AVCaptureSession, multiple AVCaptureAudioDataOutputs - iphone

Enviroment
iphone
arm7/sdk6.0
xcode 4.5
Use-case
Based on the AVCam sample
Capture A/V into a file using AVCaptureMovieFileOutput
Add an additional AVCaptureAudioDataOutput to intercept the audio being written to the file while recording
How-to
Add Video input to the Capture session
Add Audio input to the Capture session
Add File Output to the Capture session
Add Audio Output to the Capture session
Configure
Start recording
The problem
It seems the audio output is mutual exclusive, thus, either I get data being written to the disk, OR, I get AVCaptureAudioDataOutput capture delegate being called, when AVCaptureMovieFileOutput is added ( order doesn't matter ), AVCaptureAudioDataOutput delegate is not called.
How can this be solved? how can I get 'AVCaptureAudioDataOutput' triggering it's delegate/selector while, at the same time 'AVCaptureMovieFileOutput' is used to write data to the disk?
Can this be done in any way other way than using a lower level API such as eg. AVAssetWriter et al ?
Any help will be appreciated!

AVAssetWriter is to be used in conjunction with AVAssetWriterInputPixelBufferAdaptor, a good example of how this can be achieved can be found here.
Then, upon 'AVCaptureAudioDataOutputSampleBufferDelegate' invocation, the raw audio buffer can be propagated out for further processing ( in parallel to having the data written to the disk ).

Related

Understanding the role of time in a AVCaptureSession regarding CMSampleBuffers

I recently started programming in Swift as I am trying to work out an iOS camera app idea I've had. The main goal of the project is to save the prior 10 seconds of video before the record button is tapped. So the app is actually always capturing and storing frames, but also discarding the frames that are more than 10 seconds old if the app is not 'recording'.
My approach is to output video and audio data from the AVCaptureSession using respectively AVCaptureVideoDataOutput() and AVCaptureAudioDataOutput(). Using captureOutput() I receive a CMSampleBuffer for both video and audio, who I store in different arrays. I would like those arrays to later serve as an input for the AVAssetWriter.
This is the point where I'm not sure about the role of time and timing regarding the sample buffers and the capture session in general, because in order to present the sample buffers to the AVAssetWriter as an input (I believe) I need to make sure my video and audio data are the same length (duration wise) and synchronized.
I currently need to figure out at what rate the capture session is running, or how I can set that rate. Ideally I would have one audioSampleBuffer for each videoSampleBuffer, representing both the exact same duration. I don't know what realistic values are, but in the end my goal is to output 60fps, so it would be perfect if the videoSampleBuffer would contain 1 frame and the audioSampleBuffer would represent 1/60th of a second. I then could easily append the newest sample buffers to the arrays and drop the oldest.
I've of course done some research regarding my problem, but wasn't able to find what I was looking for.
My initial thought was I had to let the capture session run at some sort of set timescale, but didn't see such an option in the AVFoundation documentation. I then looked into Core Media if there was some way to set the clock the capture session was using, but couldn't find a way to say to the session to use a different CMClock (with properties I know), so I gave up this route. I still wasn't sure about the internal mechanics and timing of the capture session, so I tried to find more information about it, but without much luck. I've also stumbled on the synchronizationClock property of AVCaptureSession, but I couldn't find out how to implement this or find an example.
To this point my best guess is that with every step in time (represented by a timestamp) a new sample buffer for both video and audio is created. Which would be a good thing. But I've a feeling this is just wishful thinking and then would still not know what duration the buffers would represent.
Could anyone help me in the right direction, helping me to understand how time works in a capture session and how to get or set the duration of sample buffers?

Audio Input and Output in same iOS App

Okay so I am creating simple objects to later be used for audio input and output. Both objects work independently just fine, but when I try to use them in the same application, they clash and the audio input object gets blocked out by the output object.
The output object is using AudioUnitSessions to pass samples into a buffer and play audio, while the input object is using AudioQueue to feed in samples from the microphone, which we can later process.
I think the solution is as simple as deactivating the AudioUnitSession, but this does not seem to be working. I am doing this the following way
AudioSessionSetActive(true) or AudioSessionSetActive(false)
above depends on whether I am trying to activate it or not.
Apparently this does not work because whenever I try to recreate the input object, it fails to initialize the recording with OSStatus error number -50.
Does anyone know of a way around this, or a simple way of audio input and output in the same application.

Waveform representation of any audio in iPhone

I have to draw a waveform for an audio file (CMK.mp3) in my application.
For this I have tried this Solution
As this solution is using AVAssetreader, which is taking two much time to display the waveform.
Can anyone please help, is there any other way to display the waveform quickly?
Thanks
AVAssetReader is the only way to read an AVAsset so there is no way around that. You will want to tune the code to process it without incurring unwanted overhead. I have not tried that code yet but I intend on using it to build a sample project to share on GitHub once I have the time, hopefully soon.
My approach to tune it will be to do the following:
Eliminate all Objective-C method calls and use C only instead
Move all work to a secondary queue off the main queue and use a block to call back one finished
One obstacle with rendering a waveform is you cannot have more than one AVAssetReader running at a time, at least the last time I tried. (It may have changed with iOS 6 possibly) A new reader cancels the other and that interrupts playback, so you need to do your work in sequence. I do that with queues.
In an audio app that I built it reads the CMSampleBufferRef into a CMBufferQueueRef which can hold multiple sample buffers. (see copyNextSampleBuffer on AVAssetReader) You can configure the queue to provide you with enough time to process a waveform after an AVAssetReader finishes reading an asset so that the current playback does not exhaust the contents of the CMBufferQueueRef before you start reading more buffers into it for the next track. That will be my approach when I attempt it. I just have to be careful that I do not use too much memory by making the buffer too big or making the buffer so big that it causes issues with playback. I just do not know how long it will take to process the waveform and I will test it on my older iPods and iPhone 4 before I try it on my iPhone 5 to see if they all perform well.
Be sure to stay as close to C as possible. Calls to Objective-C resources during this processing will incur potential thread switching and other run-time overhead costs which are significant enough to be noticeable. You will want to avoid that. What I may do is set up Key-Value Observing (KVO) to trigger the AVAssetReader to start the next task quickly so that I can maintain gapless playback between tracks.
Once I start my audio experiments I will put them on GitHub. I've created a repository where I will do this work. If you are interested you can "watch" that repo so you will know when I start committing updates to it.
https://github.com/brennanMKE/Audio

How can I monitor an mp3 live stream to detect corruption?

Once a month the mp3 streams messes up and the only way to tell it has messed up is by listening to it as it streams. Is there a script or program or tool I can use to monitor the live streams at a given url and send some kind of flag when it corrupts?
What happens is normally it plays a song for example or some music but once a month, every month, randomly, the stream corrupts and starts random chimpmunk like trash audio. Any ideas on this? I am just getting started at this with no idea at all.
Typically, this will happen when you play a track of the wrong sample rate.
Most (all that I've seen) SHOUTcast/Icecast encoders (going straight from files) will compress for MP3 just fine, but assume a fixed sample rate of whatever they are configured for. Typically this will be 44.1kHz. If you drop in a 48kHz track, or a 22.05kHz track, they will play at different speeds while causing all sorts of random issues with the stream.
The problem is easy enough to verify. Simply create a file of a different sample rate and test it. I suspect you will reproduce the problem. If that is the case, to my knowledge there is no way to detect it, since your stream isn't actually corrupt... it just sounds incorrect. You will have to scan all of your files for sample rate. FFMPEG in a script should be able to help you with that.
Now, if the problem actually is a corrupt MP3 stream, then you have problems on your encoding side. I suspect simply swapping out whatever DLL or module you're using with a recent stable version of LAME will help.
To detect a corrupt MP3 stream, your encoder must be using CRC. If you enable it, you should be able to read through the headers of each frame to find the CRC, and then run it on the audio data. In the event you get an error (or several frames with errors), you can then trigger a warning.
You can find information on the MP3 stream header here:
http://www.mp3-tech.org/programmer/frame_header.html

Core Audio - CARingBuffer to read an audio file for callback

Does anyone have a good example of using CARingBuffer to buffer a large audio file and how to read it in a callback?
Should it be reading the audio file in a secondary thread? How do I pause loading the audio file until the loaded buffers have been played (how do I pre-queue the audio file)? CAPlayThrough seems close but is only streaming audio from a microphone.
Thanks!
You can find an example that uses this ring buffer if you download the example code of the book Learning Core Audio here (under the downloads tab). Jump to the chapter 8 example in a folder called CH08_AUGraphInput.
However, if you are simply reading audio from a file, then using an (extra) ring buffer seems like an overkill.. A ring buffer comes in handy when you are having real time (or near real time) input and output (read chapter 8 in the said book for a more detailed explanation of when a ring buffer is necessary.. note that the example in chapter 8 is about playing audio immediately after recording it by a mic, which isn't what you want to do).
The reason why I said extra ring buffer, is because in core Audio there is already an audio Queue (which can be thought of as a ring buffer.. or at least it in your case it replaces the need for a ring buffer: you populate it with data, it plays the data, then fires a callback that informs you that the data you supplied has been played). The apple documentation offers a good explanation on this one.
In your case, if you are simply reading audio from a file, then you can easily control the throughput of the audio from the file. You can pause it by blocking the thread that reads data from the audio file for example.
For a simple example of what I'm talking about, see this example I created on github. For a more advanced example, see Matt Gallagher's famous example.
Generally for audio playback anything that can block or take an unbounded amount of time (in particular file or disk IO) should be done in a secondary thread. So you want to read the audio file's data in a producer thread, and consume the data in your IOProc or RemoteIO callback.
Synchronization becomes an issue with multiple threads, but if you have only one reader and one writer generally it isn't too hard. In fact, CARingBuffer is thread safe for this case.
The general flow should look like:
From the main thread:
Create the producer thread
Tell it which file to process
From the producer thread:
Open the specified file
Fill the empty space in the ring buffer with audio data
Wait until signaled or a timeout happens, and go back to #2
In your IOProc/callback:
Read data from the ring buffer
Signal the producer that more data is needed
Posting code to do this here would be much too long to read, but here are a few pointers to get you started. None of these are for the iPhone, but the principles are the same.
https://github.com/sbooth/SFBAudioEngine/blob/master/Player/AudioPlayer.cpp
http://www.snoize.com/