Get UIImage from captured CMSampleBuffer

By July 24, 2012Blog

When working with the video capture, the image buffer is not usually enough and we need to pick up the UIImage from the buffer.

UIImage ImageFromSampleBuffer (CMSampleBuffer sampleBuffer)
			{
				// Get the CoreVideo image
				using (var pixelBuffer = sampleBuffer.GetImageBuffer () as CVPixelBuffer){
					// Lock the base address
					pixelBuffer.Lock (0);
					// Get the number of bytes per row for the pixel buffer
					var baseAddress = pixelBuffer.BaseAddress;
					int bytesPerRow = pixelBuffer.BytesPerRow;
					int width = pixelBuffer.Width;
					int height = pixelBuffer.Height;
					var flags = CGBitmapFlags.PremultipliedFirst | CGBitmapFlags.ByteOrder32Little;
					// Create a CGImage on the RGB colorspace from the configured parameter above
					using (var cs = CGColorSpace.CreateDeviceRGB ())
					using (var context = new CGBitmapContext (baseAddress,width, height, 8, bytesPerRow, cs, (CGImageAlphaInfo) flags))
					using (var cgImage = context.ToImage ()){
						pixelBuffer.Unlock (0);
						return UIImage.FromImage (cgImage);
					}
				}
			}