I'd like to read the time value of a timecode track. There is an excellent documentation from Apple (see Technical Note 2310) but it's written in Objective C.
I have translated the core logic to Swift 3. It works exactly as the
ObjC version, which means that a CMSampleBuffer
from a timecode
track is read and converted to a CMBlockBuffer
. It fails when I
create the data pointer CMBlockBufferGetDataPointer
(in the
timecodeFrame()
func), which means, that the raw data is always
giving me 0 frames. So it boils down to the question, how do I
handle the raw data correctly?
import Foundation
import AVFoundation
import CoreMedia
let movie = URL(fileURLWithPath: "videoWithTimecodeTrack.mov")
let asset = AVAsset(url: movie)
asset.loadValuesAsynchronously(forKeys: ["tracks"]) {
var error: NSError?
guard asset.statusOfValue(forKey: "tracks", error: &error) == AVKeyValueStatus.loaded
else { if let error = error { return print(error) } }
readStartTimecode(asset: asset)
}
func readStartTimecode(ofAsset asset: AVAsset) {
let timecodeTracks = asset.tracks(withMediaType: AVMediaTypeTimecode)
guard let timecodeTrack = timecodeTracks.first,
let assetReader = try? AVAssetReader(asset: asset) else { return }
let readerOutput = AVAssetReaderTrackOutput(track: timecodeTrack, outputSettings: nil)
assetReader.add(readerOutput)
guard assetReader.startReading() else { return }
while let sampleBuffer = readerOutput.copyNextSampleBuffer() {
if let frame = timecodeFrame(sampleBuffer: sampleBuffer) {
print("timecodeFrame: \(frame)")
}
}
}
func timecodeFrame(sampleBuffer: CMSampleBuffer) -> UInt32? {
guard let blockBuffer = CMSampleBufferGetDataBuffer(sampleBuffer),
let formatDescription = CMSampleBufferGetFormatDescription(sampleBuffer)
else { return nil }
var rawData: UnsafeMutablePointer<Int8>? = nil
var length: Int = 0
var totalLength: Int = 0
let status = CMBlockBufferGetDataPointer(blockBuffer, 0, &length, &totalLength, &rawData)
guard status == kCMBlockBufferNoErr,
let frameRead = rawData?.pointee
else { return nil }
let type = CMFormatDescriptionGetMediaSubType(formatDescription)
if type == kCMTimeCodeFormatType_TimeCode32 {
let frame = UInt32(frameRead)
let bigFrame = CFSwapInt32BigToHost(frame)
print("kCMTimeCodeFormatType_TimeCode32: \(bigFrame)")
}
if type == kCMTimeCodeFormatType_TimeCode64 {
print("kCMTimeCodeFormatType_TimeCode64")
// todo
}
return nil
}
Edit: the Objective C version of the data pointer retrieval looks like this:
size_t length = 0;
size_t totalLength = 0;
char *rawData = NULL;
CMBlockBufferGetDataPointer(blockBuffer, 0, &length, &totalLength, &rawData);
if (status == kCMBlockBufferNoErr) {
int32_t *frameNumberRead = (int32_t *)rawData;
(int)Endian32_Swap(*frameNumberRead)]
}
The solution is to not convert the Int8
data like UInt32(rawData.pointee)
but to access the UnsafeMutablePointer<Int8>
pointer's memory as a different type (temporarily). This would look like this:
if let frames = rawData?.withMemoryRebound(to: UInt32.self, capacity: 1, { CFSwapInt32BigToHost($0.pointee) }) {
return frames
}
The full function would look like this:
func timecodeFrame(sampleBuffer: CMSampleBuffer) -> UInt32? {
guard let blockBuffer = CMSampleBufferGetDataBuffer(sampleBuffer),
let formatDescription = CMSampleBufferGetFormatDescription(sampleBuffer)
else { return nil }
var rawData: UnsafeMutablePointer<Int8>? = nil
var length: Int = 0
var totalLength: Int = 0
let status = CMBlockBufferGetDataPointer(blockBuffer, 0, &length, &totalLength, &rawData)
guard status == kCMBlockBufferNoErr else { return nil }
let type = CMFormatDescriptionGetMediaSubType(formatDescription)
if type == kCMTimeCodeFormatType_TimeCode32 {
if let frames = rawData?.withMemoryRebound(to: UInt32.self, capacity: 1, { CFSwapInt32BigToHost($0.pointee) }) {
return frames
}
}
if type == kCMTimeCodeFormatType_TimeCode64 {
if let frames = rawData?.withMemoryRebound(to: UInt64.self, capacity: 1, { CFSwapInt64BigToHost($0.pointee) }) {
return UInt32(frames)
}
}
return nil
}
I hope this is useful to others who want to read the start timecode of a video's timecode track.