iOS Player SDK: preload and precache for instant playback

The FastPix iOS Player SDK can now preload and precache upcoming playlist items for near-instant playback, and its default endpoints have moved to fastpix.com.

What’s new:

• Preload upcoming items: a new PreloadManager (PreloadManager.shared) warms upcoming playlist items in the background using a shadow AVPlayer, buffering AVPlayerItem instances before the viewer navigates. Query state with preloadStatus(forVideo:), hand off a warmed item with consumePreloadedItem(for:), and cancel in-flight work with clearAll() in deinit. A PreloadManagerDelegate reports start, ready, fail, cancel, and auto-advance events.

• Precache HLS segments to disk: a new PrecacheManager (PrecacheManager.shared) downloads HLS segments to local disk and serves them on subsequent playback for lower startup latency. Start with startPrecaching(url:), stop with stopAllPrecaching(), and track cache hits and misses via PrecacheManagerDelegate. DRM-protected items are excluded from precaching since their segments are encrypted; preloading still applies to them.

• Automatic in playlists: preloading and precaching re-trigger on next(), previous(), jumpTo(), and FastPixPlaylistStateChanged to keep the preload window ahead of the current position. Works with token-protected streams, custom domains, and playlist-based playback.

• Default hosts moved to fastpix.com: the HLS playback (stream.fastpix.com), DRM license and certificate (api.fastpix.com), and spritesheet/poster (images.fastpix.com) defaults migrated from .io. If you rely on the defaults, upgrading is enough; the .io hosts still work but are slated for deprecation.

• Stability: a code-standardization pass across the SDK and an updated iOS Data Core dependency.