[SDK 45] [expo-av] Unmounted Video plays after switching the app to foreground

Summary

Starting from SDK 45, expo-av@11.2.3 doesn’t destroy unmounted Video components and resumes their playback after switching the app from background to foreground.

This issue does not occur in SDK 44 with expo-av@10.2.1, although I don’t think there’s a problem with AV. Possibly it’s something within expo-core-modules?

Here’s a quick recording that showcases this bug (listen with audio):

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6288237/168903942-b0abf33c-0387-4e86-a31c-89371d42d082.mp4

Managed or bare workflow? If you have ios/ or android/ directories in your project, the answer is bare!

bare

What platform(s) does this occur on?

iOS

SDK Version (managed workflow only)

45

Environment

 expo-env-info 1.0.3 environment info:
    System:
      OS: macOS 12.3.1
      Shell: 3.3.1 - /opt/homebrew/bin/fish
    Binaries:
      Node: 14.18.3 - ~/.local/share/nvm/v14.18.3/bin/node
      Yarn: 3.2.0 - /opt/homebrew/bin/yarn
      npm: 8.5.4 - ~/.local/share/nvm/v14.18.3/bin/npm
    Managers:
      CocoaPods: 1.11.3 - /opt/homebrew/bin/pod
    SDKs:
      iOS SDK:
        Platforms: DriverKit 21.4, iOS 15.4, macOS 12.3, tvOS 15.4, watchOS 8.5
    IDEs:
      Android Studio: 2020.3 AI-203.7717.56.2031.7935034
      Xcode: 13.3.1/13E500a - /usr/bin/xcodebuild
    npmPackages:
      expo: ^45.0.4 => 45.0.4
      react: 17.0.2 => 17.0.2
      react-native: 0.68.0 => 0.68.0
    npmGlobalPackages:
      expo-cli: 5.4.3
    Expo Workflow: bare

Reproducible demo

[Pickleboyonline]

As for when the audio starts playing when the app switches from foreground to background, I think it lies with the Reanimated being able to take a “snapshot” of the view like @barthap mentioned.

My plan is to put together a test app paired with the Xcode debugger to see what is going on.

[Pickleboyonline]

@hirbod I think you might be onto it. I agree with you that the strong reference would prevent the video from entirely unloading and thereby prevent the video from executing its end of lifecycle events.

My guess is that when we put all of Expo Video’s functionality on the Main thread SWM’s LayoutAnimation is somehow able to get ahold of and keep a strong reference to the Expo Video.

I believe once SWM gets this fixed we should be OK. Though, I would like the Expo Video to stop playing sound and unlist its event listeners when it unmounts (or if LayoutAnimation is preventing unmounting at least when we explicitly call unloadAsync()).

I’ll try to whip up a solution if I get a chance.

Also, I noticed some issues around Expo Video’s pausing and playing functionality. It doesn’t really cause the UI to freeze like previously but I’ve noticed it skipped time when pausing/playing. I don’t remember this exactly being an issue with Expo 44 with my patch but it seems to be apparent in the latest 45. I’ll put a more detailed report of my findings if I still see this happening. Just putting this out there here in case any of you have experienced the same thing.