AVAssetImageGenerator returns sometimes same image from 2 successive frames

Question

I\'m currently extracting every frame from a video with AVAssetImageGenerator, but sometimes it returns me successively 2 times almost the same image (they do not h

Answer 1

I was having the same issue of you, but much more evident, the duplication was happening when the interval between the two frames was under 1.0 second and I realised it was depending on the timescale I was using for generating CMTime values.

Before

CMTime requestTime = CMTimeMakeWithSeconds(imageTime, 1);

After

CMTime requestTime = CMTimeMakeWithSeconds(imageTime, playerItem.asset.duration.timescale);

... and Boom, no more duplication :)

So maybe you can try to increase, double perhaps, the timescale, using your code:

NSValue * time = [NSValue valueWithCMTime:CMTimeMakeWithSeconds(i*frameDuration, composition.frameDuration.timescale*2)]; // *2 at the end

For future references here is my code:

    playerItem = [AVPlayerItem playerItemWithURL:item.movieUrl];
    imageGenerator = [[AVAssetImageGenerator alloc] initWithAsset:playerItem.asset];
    imageGenerator.requestedTimeToleranceAfter = kCMTimeZero;
    imageGenerator.requestedTimeToleranceBefore = kCMTimeZero;

    float duration = item.duration;
    float interval = item.interval;

    NSLog(@"\nItem info:\n%f \n%f", duration,interval);

    NSString *srcPath = nil;
    NSString *zipPath = nil;

    srcPath = [item.path stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"info.json"];
    zipPath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"/%@/info.json",galleryID];

    [zip addFileToZip:srcPath newname:zipPath level:0];

    NSTimeInterval frameNum = item.duration / item.interval;
    for (int i=0; i<=frameNum; i++)
    {
        NSArray* cachePathArray = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSCachesDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
        NSString* cachePath = [cachePathArray lastObject];

        srcPath = [cachePath stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"export-tmp.jpg"];
        zipPath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"/%@/%d.jpg",galleryID,i];

        float imageTime = ( i * interval );

        NSError *error = nil;
        CMTime requestTime = CMTimeMakeWithSeconds(imageTime, playerItem.asset.duration.timescale);
        CMTime actualTime;

        CGImageRef imageRef = [imageGenerator copyCGImageAtTime:requestTime actualTime:&actualTime error:&error];

        if (error == nil) {
            float req = ((float)requestTime.value/requestTime.timescale);
            float real = ((float)actualTime.value/actualTime.timescale);
            float diff = fabsf(req-real);

            NSLog(@"copyCGImageAtTime: %.2f, %.2f, %f",req,real,diff);
        }
        else
        {
            NSLog(@"copyCGImageAtTime: error: %@",error.localizedDescription);
        }



        // consider using CGImageDestination -> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1320988/saving-cgimageref-to-a-png-file
        UIImage *img = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:imageRef];
        CGImageRelease(imageRef);  // CGImageRef won't be released by ARC



        [UIImageJPEGRepresentation(img, 100) writeToFile:srcPath atomically:YES];

        if (srcPath != nil && zipPath!= nil)
        {
            [zip addFileToZip:srcPath newname:zipPath level:0]; // 0 = no compression. everything is a jpg image
            unlink([srcPath UTF8String]);
        }