Lag in output of AVCaptureSession - iphone

I am currently trying to implement a very simple UIView to replace the UIImagePickerController and am running into lag with the image being captured.
Here is the class I am currently using:
https://gist.github.com/963319
When I call snapPicture the delegate gets back the image with correct dimensions instantaneously from captureOutput:didOutputSampleBuffer but does not display the image for at least 3 seconds and sometimes takes up to 5 or 10 seconds. I have tried adding in the delegate setNeedsDisplay and setNeedsLayout. Does anyone have any idea what I might be doing wrong here or what might be causing this delay?

The docs of AVCaptureAudioDataOutput say "All delegate methods are called on the specified dispatch queue", so the answer below from Alex could well indicate the problem.
If you do something like this instead of the current delegate callback:
[delegate performSelectorOnMainThread:#selector(usePicture:) withObject:image waitUntilDone:NO];
The -usePicture: method then invokes the delegate with the new picture.
Works for me. Though only tested on iPhone 4 for now.
Regards,
Edwin

Do you switch to main thread/queue when updating the UI in camView:didCaptureImage:? Updating UI from threads other than main causes issues.

Related

Understanding setNeedsDisplay/drawRect with Blocks

I'm trying to understand how things work in regards to concurrent programming and calling setNeedsDisplay. I basically have Three objects.
Main View - container with different UIView objects, the main one being a UIScrollView
Small Map View - a small UIView that draws a miniature version of one of the other UIView items on screem
Processor - a delegate of the Main View that calculates what's on screen and calls the Main View back with what's in view.
So a simple use case of what's going on is the user touches the ScrollView and then the processor updates what's in view of the scrollView (like calculating coordinates, center point, etc) It does this using blocks and does it asynchronously. This then posts a notification to the MainView object.
When the MainView receives the notification, it just calls
[smallMap setNeedsDisplay]; // example 1
I put some logs around this call, and I do see it gets called right away. However, the drawRect: of this function does not get called right away. It gets called after 2 seconds or so.
I remember reading that setNeedsDisplay just marks the view for redraw to happen on the next event of the run loop.
But if I add this code instead:
// example 2
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
[smallMap setNeedsDisplay];
});
My view gets redrawn right away.
I guess I'm confused as to why I have to ask for the main event loop to call setNeedsDisplay to immediately redraw something. Like in example 1, by me calling setNeedsDisplay, is that done in the background or something and that's why it doesn't get redrawn right away? I'm trying to understand the difference in what's going on behind the scenes so I know what to look for the in future. Like should I have all my calls that need to be immediately redrawn in something similar to the example 2 block? Or is it because I'm processing my data asynchronously that I need to then ask for the main queue? Thanks!
My guess is 1 of 2 things:
Your code that is running on a separate thread is calling your MainView methods from the separate thread instead of using performSelectorOnMainThread or a GCD call that invokes the code on the main thread. Thus your call to setNeedsDisplay is actually taking place on a background thread, which is a no-no, as the other poster said.
The second possibility is that your MainView code is running on the main thread, but it gets busy doing time-consuming processing, or waiting for a synchronous call to another thread to finish, and doesn't service the event loop.
You can rule out the first possibility by setting a breakpoint on your call to setNeedsDisplay and looking at the call trace in the debugger to see what thread it's running from.
Figuring out the second possibility will take a little more work. You might need to delve into instruments.
setNeedsDisplay is a UIKIT API call and has to be called from the main thread of the application, also known as the UI thread. That's why calling it in a background thread doesn't have any immediate effect and scheduling it on the main queue has immediate effects.
See this related question https://stackoverflow.com/a/6988115/172690 for a more detailed answer.

Data on Screen does not update when updating from other thread in Iphone

I have a weired problem and i want some good solution.
Problem is that i have a method in my ViewController i.e.
-(void)updateMyInformation;
I also have one Seperate non-UIThread running in my application. Other than the Main Thread.
Now that thread after every 10 minutes calls my updateMyInformation method of my ViewController.
it calls it successfully. I am using NSNotification for that. but the problem is that its updating the information in my variables but does not update it on the view.
What can be the problem. can anybody help
Thanks
You need to update the UI on the main thread:
[self performSelectorOnMainThread:#selector(updateMyInformation) withObject:nil waitUntilDone:false];

performSelector vs direct call performance

Is there any significant difference in performance when you call
[someObject performSelector:#selector(testMethod:) withObject:anotherObject];
vs
[someObject testMethod:anotherObject];
?
The first causes an extra call to objc_msgSend() that isn't necessary in the second case.
The performance difference is unlikely to remotely matter unless you are calling said method as quickly as you possibly can many 10s of thousands of times and you aren't doing any significant work in testMethod:.
I.e. don't worry about it unless you measure an actual performance problem.
Interesting fact, performing a selector with a delay of 0 causes that method to be called at the top of the next run loop of the app. You can use that to delay certain events that occur frequently (used a lot in optimizations of UI, like images that get reloaded in a UIScrollView)
No there isn't any performance hit that I am aware of, and if there is any it is not significant.
I’ve come across an important difference when passing data to another view controller in prepareForSegue.
using:
[viewController performSelector:#selector(aMethod:) withObject:anObject];
aMethod is called AFTER viewDidLoad and viewWillAppear of the destination viewController.
using:
[viewController aMethod: anObject] ;
aMethod is called BEFORE viewDidLoad and viewWillAppear of the destination viewController.
So if you’re sending data important for the setup of the destination viewController, use the second way.
There is a lot difference in above both methods. I was trying to get animation of Two buttons coming from right side and stops at center but the second button was coming with 0.3 second delay. Now the main point comes here. I was using one animation method for both of 2 buttons. Now i wanted that when I click Finish button, then both buttons should go to left and again New buttons come. This was fine till reading.
Now when i was writing method for Finish button click. I was performing going out of buttons Animation first and then coming in buttons, but when I used the Above second method i.e. [someObject testMethod:anotherObject]; then what happens is I was not able to see the Going out Animation and directly coming in animation of buttons was shown.
Here actually comes the use of first method i.e. [someObject performSelector:#selector(testMethod:) withObject:anotherObject withDelay:delay];
The reason I found was when I click the Finish button the animation runs in different thread and the other code runs in different thread so the going out action was performed in another thread and coming in was performed in another thread. So first thread was not shown.
After using first method with Delay time of total animation. I achieved my goal. So both methods have their own significance.
For my experience,there are two differences:
The first one can add afterDelay:(CGFloat)seconds, and this is the only case I use the first one.
[someObject performSelector:#selector(testMethod:) withObject:anotherObject afterDelay:1.0];
The second one, you need to define it in someObject.h. Otherwise, you will get a compile warning.
The answer is that they are exactly the same.
There are two really good articles one from Mike Ash, where he explains the objc_msgSend():
http://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2012-11-16-lets-build-objc_msgsend.html
And an another one from Tom Dalling who is explaining that perform selector is calling objc_msgSend().
http://tomdalling.com/blog/cocoa/why-performselector-is-more-dangerous-than-i-thought/

UIActivityIndicatorView not displayed despite of threading

I've been trying to implement this for a long time and I have gotten no favorable results.
Say I have a method in the which an HTTP request is performed (specifically, a twitter update), and say I want to display a UIActivityIndicatorView while the HTTP request is in progress (I know when it is done because there are delegate methods that are called when the request is done, either with positive results or negative ones).
I've seen many answers that say that threading is necessary for the implementation of this class. At first I tried calling the startAnimating method in a different thread and the stopAnimating method directly (without starting a new thread). After that I saw how this guy does it and I thought this was safer as I was starting and stopping the indicator in two different methods (the delegate methods for the twitter update).
However, none of this two ways of doing this have given me the results I want (the activity indicator does not show up at all). Is there anything I'm missing?
Thank you in advance and I apologize if my question is too long.
Your help is very much appreciated.
Threading is absolutely forbidden when working with UIKit subclasses. You may have seen reports that UIActivityIndicatorView uses threading internally, but in no way does that mean you can access the object from multiple threads. All UIView subclasses (including UIActivityIndicatorView) must only be accessed from the main thread. This includes calling -startAnimating and -stopAnimating.
If you rewrite your code such that you're only ever accessing the activity view on the main thread, and it still isn't working, then I would guess that the view was either not added to a visible view, is covered up by another view, or has a frame that puts itself outside of the visible area of its superview.
You cannot perform UI stuff in a secondary thread.
You should perform your HTTP request in a secondary thread, while calling the activity view from the main thread.
I recommend using DSActivityView which is so much easier to use. Just 1 line to show an activity view, 1 line to hide.
MBProgressHUD it's also easy and shows and hides itself when the secondary thread has started/finished. Something like this:
[HUD showhileexecuting:"yourstuff" animated:YES]
"Yourstuff" will run on a separate thread.
You should not perform UI activities in a secondary thread.

iPhone app stop rotating after few touches or sometimes stop rotating at all, other times works just fine. Any idea where to look for the problem?

iPhone app stop rotating after few touches or sometimes stop rotating at all, other times works just fine. Any idea where to look for the problem?
My app is designed to support auto-rotate and works fine previously until I added some code that move JSOn data loading to another thread.
Are you trying to do the rotation through the other thread? If this is the case then the you must make those calls on the main thread. UIKit is not thread safe, anything not done on the main thread is not guaranteed. What you must do is call performSelectorOnMainTHread NSObject method in order to get the behavior that you are expecting
are you calling
[[UIDevice currentDevice] endGeneratingDeviceOrientationNotifications];
anywhere in your code? if not, I agree with the previous answer that you must just be confusing UIKit somehow.