From Camera Roll

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VideoEditor SDK supports importing videos from the camera roll.

Instantiate image picker#

To that end, we first instantiate a UIImagePickerController. We are opting for this class over PHPickerViewController, because the latter does not reliably work for some .mp4 files encoded with non-ffmpeg codecs. We have reported this issue to Apple.

We further set the current class as the controller's delegate to handle cancellation. Since we only want videos from the camera roll, we set sourceType and mediaType correspondingly.

Prevent re-encoding#

We want to prevent reencoding the video when UIImagePickerController passes it to the delegate methods, so we set the videoExportPreset property to passthrough

Initialize the editor#

The imagePickerController delegate is invoked when the user picked a video and the video's mediaURL is passed to it via the info dictionary. We can now dismiss the image picker and create a Video from the videoURL which is in turn passed as videoAsset to the VideoEditViewController to instantiate the video editor. Again, setting the current class as the delegate of the VideoEditViewController allows us to implement export, cancellation and error handling there.


import AVFoundation
import Foundation
import UniformTypeIdentifiers
import VideoEditorSDK

class OpenVideoFromCameraRollSwift: Example, UIImagePickerControllerDelegate, UINavigationControllerDelegate, VideoEditViewControllerDelegate {
  override func invokeExample() {
    // We recommend using the old `UIImagePickerController` class instead of the newer `PHPickerViewController`
    // due to video import issues for some MP4 files encoded with non-ffmpeg codecs. We've filed a bug report
    // with Apple regarding this issue.
    let imagePicker = UIImagePickerController()
    imagePicker.delegate = self
    imagePicker.sourceType = UIImagePickerController.SourceType.photoLibrary
    imagePicker.mediaTypes = [UTType.movie.identifier]

    // Setting `videoExportPreset` to passthrough will not reencode the video before passing it to
    // the delegate methods.
    imagePicker.videoExportPreset = AVAssetExportPresetPassthrough

    // Present the image picker modally.
    imagePicker.modalPresentationStyle = .fullScreen
    presentingViewController?.present(imagePicker, animated: true, completion: nil)
  }

  // MARK: - UIImagePickerControllerDelegate

  func imagePickerController(_ picker: UIImagePickerController, didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo info: [UIImagePickerController.InfoKey: Any]) {
    guard let videoURL = info[.mediaURL] as? URL else {
      fatalError()
    }

    // Dismiss the image picker and present the video editor after dismissal is done
    presentingViewController?.dismiss(animated: true, completion: {
      // Create a `Video` from the picked video URL
      let video = Video(url: videoURL)

      // Create a video editor and pass it the video. Make this class the delegate of it to handle export and cancelation.
      let videoEditViewController = VideoEditViewController(videoAsset: video)
      videoEditViewController.delegate = self

      // Present the video editor.
      videoEditViewController.modalPresentationStyle = .fullScreen
      self.presentingViewController?.present(videoEditViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
    })
  }

  func imagePickerControllerDidCancel(_ picker: UIImagePickerController) {
    presentingViewController?.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
  }

  // MARK: - VideoEditViewControllerDelegate

  func videoEditViewControllerShouldStart(_ videoEditViewController: VideoEditViewController, task: VideoEditorTask) -> Bool {
    // Implementing this method is optional. You can perform additional validation and interrupt the process by returning `false`.
    true
  }

  func videoEditViewControllerDidFinish(_ videoEditViewController: VideoEditViewController, result: VideoEditorResult) {
    // The user exported a new video successfully and the newly generated video is located at `result.output.url`. Dismissing the editor.
    presentingViewController?.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
  }

  func videoEditViewControllerDidFail(_ videoEditViewController: VideoEditViewController, error: VideoEditorError) {
    // There was an error generating the video.
    print(error.localizedDescription)
    // Dismissing the editor.
    presentingViewController?.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
  }

  func videoEditViewControllerDidCancel(_ videoEditViewController: VideoEditViewController) {
    // The user tapped on the cancel button within the editor. Dismissing the editor.
    presentingViewController?.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
  }
}