Screenshot for AVPlayer and Video

Question

I am trying to take a screenshot of an AVPlayer inside a bigger view. I want to build a testing framework only, so private APIs or any method is go

Answer 1

AVPlayer rending videos using GPU, so you cannot capture it using core graphics methods.

However that’s possible to capture images with AVAssetImageGenerator, you need specify a CMTime.

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Update:

Forget to take a screenshot of the entire screen. AVPlayerItemVideoOutput is my final choice, it supports video steam.

Here is my full implementation: https://github.com/BB9z/ZFPlayer/commit/a32c7244f630e69643336b65351463e00e712c7f#diff-2d23591c151edd3536066df7c18e59deR448

Answer 2

If you want to take screenshot of current screen just call following method on any action event which give you Image object.

-(UIImage *) screenshot
{
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(self.view.bounds.size);
    [self.view.layer renderInContext:UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext()];
    UIImage *sourceImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
    UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

    //now we will position the image, X/Y away from top left corner to get the portion we want
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(sourceImage.size);
    [sourceImage drawAtPoint:CGPointMake(0, 0)];
    UIImage *croppedImage = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
    UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

    //To write image on divice.
    //UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(croppedImage,nil, nil, nil);

    return croppedImage;
}

Hope this will help you.

Answer 3

CGRect grabRect = CGRectMake(0,0,320,568);// size you want to take screenshot of. 

if ([[UIScreen mainScreen] respondsToSelector:@selector(scale)]) {
   UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(grabRect.size, NO, [UIScreen mainScreen].scale);
 } else {
      UIGraphicsBeginImageContext(grabRect.size);
}
CGContextRef ctx = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
CGContextTranslateCTM(ctx, -grabRect.origin.x, -grabRect.origin.y);
[self.view.layer renderInContext:ctx];
UIImage *image = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext();
UIGraphicsEndImageContext();

Answer 4

I know you don't want to use the AVAssetImageGenerator but I've also researched this extensively and I believe the only solution currently is using the AVAssetImageGenerator. It's not that difficult as you say to get the right coordinate because you should be able to get the current time of your player. In my App the following code works perfectly:

-(UIImage *)getAVPlayerScreenshot 
{
    AVURLAsset *asset = (AVURLAsset *)self.playerItem.asset;
    AVAssetImageGenerator *imageGenerator = [[AVAssetImageGenerator alloc] initWithAsset:asset];
    imageGenerator.requestedTimeToleranceAfter = kCMTimeZero;
    imageGenerator.requestedTimeToleranceBefore = kCMTimeZero;
    CGImageRef thumb = [imageGenerator copyCGImageAtTime:self.playerItem.currentTime
                                              actualTime:NULL
                                                   error:NULL];
    UIImage *videoImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:thumb];
    CGImageRelease(thumb);
    return videoImage;
}