MPMoviePlayerController only playing audio *when played again*

Question

Hi guys,
I'm using MPMoviePlayerController to play back a movie file called Move.m4v (extracted from Apple's own "MoviePlayer" sample project). It plays back just fine when I call the play function, but if I exit the player and try to play it again, I only get audio. There's no video and none of the controls show up either!
I tried playing the "MoviePlayer" sample again. It shows fine the first time around, but if you play it again, it becomes all flickery!
Does anyone please have a solution for this, or has seen it before?
Thanks a lot
Here's the code I'm using to play the movie. The playVideo function gets called by a button on the UI:
#import "HomeViewController.h"
@implementation HomeViewController
@synthesize playVideoButton;
@synthesize mMoviePlayer;
- (IBAction) playVideo{
NSLog(@"calling playVideo");
mMoviePlayer = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:[self movieURL]];
[mMoviePlayer play];
- (NSURL *)movieURL
NSURL *mMovieURL = nil;
NSBundle *bundle = [NSBundle mainBundle];
NSString *moviePath = [bundle pathForResource:@"Movie" ofType:@"m4v"];
mMovieURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:moviePath];
return mMovieURL;
- (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceO rientation {
// Return YES for supported orientations
return YES;
- (void)didReceiveMemoryWarning {
[super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview
// Low on memory: Release anything that's not essential, such as cached data, or perhaps
// unload the movie, etc.
- (void)dealloc {
[super dealloc];
// free our movie player
[mMoviePlayer release];
@end

Answer 1

I found that if you release the instance in a 'moviePlayBackDidFinish' that sometimes this can cause an error (almost as if the instance is still required). The way I do it is to release the instance right before you call it again:
#import "HomeViewController.h"
@implementation HomeViewController
@synthesize playVideoButton;
@synthesize mMoviePlayer;
(IBAction) playVideo{
NSLog(@"calling playVideo");
// add these lines to release the previous instance
if (mMoviePlayer != nil) {
// free the old movie player
[mMoviePlayer release];
mMoviePlayer = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] initWithContentURL:[self movieURL]];
[mMoviePlayer play];
(NSURL *)movieURL
NSURL *mMovieURL = nil;
NSBundle *bundle = [NSBundle mainBundle];
NSString *moviePath = [bundle pathForResource:@"Movie" ofType:@"m4v"];
mMovieURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:moviePath];
return mMovieURL;
(BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation {
// Return YES for supported orientations
return YES;
(void)didReceiveMemoryWarning {
[super didReceiveMemoryWarning]; // Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview
// Low on memory: Release anything that's not essential, such as cached data, or perhaps
// unload the movie, etc.
(void)dealloc {
// free our movie player
[mMoviePlayer release];
[super dealloc];
@end