Creating IOSurface-backed CVPixelBuffers for accessing video data in OpenGL ES

Q:  Why is CVOpenGLESTextureCacheCreateTextureFromImage() returning an error of -6683?

A: The reason CVOpenGLESTextureCacheCreateTextureFromImage() is returning the kCVReturnPixelBufferNotOpenGLCompatible (-6683) error is that the source pixel buffer is not IOSurface-backed.

To create a CVOpenGLESTexture object successfully, the pixel buffer passed to CVOpenGLESTextureCacheCreateTextureFromImage() must be backed by an IOSurface. To do that, you must specify kCVPixelBufferIOSurfacePropertiesKey in the pixelBufferAttributes dictionary when creating the pixel buffer using CVPixelBufferCreate(). See Listing 1 for an example:

Listing 1  Creating an IOSurface-backed CVPixelBuffer with CVPixelBufferCreate()

NSDictionary *pixelBufferAttributes = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:

    [NSDictionary dictionary], (id)kCVPixelBufferIOSurfacePropertiesKey,

    nil];

// you may add other keys as appropriate, e.g. kCVPixelBufferPixelFormatTypeKey, kCVPixelBufferWidthKey, kCVPixelBufferHeightKey, etc.

CVPixelBufferRef pixelBuffer;

CVPixelBufferCreate(... (CFDictionaryRef)pixelBufferAttributes,  &pixelBuffer);

Alternatively, you can make IOSurface-backed CVPixelBuffers using CVPixelBufferPoolCreatePixelBuffer() from an existing pixel buffer pool, if the pixelBufferAttributes dictionary provided to CVPixelBufferPoolCreate() includes kCVPixelBufferIOSurfacePropertiesKey.

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