UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera crashes in IPHONE Simulator? - iphone

Is it a known issue that if you try to test your UIImagePickerController using the Camera as a source type then the simulator will crash?
I have the following code:
self.imgPicker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];
self.imgPicker.allowsEditing = NO;
self.imgPicker.delegate = self;
[self.imgPicker setSourceType:UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera];
[self presentModalViewController:self.imgPicker animated:YES];
[imgPicker release];
Running this in simulator, I get an objc-exception-throw error on the stack # -[UIImagePickerController setSourceType:].
Now if I set the source type to the Photo Library though, everything runs smoothly and fine? What's the deal?

Simulator doesn't have the camera and can't simulate to take a picture (it would have been nice to use the isight but Apple has not been so kindly). However Your code is not safe because, for example, old ipod touch doesn't have a camera and in this case your app will crash on this device.
As Apple suggest in UIImagePickerController documentation:
To use an image picker controller
containing its default controls,
perform these steps:
1.Verify that the device is capable of picking content from the
desired source. Do this calling the
isSourceTypeAvailable: class method,
providing a constant from the
“UIImagePickerControllerSourceType”
enum.
2.Check which media types are available, for the source type you’re
using, by calling the
availableMediaTypesForSourceType:
class method. This lets you
distinguish between a camera that can
be used for video recording and one
that can be used only for still
images.
3.Tell the image picker controller to adjust the UI according to the
media types you want to make
available—still images, movies, or
both—by setting the mediaTypes
property.
4.Present the user interface by calling the
presentModalViewController:animated:
method of the currently active view
controller, passing your configured
image picker controller as the new
view controller.
5.When the user taps a button to pick a newly-captured or saved image
or movie, or cancels the operation,
dismiss the image picker using your
delegate object. For newly-captured
media, your delegate can then save it
to the Camera Roll on the device. For
previously-saved media, your delegate
can then use the image data according
to the purpose of your app.
So you have to call isSourceTypeAvailable and set your sourceType consistently.

Related

UIImagePickerController CameraDevice picks wrong device every other time (using ARC)

My app takes a video (using a custom overlay, in case that's relevant) where I have the cameraDevice set to front facing camera. 3 videos need to be taken, though the cameraDevice alternates between front and rear each time the UIImpagePickerController is called to take the video. On each occasion the
picker.cameraDevice = UIImagePickerControllerCameraDeviceFront;
is used within the code, though as mentioned the app ignores this command every other time.
I see this problem has been asked before, though I am using ARC so the previously suggested solutions of releasing the UIImagePickerController is not an option for me.
Thanks in advance, Jim.
You cannot release the picker in ARC but you can still create a brand new one like this:
picker = nil;
picker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];
// configure picker
Notice that in Apple's sample code "Using UIImagePickerController to Select Pictures and Take Photos" they call a method each time which does exactly this.

MPMoviePlayerController dismisses my UIImagePickerController

I have an iPhone app where I load an UIImagePickerController onto a UIViewController. I then have a custom view on top of the camera. Now when the user takes a photo it is loaded onto a UIImageView which presents it to the user asking if you want to use that photo or take another (removing the image from the UIImageView). This works perfectly.
Now If the user has just recorded a video I wanted to take a snapshot preview somewhere in the video and present it as a static image in the same UIImageView. I do this with the following code:
MPMoviePlayerController *videoPlayer = [[MPMoviePlayerController alloc] init];
videoPlayer.shouldAutoplay = NO;
[videoPlayer setContentURL:[info valueForKey:UIImagePickerControllerMediaURL]];
UIImage *videoScreenShot = [videoPlayer thumbnailImageAtTime:(videoPlayer.duration/2.0) timeOption:MPMovieTimeOptionNearestKeyFrame];
photoPreview.image = videoScreenShot;
[videoPlayer release]
This works as intended. The problem is if I want to take another video. When I call:
[videoPlayer setContentURL:[info valueForKey:UIImagePickerControllerMediaURL]];
The camera shutter closes and the camera is seemingly dismissed. Trying to take a picture or recording video gives me:
UIImagePickerController: ignoring request to take picture; camera is not yet ready.
UIImagePickerController: ignoring request to start video capture; camera is not yet ready.
I've tried calling the following after, which has no effect:
myImagePicker.mediaTypes = [UIImagePickerController availableMediaTypesForSourceType: UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera];
[myImagePicker setSourceType:UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera];
I tried adding the UIImagePickerController to the UIIViewController again, which caused some fantastic freeze-ups.
Finally I tried commenting out the UIViewController's [super didReceivedMemoryWarning] line of didReceivedMemoryWarning. Which also had no effect.
I'm guessing MPMoviePlayerController takes over something UIImagePicker also needs. How do I give it back?
I would suggest setting your MPMoviePlayerController to nil before showing the UIImagePickerController, or maybe taking its view out of the interface temporarily. Both of these contain a movie player view, but there can be only one movie player view at a time in your application's interface. Thus they can interfere with each other, and that might be what's happening to you.

How to use UIImagePickerController properly on the iPad?

From the documentation of UIImagePickerController:
On iPad, present the user interface using a popover. Doing so is valid
only if the sourceType property of the image picker controller is set
to UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera.
So what they say is:
On iPad I MUST use a UIPopoverController to display the image picker.
But at the same time, it is limited to UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera
How about the other source types such as UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary or UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeSavedPhotosAlbum?
In my case I want the user to choose from his photo library and not take a picture with the camera.
Is there a way to use UIImagePickerController to pick photos from a library on the iPad?
I suspect that documention has a typo in it. I've successfully used UIImagePickerController with other sourceTypes on iPad - just had to make sure it was in a UIPopoverController.

iPhone camera can't open from landscape application

I am creating a landscape only application using sdk 3.0 that uses mapkit. I need to use iphone camera in my application. But I am getting following warning when I try to open camera.
"Can't perform full-screen transition. The fromViewController's view must be within a view that occupies the full screen."
The view from which I am calling camera method is mapview with size of 480*320. I have written following code to call camera:
UIImagePickerController *picker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc]init];
picker.delegate = self;
picker.sourceType=UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera;
[self presentModalViewController: picker animated:YES];
[picker release];
After that I have written the usual method :
-(void)imagePickerController : (UIImagePickerController *)picker didFinishPickingImage : (UIImage *)image editingInfo : (NSDictionary *)editingInfo
But this is never called , since camera is never opened. So my question is what am I missing here...? I am testing this app on actual iphone device , not on simulator. I have used this code in another app and it works fine. But here, it simply doesnt work! Plz help if you have any idea about this..
it sounds like the warning is telling you the problem: the parent view you're passing in to presentModalViewController needs to be a full-screen view. So instead of using "self" in this code you need to use something else, like the parent view controller.
now, you're going to have another problem, because the camera controller doesn't like landscape mode, so you may have to switch back to portrait mode before showing it....
just replace "self" with the parent ViewController which is probably declared in you appDelegate.

iPhone: taking a picture programmatically

I'm trying to use the UIImagePickerController interface from OS 3.1, with the cameraOverlayView and takePicture, but I've clearly failed to understand how this works, and so I'm not getting the behaviour I want.
What I want to do is open the camera and take a picture automatically without having to having the user interact with the picker or edit the image. So I subclass UIImagePickerController (similar to the example in http://github.com/pmark/Helpful-iPhone-Utilities/tree/master/BTL%20Utilities/) and turn off all of the controls:
- (void)displayModalWithController:(UIViewController*)controller animated:(BOOL)animated {
self.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera;
self.showsCameraControls = NO;
self.navigationBarHidden = YES;
self.toolbarHidden = YES;
// Setting the overlay view up programmatically.
ipView = [[ImagePickerView alloc] init];
self.cameraOverlayView = ipView;
[controller presentModalViewController:self animated:NO];
}
In the overlayView, I've managed to force the takePicture method of UIImagePickerController to fire (I know this, because I can NSLog it, and I hear the sound of the camera taking a picture). The overlayView shows up just fine. However, the delegate method didFinishPickingMediaWithInfo: never gets called, and imagePickerControllerDidCancel doesn't get called either.
So, how do I either get the delegate methods to get called, or save the picture by overriding the takePicture method? (I have no idea how to capture the picture data here, and Google seems to have failed me). I can't help feeling that I've failed to understand how the guts of UIImagePickerController works, but the docs aren't overly helpful:
e.g.:
"You can provide a custom overlay view to display a custom picture-taking interface and you can initiate the taking of pictures from your code. Your custom overlay view can be displayed in addition to, or instead of, the default controls provided by the image picker interface."
or from showCameraControls:
"If you set this property to NO and provide your own custom controls, you can take multiple pictures before dismissing the image picker interface." - How do I dismiss the picker interface?
Note: the delegate is set properly in IB, so that's not the problem.
Thanks for any help you can provide!
I've found that you just have to wait "long enough" before calling takePicture, or it just silently fails. I don't have a good answer for how to determine the minimum value of "long enough" that will always work, but if you set a timer and wait five or ten seconds you should be okay. It would be nice if it returned some kind of an "I'm not ready to take a picture yet, sorry" error either directly from takePicture or through the delegate, but as far as I know it doesn't.
As an update to my own question: It turns out that I was trying to use takePicture too early. When I moved the action to a button on the overlay and sent takePicture from that button (once the picker was presented modally), the delegate methods fired as they should. I don't know if what I wanted is achievable - taking the image without having to press that button, automatically - but if it is, it will probably have to be done by sending takePicture sometime after I was trying to use it.
-(void)imageMethod:(id)sender{
imagePickerController = [[UIImagePickerController alloc]init];
imagePickerController.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypePhotoLibrary;
imagePopover=[[UIPopoverController alloc]initWithContentViewController:imagePickerController];
[imagePopover presentPopoverFromRect:importButton.frame inView:self.view permittedArrowDirections:UIPopoverArrowDirectionLeft animated:YES];
}