CGBitmapContextRef can only paint into something like 32ARGB, correct. This means that you will want to create ARGB (or RGBA) buffers, and then find a way to very quickly transfer YUV pixels onto this ARGB surface. This recipe includes using CoreImage, a home-made CVPixelBufferRef through a pool, a CGBitmapContextRef referencing your home made pixel buffer, and then recreating a CMSampleBufferRef resembling your input buffer, but referencing your output pixels. In other words,
- Fetch the incoming pixels into a
CIImage.
- Create a
CVPixelBufferPool with the pixel format and output dimensions you are creating. You don't want to create CVPixelBuffers without a pool in real time: you will run out of memory if your producer is too fast; you'll fragment your RAM as you won't be reusing buffers; and it's a waste of cycles.
- Create a
CIContext with the default constructor that you'll share between buffers. It contains no external state, but documentation says that recreating it on every frame is very expensive.
- On incoming frame, create a new pixel buffer. Make sure to use an allocation threshold so you don't get runaway RAM usage.
- Lock the pixel buffer
- Create a bitmap context referencing the bytes in the pixel buffer
- Use CIContext to render the planar image data into the linear buffer
- Perform your app-specific drawing in the CGContext!
- Unlock the pixel buffer
- Fetch the timing info of the original sample buffer
- Create a
CMVideoFormatDescriptionRef by asking the pixel buffer for its exact format
- Create a sample buffer for the pixel buffer. Done!
Here's a sample implementation, where I have chosen 32ARGB as the image format to work with, as that's something that both CGBitmapContext and CoreVideo enjoys working with on iOS:
{
CGPixelBufferPoolRef *_pool;
CGSize _poolBufferDimensions;
}
- (void)_processSampleBuffer:(CMSampleBufferRef)inputBuffer
{
// 1. Input data
CVPixelBufferRef inputPixels = CMSampleBufferGetImageBuffer(inputBuffer);
CIImage *inputImage = [CIImage imageWithCVPixelBuffer:inputPixels];
// 2. Create a new pool if the old pool doesn't have the right format.
CGSize bufferDimensions = {CVPixelBufferGetWidth(inputPixels), CVPixelBufferGetHeight(inputPixels)};
if(!_pool || !CGSizeEqualToSize(bufferDimensions, _poolBufferDimensions)) {
if(_pool) {
CFRelease(_pool);
}
OSStatus ok0 = CVPixelBufferPoolCreate(NULL,
NULL, // pool attrs
(__bridge CFDictionaryRef)(@{
(id)kCVPixelBufferPixelFormatTypeKey: @(kCVPixelFormatType_32ARGB),
(id)kCVPixelBufferWidthKey: @(bufferDimensions.width),
(id)kCVPixelBufferHeightKey: @(bufferDimensions.height),
}), // buffer attrs
&_pool
);
_poolBufferDimensions = bufferDimensions;
assert(ok0 == noErr);
}
// 4. Create pixel buffer
CVPixelBufferRef outputPixels;
OSStatus ok1 = CVPixelBufferPoolCreatePixelBufferWithAuxAttributes(NULL,
_pool,
(__bridge CFDictionaryRef)@{
// Opt to fail buffer creation in case of slow buffer consumption
// rather than to exhaust all memory.
(__bridge id)kCVPixelBufferPoolAllocationThresholdKey: @20
}, // aux attributes
&outputPixels
);
if(ok1 == kCVReturnWouldExceedAllocationThreshold) {
// Dropping frame because consumer is too slow
return;
}
assert(ok1 == noErr);
// 5, 6. Graphics context to draw in
CGColorSpaceRef deviceColors = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
OSStatus ok2 = CVPixelBufferLockBaseAddress(outputPixels, 0);
assert(ok2 == noErr);
CGContextRef cg = CGBitmapContextCreate(
CVPixelBufferGetBaseAddress(outputPixels), // bytes
CVPixelBufferGetWidth(inputPixels), CVPixelBufferGetHeight(inputPixels), // dimensions
8, // bits per component
CVPixelBufferGetBytesPerRow(outputPixels), // bytes per row
deviceColors, // color space
kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst // bitmap info
);
CFRelease(deviceColors);
assert(cg != NULL);
// 7
[_imageContext render:inputImage toCVPixelBuffer:outputPixels];
// 8. DRAW
CGContextSetRGBFillColor(cg, 0.5, 0, 0, 1);
CGContextSetTextDrawingMode(cg, kCGTextFill);
NSAttributedString *text = [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:@"Hello world" attributes:NULL];
CTLineRef line = CTLineCreateWithAttributedString((__bridge CFAttributedStringRef)text);
CTLineDraw(line, cg);
CFRelease(line);
// 9. Unlock and stop drawing
CFRelease(cg);
CVPixelBufferUnlockBaseAddress(outputPixels, 0);
// 10. Timings
CMSampleTimingInfo timingInfo;
OSStatus ok4 = CMSampleBufferGetSampleTimingInfo(inputBuffer, 0, &timingInfo);
assert(ok4 == noErr);
// 11. VIdeo format
CMVideoFormatDescriptionRef videoFormat;
OSStatus ok5 = CMVideoFormatDescriptionCreateForImageBuffer(NULL, outputPixels, &videoFormat);
assert(ok5 == noErr);
// 12. Output sample buffer
CMSampleBufferRef outputBuffer;
OSStatus ok3 = CMSampleBufferCreateForImageBuffer(NULL, // allocator
outputPixels, // image buffer
YES, // data ready
NULL, // make ready callback
NULL, // make ready refcon
videoFormat,
&timingInfo, // timing info
&outputBuffer // out
);
assert(ok3 == noErr);
[_consumer consumeSampleBuffer:outputBuffer];
CFRelease(outputPixels);
CFRelease(videoFormat);
CFRelease(outputBuffer);
}
