iPhone How to Set Frame Rate and Slow Down AVCapture didOutputSampleBuffer Delegate

Question

I want to slow down the frame rate of the video device on an iPhone 4S so that the didOutputSampleBuffer delegate is called less frequently. This is to improve performance since I process each frame and need a large frame for the detail.

I tried to use the following to do so when I setup my AVSession:

AVCaptureConnection *conn = [self.output connectionWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeVideo];
[conn setVideoMinFrameDuration:CMTimeMake(1, CAPTURE_FRAMES_PER_SECOND)];
[conn setVideoMaxFrameDuration:CMTimeMake(1, CAPTURE_FRAMES_PER_SECOND)];

But this has no effect, I can change CAPTURE_FRAMES_PER_SECOND from 1 to 60 and see no difference in performance or slowing down of the video capture. Why does this have no effect? How can I slow down the capture frame rate for the video device?

I set up my Session with the following code:

// Define the devices and the session and the settings
self.session = [[AVCaptureSession alloc] init];

//self.session.sessionPreset = AVCaptureSessionPresetPhoto;
//self.session.sessionPreset = AVCaptureSessionPresetHigh;
self.session.sessionPreset = AVCaptureSessionPreset1280x720;

self.device = [AVCaptureDevice defaultDeviceWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeVideo];
self.input = [AVCaptureDeviceInput deviceInputWithDevice:self.device error:nil];

// Add the video frame output
self.output = [[AVCaptureVideoDataOutput alloc] init];
[self.output setAlwaysDiscardsLateVideoFrames:YES];
self.output.videoSettings = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:[NSNumber numberWithInt:kCVPixelFormatType_32BGRA]
                                                        forKey:(id)kCVPixelBufferPixelFormatTypeKey];

// A dispatch queue to get frames
dispatch_queue_t queue;
queue = dispatch_queue_create("frame_queue", NULL);

// Setup the frame rate    
AVCaptureConnection *conn = [self.output connectionWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeVideo];
[conn setVideoMinFrameDuration:CMTimeMake(1, CAPTURE_FRAMES_PER_SECOND)];
[conn setVideoMaxFrameDuration:CMTimeMake(1, CAPTURE_FRAMES_PER_SECOND)];

// Setup input and output and set the delegate to self
[self.output setSampleBufferDelegate:self queue:queue];
[self.session addInput:self.input];
[self.session addOutput:self.output];

// Start the session
[self.session startRunning];

I capture the frames using the "didOutputSampleBuffer" delegate implementation below:

// The delegate method where we get our image data frames from
- (void)captureOutput:(AVCaptureOutput *)captureOutput
didOutputSampleBuffer:(CMSampleBufferRef)sampleBuffer
       fromConnection:(AVCaptureConnection *)connection
{

    // Extract a UImage
    CVPixelBufferRef pixel_buffer = CMSampleBufferGetImageBuffer(sampleBuffer);
    CIImage *ciImage = [CIImage imageWithCVPixelBuffer:pixel_buffer];

    // Capture the image
    CGImageRef ref = [self.context createCGImage:ciImage fromRect:ciImage.extent];

    // This sets the captured image orientation correctly
    UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:ref scale:1.0 orientation:UIImageOrientationLeft];

    // Release the CGImage
    CGImageRelease(ref);

    // Update the UI on the main thread but throttle the processing
    [self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(updateUIWithCapturedImageAndProcessWithImage:) withObject:image waitUntilDone:YES];

}

Answer 1

I am not sure what iOS you are running, but bracket your code like this:

AVCaptureConnection *conn = [self.output connectionWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeVideo];
if ([conn isVideoMaxFrameDurationSupported] && [conn isVideoMinFrameDurationSupported])
{
  [conn setVideoMinFrameDuration:CMTimeMake(1, CAPTURE_FRAMES_PER_SECOND)];
  [conn setVideoMaxFrameDuration:CMTimeMake(1, CAPTURE_FRAMES_PER_SECOND)];
}

else
  NSLog(@"Setting Max and/or Min frame duration is unsupported";

Then go from there. I suspect it is unsupported on your iOS.