Accessing the User’s Assets

To access the assets managed by the iPod library or by the Photos application, you need to get a URL of the asset you want.

To access the iPod Library, you create an MPMediaQuery instance to find the item you want, then get its URL using MPMediaItemPropertyAssetURL. For more about the Media Library, see Multimedia Programming Guide.

To access the assets managed by the Photos application, you use ALAssetsLibrary. The following example shows how you can get an asset to represent the first video in the Saved Photos Album.

ALAssetsLibrary *library = [[ALAssetsLibrary alloc] init];
 
// Enumerate just the photos and videos group by using ALAssetsGroupSavedPhotos.
[library enumerateGroupsWithTypes:ALAssetsGroupSavedPhotos usingBlock:^(ALAssetsGroup *group, BOOL *stop) {
 
// Within the group enumeration block, filter to enumerate just videos.
[group setAssetsFilter:[ALAssetsFilter allVideos]];
 
// For this example, we're only interested in the first item.
[group enumerateAssetsAtIndexes:[NSIndexSet indexSetWithIndex:0]
                        options:0
                     usingBlock:^(ALAsset *alAsset, NSUInteger index, BOOL *innerStop) {
 
                         // The end of the enumeration is signaled by asset == nil.
                         if (alAsset) {
                             ALAssetRepresentation *representation = [alAsset defaultRepresentation];
                             NSURL *url = [representation url];
                             AVAsset *avAsset = [AVURLAsset URLAssetWithURL:url options:nil];
                             // Do something interesting with the AV asset.
                         }
                     }];
                 }
                 failureBlock: ^(NSError *error) {
                     // Typically you should handle an error more gracefully than this.
                     NSLog(@"No groups");
                 }];

Save to the Camera Roll

            ALAssetsLibrary *assetsLibrary = [[ALAssetsLibrary alloc] init];
            if ([assetsLibrary videoAtPathIsCompatibleWithSavedPhotosAlbum:exporter.outputURL]) {
                [assetsLibrary writeVideoAtPathToSavedPhotosAlbum:exporter.outputURL completionBlock:NULL];
            }