Iphone – AVCapture appendSampleBuffer

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I am going insane with this one – have looked everywhere and tried anything and everything I can thinks of.

Am making an iPhone app that uses AVFoundation – specifically AVCapture to capture video using the iPhone camera.

I need to have a custom image that is overlayed on the video feed included in the recording.

So far I have the AVCapture session set up, can display the feed, access the frame, save it as a UIImage and marge the overlay Image onto it. Then convert this new UIImage into a CVPixelBufferRef. annnd to double check that the bufferRef is working I converted it back to a UIImage and it displays the image fine still.

The trouble starts when I try to convert the CVPixelBufferRef into a CMSampleBufferRef to append to the AVCaptureSessions assetWriterInput. The CMSampleBufferRef always returning NULL when I attempt to create it.

Here is the -(void)captureOutput function

- (void)captureOutput:(AVCaptureOutput *)captureOutput 
didOutputSampleBuffer:(CMSampleBufferRef)sampleBuffer 
    fromConnection:(AVCaptureConnection *)connection
{ 

 UIImage *botImage = [self imageFromSampleBuffer:sampleBuffer];
 UIImage *wheel = [self imageFromView:wheelView];

 UIImage *finalImage = [self overlaidImage:botImage :wheel];
 //[previewImage setImage:finalImage]; <- works -- the image is being merged into one UIImage

 CVPixelBufferRef pixelBuffer = NULL;
 CGImageRef cgImage = CGImageCreateCopy(finalImage.CGImage);
 CFDataRef image = CGDataProviderCopyData(CGImageGetDataProvider(cgImage));
 int status = CVPixelBufferCreateWithBytes(NULL,
             self.view.bounds.size.width,
             self.view.bounds.size.height,
             kCVPixelFormatType_32BGRA, 
             (void*)CFDataGetBytePtr(image), 
             CGImageGetBytesPerRow(cgImage), 
             NULL, 
             0,
             NULL, 
             &pixelBuffer);
 if(status == 0){
  OSStatus result = 0;

  CMVideoFormatDescriptionRef videoInfo = NULL;
  result = CMVideoFormatDescriptionCreateForImageBuffer(NULL, pixelBuffer, &videoInfo);
  NSParameterAssert(result == 0 && videoInfo != NULL);

  CMSampleBufferRef myBuffer = NULL;
  result = CMSampleBufferCreateForImageBuffer(kCFAllocatorDefault,
            pixelBuffer, true, NULL, NULL, videoInfo, NULL, &myBuffer);
  NSParameterAssert(result == 0 && myBuffer != NULL);//always null :S

  NSLog(@"Trying to append");

  if (!CMSampleBufferDataIsReady(myBuffer)){
   NSLog(@"sampleBuffer data is not ready");
   return;
  }

  if (![assetWriterInput isReadyForMoreMediaData]){
   NSLog(@"Not ready for data :(");
   return;
  }

  if (![assetWriterInput appendSampleBuffer:myBuffer]){   
   NSLog(@"Failed to append pixel buffer");
  }



 }

}

Another solution I keep hearing about is using a AVAssetWriterInputPixelBufferAdaptor which eliminates the need to do the messy CMSampleBufferRef wrapping. However I have scoured stacked and apple developer forums and docs and can't find a clear description or example on how to set this up or how to use it. If anyone has a working example of it could you please show me or help me nut out the above issue – have been working on this non-stop for a week and am at wits end.

Let me know if you need any other info

Thanks in advance,

Michael

Best Answer

You need AVAssetWriterInputPixelBufferAdaptor, here is the code to create it :

    // Create dictionary for pixel buffer adaptor
NSDictionary *bufferAttributes = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:[NSNumber numberWithInt:kCVPixelFormatType_32BGRA], kCVPixelBufferPixelFormatTypeKey, nil];

// Create pixel buffer adaptor
m_pixelsBufferAdaptor = [[AVAssetWriterInputPixelBufferAdaptor alloc] initWithAssetWriterInput:assetWriterInput sourcePixelBufferAttributes:bufferAttributes];

And the code to use it :

// If ready to have more media data
if (m_pixelsBufferAdaptor.assetWriterInput.readyForMoreMediaData) {
    // Create a pixel buffer
    CVPixelBufferRef pixelsBuffer = NULL;
    CVPixelBufferPoolCreatePixelBuffer(NULL, m_pixelsBufferAdaptor.pixelBufferPool, &pixelsBuffer);

    // Lock pixel buffer address
    CVPixelBufferLockBaseAddress(pixelsBuffer, 0);

    // Create your function to set your pixels data in the buffer (in your case, fill with your finalImage data)
    [self yourFunctionToPutDataInPixelBuffer:CVPixelBufferGetBaseAddress(pixelsBuffer)];

    // Unlock pixel buffer address
    CVPixelBufferUnlockBaseAddress(pixelsBuffer, 0);

    // Append pixel buffer (calculate currentFrameTime with your needing, the most simplest way is to have a frame time starting at 0 and increment each time you write a frame with the time of a frame (inverse of your framerate))
    [m_pixelsBufferAdaptor appendPixelBuffer:pixelsBuffer withPresentationTime:currentFrameTime];

    // Release pixel buffer
    CVPixelBufferRelease(pixelsBuffer);
}

And don't forget to release your pixelsBufferAdaptor.

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