iphone - AVAudioRecorder / AVAudioPlayer - append recording to file

Question

Is there any way to record onto the end of an audio file? We can't just pause the recording instead of stopping it, because the user needs to be able to come back to the app later and add more audio to their recording. Currently, the audio is stored in CoreData as NSData. NSData's AppendData does not work because the resulting audio file still reports that it is only as long as the original data.

Another possibility would be taking the original audio file, along with the new one, and concatenate them into one audio file, if there's any way to do that.

Answer 1

This can be done fairly easily using AVMutableComposionTrack insertTimeRange:ofTrack:atTime:error. The code is somewhat lengthy, but it's really just like 4 steps:

// Create a new audio track we can append to
AVMutableComposition* composition = [AVMutableComposition composition];
AVMutableCompositionTrack* appendedAudioTrack = 
    [composition addMutableTrackWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeAudio
                             preferredTrackID:kCMPersistentTrackID_Invalid];

// Grab the two audio tracks that need to be appended
AVURLAsset* originalAsset = [[AVURLAsset alloc]
    initWithURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:originalAudioPath] options:nil];
AVURLAsset* newAsset = [[AVURLAsset alloc] 
    initWithURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:newAudioPath] options:nil];

NSError* error = nil;

// Grab the first audio track and insert it into our appendedAudioTrack 
AVAssetTrack *originalTrack = [originalAsset tracksWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeAudio];
CMTimeRange timeRange = CMTimeRangeMake(kCMTimeZero, originalAsset.duration);
[appendedAudioTrack insertTimeRange:timeRange 
                            ofTrack:[originalTrack objectAtIndex:0]
                             atTime:kCMTimeZero
                              error:&error];
if (error)
{
    // do something
    return;
}

// Grab the second audio track and insert it at the end of the first one
AVAssetTrack *newTrack = [newAsset tracksWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeAudio]; 
timeRange = CMTimeRangeMake(kCMTimeZero, newAsset.duration);   
[appendedAudioTrack insertTimeRange:timeRange
                            ofTrack:[newTrack objectAtIndex:0]
                             atTime:originalAsset.duration
                              error:&error];

if (error)
{
    // do something
    return;
}

// Create a new audio file using the appendedAudioTrack      
AVAssetExportSession* exportSession = [AVAssetExportSession
                                       exportSessionWithAsset:composition
                                       presetName:AVAssetExportPresetAppleM4A];
if (!exportSession)
{
    // do something
    return;
}


NSString* appendedAudioPath= @""; // make sure to fill this value in    
exportSession.outputURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:appendedAudioPath];
exportSession.outputFileType = AVFileTypeAppleM4A; 
[exportSession exportAsynchronouslyWithCompletionHandler:^{

    // exported successfully?
    switch (exportSession.status)
    {
        case AVAssetExportSessionStatusFailed:
            break;
        case AVAssetExportSessionStatusCompleted:
            // you should now have the appended audio file
            break;
        case AVAssetExportSessionStatusWaiting:
            break;
        default:
            break;
    }
    NSError* error = nil;

}];