looks correct here. BTW, the window background is SDR white, so that bright EDR pixels can be clearly identified, e.g. the clouds just above the mountains in the upper left corner of the sample video. You may need to lower display brightness a bit if these clouds do not appear brighter than the white window background. The bottom view uses a CAMetalLayer and low-level Metal rendering. The CVPixelBuffers we receive from AVFoundation still need to be scaled down so that SDR reference white reaches pixel value 1.0. Entering a value of 9.0 to 10.0 for reference white in the text field makes it look about right on my Studio Display. But that is just experimental for this sample video file. We need code to calculate the correct value for reference white for any kind of video file! We have a couple of questions: SDR videos should probably use 1.0 as reference white, as their encoded pixel values can already be used as is? Is this assumption correct? Different video encoding of HDR video (HLG, PQ, etc) will probably lead to different values for reference white? Is the value for reference white constant throughout a video, or can it vary over time, either scene by scene, or even frame by frame? If it can vary, does the CVPixelBuffer of the current video frame contain all the necessary metadata to calculate the correct value? Does the NSScreen.maximumExtendedDynamicRangeColorComponentValue also influence the reference white value? The attached sample project is structured in a way that the only piece of code that needs to be modified is the ViewController.sdrReferenceWhiteValue() function. Please read the comments and the #warning in this function. This is where the code for calculating the reference white value should be inserted. Here is the download link for the sample project: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4w5gmftav5xhbixu9u6pb/HDRMetalTest.zip?rlkey=n8cm02soux3rx03vplgo6h1lm&dl=0

I'm wondering if someone happened issues with currentPlaybackRate in released version of iOS 26.0? There is no issue happened in case of iOS 18.5. When I changed currentPlaybackRate on iOS 26.0, it seems to unexpectedly change currentPlaybackRate to be 0 or 1.0 forcibly no matter DRM or non-DRM contents. And also, playing music will be abnormal behavior and unstable with noise if currentPlaybackRate is not 1.0. And changes stop state and play state frequently.

I'm getting this error when I launch my application on the iPhone 14 Pro via Xcode. Everything builds OK. I"m using the audio kit plugin and Sound Pipe Audiokit. The error starts as soon as I start the app and will carry on repeatedly. I have background processing turned on as I'd like the sounds to play when the phone is locked via the headphones. I can't find anything online about this error. None of my catches are printing anything in the logs either. So I don't know if this is just something that pops up repeatedly or whether there is something fundamentally wrong. private func setupAudioSession() { do { let session = AVAudioSession.sharedInstance() try session.setCategory(.playback, mode: .default, options: [.mixWithOthers]) try session.setActive(true, options: .notifyOthersOnDeactivation) } catch { errorMessage = "Failed to set up audio session: (error.localizedDescription)" print(errorMessage ?? "") } } // MARK: - Background Task Handling private func setupBackgroundTaskHandling() { // Handle app entering background notificationObservers.append( NotificationCenter.default.addObserver( forName: UIApplication.didEnterBackgroundNotification, object: nil, queue: .main, using: { [weak self] _ in // Safely unwrap self guard let self = self else { return } self.handleBackgroundTransition() } ) ) I'm not sure if this is the code causing the issue. Any help would be gratefully appreciated. This is my first app I'm working on .

Hi all, I'm trying to diagnose and resolve an issue with stuttering video playback using the standard AVPlayer. The video in question is a 4K, 39-second file in *.mov format, being played on an iOS device. It's served via a local HTTP server that proxies requests to a backend to fetch and process the content. The project uses end-to-end encrypted storage, which necessitates the proxy for handling data processing. While playback in offline scenarios is smooth, we are encountering issues with smooth playback during streaming. The same video streams smoothly on other platforms using the same connection, so network limitations are not a factor. On iOS, playback is consistently choppy, with pauses every 1-3 seconds. The video does not appear to buffer adequately for smooth playback. One particularly curious aspect is the seemingly random pattern of Content-Range requests made by the AVPlayer when streaming the video. Below is an example of the range requests:

My app has been using the iTunes Search API (itunes.apple.com/search) for a few years now, but at some point over the last week or so (late Sept. 2025) it is no longer returning track results with explicit content, regardless of whether I provide "explicit=Yes" (which is the default anyway, according to the API documentation - https://performance-partners.apple.com/search-api). Has anyone else experienced this with this API and have you figured out a workaround? FYI, I do also use the more robust Apple Music API in another part of my app, which isn't going through this issue, so I know it's technically an alternative. I just need to stick with iTunes Search API in this particular case. Thanks.

I'm experiencing a significant limitation with MusicKit's Dolby Atmos implementation on macOS and would appreciate clarification on whether this is intended behavior or if there are solutions available. When streaming Dolby Atmos content through MusicKit's ApplicationMusicPlayer, the output is limited to 2-channel stereo, even when: Audio MIDI Setup is configured for 7.1.4 (12-channel) output The same tracks play in full multichannel through the native Apple Music app Dolby Atmos is set to "Automatic" in Apple Music preferences Please let me know if there is anyway to enable this. If not, is this documented anywhere? Thanks!

Hi everyone, I’m working on an iOS MusicKit app that overlays a metronome on top of Apple Music playback. To line the clicks up perfectly I’d like access to low-level audio analysis data—ideally a waveform / spectrogram or beat grid—while the track is playing. I’ve noticed that several approved DJ apps (e.g. djay, Serato, rekordbox) can already: • Display detailed scrolling waveforms of Apple Music songs • Scratch, loop or time-stretch those tracks in real time That implies they receive decoded PCM frames or at least high-resolution analysis data from Apple Music under a special entitlement. My questions: 1. Does MusicKit (or any public framework) expose real-time audio buffers, FFT bins, or beat markers for streaming Apple Music content? 2. If not, is there an Apple program or entitlement that developers can apply for—similar to the “DJ with Apple Music” initiative—to gain that deeper access? 3. Where can I find official documentation or a point of contact for this kind of request? I’ve searched the docs and forums but only see standard MusicKit playback APIs, which don’t appear to expose raw audio for DRM-protected songs. Any guidance, links or insider tips on the proper application process would be hugely appreciated! Thanks in advance.

I am working on an app which plays audio - https://youtu.be/VbAfUk_eYl0?si=nJg5ayy2faWE78-g - and one of the features is, on restart, if you had paused playback of a file at the time the app was previously shut down (or were playing one at the time of shutdown), the paused state and position in the file is restored exactly as it was, on restart. The functionality works. However, it seems impossible to get the "now playing" information in iOS into the right state to reflect that via the MediaPlayer API. On restart, handlers are attached to the play/pause/togglePlayPause actions on MPRemoteCommandCenter.shared(), and the map of media info is updated on MPNowPlayingInfoCenter.default().nowPlayingInfo. What happens is that iOS's media view shows the audio as playing and offers a pause button - even though the play action is enabled and the pause action is disabled. Once playback has been initiated (my workaround is to have the pause action toggle the play state, since otherwise you wouldn't be able to initiate playback from controls in a car without initiating it once from a device first). I've created a simplified white-noise-player demo to illustrate the problem - simply build and deploy it, and then start the app, lock your device and look at the playback controls on the lock screen. It will show a pause button - same behavior I've described. https://github.com/timboudreau/ios-play-pause-demo I've tried a few things to narrow down the source of the issue - for example, thinking that not MPNowPlayingInfoPropertyPlaybackProgress and MPMediaItemPropertyPlaybackDuration might be the culprit (since the system interpolates elapsed time and it's recommended to update those properties infrequently) on startup might do the trick, but the result is the same, just without a duration or progress shown. What governs this behavior, and is there some way to explicitly tell the media player API your current state is paused?

I was testing audio playback from YouTube in Safari, and the sound was clipping heavily. At first, I thought it might be due to the poor quality of my small sound system. However, when I took a screenshot and the screenshot sound effect itself produced a loud clipping noise, it became clear that this is not a mechanical problem with my speakers, nor an issue specific to YouTube or Safari. This appears to be a system-wide audio issue in macOS Tahoe 26 - Beta 5.

Hello, I'm new to the Swift MusicKit API and am starting with the implementation in iOS 16. I'm getting stuck on an issue where there is no background or text color associated with the Artwork object. Is this something you have to make an additional property request for, and if so, how do you do that? var catalogSearch = MusicCatalogResourceRequest<Album>(matching: \.id, equalTo: item.id) let catalogResponse = try await request.response() guard let firstItem = catalogResponse.items.first else { return } In this example, firstItem.artwork only contains the url and what look like incorrect max width/height values. here's a printout of firstItem.artwork Optional(Artwork(   urlFormat: "musicKit://artwork/library/5F37858D-F46B-4F12-BA67-40FA8DD63D87/{w}x{h}?at=item&fat=&id=7718670444435992305&lid=5F37858D-F46B-4F12-BA67-40FA8DD63D87&mt=music&aat=Music122/v4/37/25/f5/3725f515-249f-7b91-77bb-f479cd48201c/22UMGIM32254.rgb.jpg", maximumWidth: 0, maximumHeight: 0 ))

I’ve never had a problem with any update before but as soon as I updated to 18.3 update my camera decided to start blurring when it’s in 1x & 2x, I use my camera daily for work and this is unacceptable. I’m wondering if anyone else is having this issue, it’s really frustrating..

Hello, our application is unable to HDMI output FairPlay protected content to TV via official Lightning HDMI AV Adapter, by checking the console log on mediaplayerd it is found that a CoreMediaErrorDomain Code=-19156 is raised, but we are unable to know what this error code means. default 11:18:15.121584+0800 mediaplaybackd keyboss ckb_customURLReadCallback: 0x7fa62f800 60/0 customURLReqID 4 isComplete 1 err -19156 error <private> (0) dokeyCallbacksExist 0 default 11:18:15.121670+0800 mediaplaybackd keyboss ckb_processErrorForRequest: 0x7fa62f800 60/0 handler 4 err 0 default 11:18:15.121752+0800 mediaplaybackd <<<< FigCustomURLHandling >>>> curll_cancelRequestOnQueue: 0x7fa031360: requestID: 4 default 11:18:15.121932+0800 mediaplaybackd keyboss ckb_transitionRequestToTerminalState: 0x7fa62f800 60/0 reqFin err Error Domain=CoreMediaErrorDomain Code=-19156 (-19156) dokeyCallbacksExist 0 default 11:18:15.122025+0800 mediaplaybackd keyboss ckb_transitionRequestToTerminalState: 0x7fa62f800 60/0 retry default 11:18:15.123195+0800 mediaplaybackd <<<< FigCPECryptorPKD >>>> PostKeyRequestErrorOccurred: 0x7fab7be80 029592C2-093D-400D-B57F-7AB06CC292D1 key request error: Error Domain=CoreMediaErrorDomain Code=-19160 (-19160)

I'm developing iPad app that will be mostly dedicated for certain external camera for visually impaired people. The linux UVC api (e.g. using guvcview) allows to enable automatic exposure for the camera. IOs api "isExposureModeSupported" unfortunately returns false for any of the exposure modes. Is it a bug? Or perhaps AVFoundation doesn't support UVC exposure yet?

I have an HDR10+ encoded video that if loaded as a mov plays back on the Apple Vision Pro but when that video is encoded using the latest (1.23b) Apple HLS tools to generate an fMP4 - the resulting m3u8 cannot be played back in the Apple Vision Pro and I only get back a "Cannot Open" error. To generate the m3u8, I'm just calling mediafilesegmenter (with -iso-fragmented) and then variantplaylistcreator. This completes with no errors but the m3u8 will playback on the Mac using VLC but not on the Apple Vision Pro. The relevant part of the m3u8 is: #EXT-X-STREAM-INF:AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=40022507,BANDWIDTH=48883974,VIDEO-RANGE=PQ,CODECS="ec-3,hvc1.1.60000000.L180.B0",RESOLUTION=4096x4096,FRAME-RATE=24.000,CLOSED-CAPTIONS=NONE,AUDIO="audio1",REQ-VIDEO-LAYOUT="CH-STEREO" {{url}} Has anyone been able to use the HLS tools to generate fMP4s of MV-HEVC videos with HDR10?

Hi team, In the Apple Music Feed datasets, we've noticed some unexpected values in the song and album tables. The primaryartists column from either song or album may contain a "non-default" artist name such as the katakana name shown in the example below: select id, name, namedefault, primaryartists from amf_song where id = '1698723329' id | name | namedefault | primaryartists ---------------------------------------- 1698723329 | {default=California} | California | [{id=1264818718, name=チャペル・ローン}] select * from amf_artist where id = '1264818718' id | name | namedefault | namepronunciation | ---------------------------------------------- 1264818718 | {default=Chappell Roan, ja=チャペル・ローン} | Chappell Roan | {ja=チャペルローン} | Shouldn't the primaryartists column be showing the namedefault instead of the Japanese language version? When can we expect this bug to resolved? Thanks,

I'm creating an app that uses AVCaptureSession to pass camera input to AVCaptureMetadataOutput type set [metaout setMetadataObjectTypes:@[AVMetadataObjectTypeFace]] and scan Face. After updating to OS 26 Beta2 and iOS 26 Beta2, an issue has occurred where the delegate method of AVCaptureMetadataOutputObjectsDelegate is not called on some devices. The following devices are experiencing this issue. iPad (9th Gen) iPad air (4th Gen) iPhone 15 This issue has not occur on any other devices I have. I tried running the AVFoundation sample code on the Apple Developer site on the above device. The same problem still occurs. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/capture_setup/avcambarcode_detecting_barcodes_and_faces Are any additional settings required after OS 26 beta and iOS 26 beta? Or is there some problem on the OS side?

I often find when doing basic actions in MusicKit it is incredibly slow compared to Apple's Music App. I've tried different versions, devices, networks, Apple's sample code, it all throughout the last several years, and it is all the same. Does anyone else have this issue?

Hi, is there a way to display the animated cover art in an app? Not every album has a cover art but for the ones that have one I would like to display them instead of the artwork. Thank you :)

Our streaming app uses FairPlay-protected video streams, which previously worked fine when using AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate to provide CKCs. Recently, we migrated to AVContentKeySession, and while everything works as expected during regular playback, we encountered an issue with AirPlay. Our CKC has a 120-second expiry, so we renew it by calling renewExpiringResponseData.. This trigger the didProvideRenewingContentKeyRequest delegate and we respond with updated CKC. However, when streaming via AirPlay, both video and audio freeze exactly after 120 seconds. To validate the issue, I tested with AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate and found that I can reproduce the same freeze if I do not renew the key. This suggests that AirPlay is not accepting the renewed CKC when using AVContentKeySession. Additional Details: This issue occurs across different iOS versions and various AirPlay devices. The same content plays without issues when played directly on the device. The renewal process is successful, and segments continue to load, but playback remains frozen. Tried renewing the CKC bit early (100s). I also tried setting player.usesExternalPlaybackWhileExternalScreenIsActive = true, but the issue persists. We don't use persistentKey. Is there anything else that needs to be considered for proper key renewal when AirPlaying? Any help on how to fix this or confirmation if this is a known issue would be greatly appreciated.

We move to another streaming service and need to deliver a ASK, .PEM &amp;key, and CRT to enable DRM. Now the issue is that we don't have that information anymore. Most logical would be to revoke the current certificate and create a new one. Unfortunately for Fairplay Streaming Certificates there is no revoke button. We asked developer support who isn't able to help. We then did a request to revoke as described in article 2.7 of the Apple Developer Program License Agreement. They can only do this when the certificate is compromised. So now we are stuck. Anyone out there who had the same issue and found a solution? Your help is much appreciated.