AVCaptureSession - Stop Running - take a long long time - iphone

Question

I use ZXing for an app, this is mainly the same code than the ZXing original code except that I allow to scan several time in a row (ie., the ZXingWidgetController is not necesseraly dismissed as soon as something is detected).
I experience a long long freeze (sometimes it never ends) when I press the dismiss button that call
- (void)cancelled {
// if (!self.isStatusBarHidden) {
// [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:NO];
// }
[self stopCapture];
wasCancelled = YES;
if (delegate != nil) {
[delegate zxingControllerDidCancel:self];
}
}
with
- (void)stopCapture {
decoding = NO;
#if HAS_AVFF
if([captureSession isRunning])[captureSession stopRunning];
AVCaptureInput* input = [captureSession.inputs objectAtIndex:0];
[captureSession removeInput:input];
AVCaptureVideoDataOutput* output = (AVCaptureVideoDataOutput*)[captureSession.outputs objectAtIndex:0];
[captureSession removeOutput:output];
[self.prevLayer removeFromSuperlayer];
/*
// heebee jeebees here ... is iOS still writing into the layer?
if (self.prevLayer) {
layer.session = nil;
AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer* layer = prevLayer;
[self.prevLayer retain];
dispatch_after(dispatch_time(DISPATCH_TIME_NOW, 12000000000), dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
[layer release];
});
}
*/
self.prevLayer = nil;
self.captureSession = nil;
#endif
}
(please notice that the dismissModalViewController that remove the view is within the delegate method)
I experience the freeze only while dismissing only if I made several scans in a row, and only with an iPhone 4 (no freeze with a 4S)
Any idea ?
Cheers
Rom

Answer 1

According to the AV Cam View Controller Example calling startRunning or stopRunning does not return until the session completes the requested operation. Since you are sending these messages to the session on the main thread, it freezes all the UI until the requested operation completes. What I would recommend is that you wrap your calls in an Asynchronous dispatch so that the view does not lock-up.
- (void)cancelled
{
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0), ^{
[self stopCapture];
});
//You might want to think about putting the following in another method
//and calling it when the stop capture method finishes
wasCancelled = YES;
if (delegate != nil) {
[delegate zxingControllerDidCancel:self];
}
}