New classes for media sample introspection and loading: AVSampleCursor and AVSampleBufferGenerator

AVAssetTrack *assetTrack = <#An AVAssetTrack#>;

if (assetTrack.canProvideSampleCursors)

{

    // Create an instance of AVSampleCursor and position it at the receiver's

    // first media sample in decode order.

    AVSampleCursor *cursor = [assetTrack makeSampleCursorAtFirstSampleInDecodeOrder];

    // Do something interesting with the AVSampleCursor

}

AVAssetTrack *assetTrack = <#An AVAssetTrack#>;

if (assetTrack.canProvideSampleCursors)

{

    CMTime presentationTimeStamp = <#A time stamp#>;

    // Create an instance of AVSampleCursor and position it at the specified time stamp

    AVSampleCursor *cursor =

        [assetTrack makeSampleCursorWithPresentationTimeStamp:presentationTimeStamp];

    // Do something interesting with the AVSampleCursor

}

// Create a AVSampleBufferRequest object from an AVSampleCursor.

AVSampleCursor *cursor = <#An AVSampleCursor#>;

AVSampleBufferRequest *sampleBufferRequest =

    [[AVSampleBufferRequest alloc] initWithStartCursor:cursor];

if (sampleBufferRequest)

{

    // Configure the AVSampleBufferRequest

    // See AVSampleBufferGenerator.h for more information

    sampleBufferRequest.direction = AVSampleBufferRequestDirectionForward;

    // Do something interesting with the AVSampleBufferRequest

}

AVSampleBufferRequest *sampleBufferRequest = <#An AVSampleBufferRequest for the AVAsset#>;

AVAsset *asset = <#The AVAsset#>;

AVSampleBufferGenerator *generator =

    [[AVSampleBufferGenerator alloc] initWithAsset:asset timebase:NULL];

if (generator)

{

    CMSampleBufferRef samplebuffer =

        [generator createSampleBufferForRequest:sampleBufferRequest];

    // Do something interesting with sample buffer.

    // For example:

    // CMItemCount itemCount = CMSampleBufferGetNumSamples(samplebuffer);

    // etc.

    // See CMSampleBufferRef.h

    CFRelease(samplebuffer);

}

URL Reference movie support

In OS X Yosemite, AV Foundation supports reference movies, where the movie file may not actually contain the movie's sample data.  Such movie files contain relative or absolute URLs to other files where sample data is stored.  URL reference movies may be played via AVPlayer.  

A new AVAssetReaderOutput subclass, AVAssetReaderSampleReferenceOutput, lets you read CMSampleBuffer's which contain the absolute URL and offset in place of the sample data.  To create an AVAssetReaderSampleReferenceOutput object, you supply the asset track for which which the resulting AVAssetReaderSampleReferenceOutput should provide sample references. The track must be one of the tracks contained by the target AVAssetReader's asset.

Clients can extract information about the location (file URL and offset) of samples in a track by adding an instance of AVAssetReaderSampleReferenceOutput to an AVAssetReader using the AVAssetReader addOutput method as shown in Listing 5.

Listing 5  Creating an AVAssetReaderSampleReferenceOutput object and adding it as an AVAssetReader output.

AVAssetReader *assetReader = <#an asset reader#>;

AVAssetTrack *aTrack = <#an asset track contained by the asset reader's asset#>;

AVAssetReaderSampleReferenceOutput *sampleRefOutput =

    [AVAssetReaderSampleReferenceOutput assetReaderSampleReferenceOutputWithTrack: aTrack];

// Add AVAssetReaderSampleReferenceOutput to the AVAssetReader

[assetReader addOutput: sampleRefOutput];

No actual sample data can be extracted using the AVAssetReaderSampleReferenceOutput class. The location of the sample data is described by the kCMSampleBufferAttachmentKey_SampleReferenceURL and kCMSampleBufferAttachmentKey_SampleReferenceByteOffset attachments on the extracted sample buffer. Use the CMGetAttachment API to get these attachments from the sample buffer. Listing 6 shows an example.

Listing 6  Get the kCMSampleBufferAttachmentKey_SampleReferenceURL, kCMSampleBufferAttachmentKey_SampleReferenceByteOffset attachments from a sample buffer.

CMSampleBufferRef sampleBuffer = <#a sample buffer#>;

CMAttachmentMode attachmentMode;

CFURLRef url = CMGetAttachment(sampleBuffer, kCMSampleBufferAttachmentKey_SampleReferenceURL, &attachmentMode);

if (url)

{

    // Do something interesting with the URL.

}

CFNumberRef byteoffset = CMGetAttachment(sampleBuffer, kCMSampleBufferAttachmentKey_SampleReferenceByteOffset, &attachmentMode);

if (byteoffset)

{

    // Do something interesting with the byte offset.

}

More information about sample buffers describing sample references can be found in the CMSampleBuffer documentation. CMSampleBuffer's constructed in this manner may be provided to AVAssetWriterInput to write sample references to new movie files.  

A new AVAssetWriterInput property, sampleReferenceBaseURL, lets you specify a base URL that the sample reference URLs should be rewritten to be relative to. If the value of this property can be resolved as an absolute URL, the sample locations written to the file when appending sample references will be relative to this URL. The URL must point to a location that is in a directory that is a parent of the sample reference location. For example, setting the sampleReferenceBaseURL property to "file:///User/johnappleseed/Movies/" and appending sample buffers with the kCMSampleBufferAttachmentKey_SampleReferenceURL attachment set to "file:///User/johnappleseed/Movies/data/movie1.mov" will cause the sample reference "data/movie1.mov" to be written to the movie.

See AVAssetReaderOutput.h, AVAssetWriterInput.h and CMSampleBuffer.h for more information.

Fragmented movie support

AVFoundation's AVCaptureMovieFileOutput and AVAssetWriter APIs support writing fragmented movie files. Such files have a regular movie header near the beginning that describes some initial period of media data, followed by "fragments" consisting of a period of media data and then a "movie fragment" describing that additional data.  This approach provides crash-resilience, since even if file writing stops abruptly, only the most recent fragment can be lost.  

A new AVAsset subclass, AVFragmentedMovie, is aware of the presence of movie fragments, and a companion class, AVFragmentedMovieMinder, can be used to request that AVFoundation periodically examine the movie file to see if more movie fragments have been appended.  If they have, they are incorporated into the AVAsset and the newly added media data can immediately be played without needing to close and reopen the AVAsset. See AVMovie.h for additional information.

To enable writing of fragmented movie files using AVCaptureMovieFileOutput or AVAssetWriter, specify a time to elapse between writing movie fragments value for the movieFragmentInterval property on these classes (the default value is kCMTimeInvalid, which means that movie fragments should not be used).

In OS X Yosemite, QuickTime Player X uses these new services, so if you open a fragmented movie file while it is being captured by another process or computer, you will see its duration periodically increase, and you can scrub into and play portions of the movie that had not yet been captured when you first opened it.

DV Stream File Format Support

Support for playback of DV stream files is now directly integrated into the AVFoundation/CoreMedia workflow on OS X Yosemite.

Uncompressed Movie Support

Uncompressed movie formats now supported on OS X Yosemite include:

• R10k

• v210

• 2vuy