IPhone RGBA to ARGB

Question

Im using glReadPixels to grab screen shots of my opengl scene and then turning them into a video using AVAssetWriter on IOS 4. My problem is i need to pass the alpha channel to the video which only accepts kCVPixelFormatType_32ARGB and glReadPixels on retrieves RGBA. So basically i need a way to convert my RGBA to ARGB, in other words put the alpha bytes first.

int depth = 4;
unsigned char buffer[width * height * depth];  
glReadPixels(0,0,width, height, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, &buffer);

CGDataProviderRef ref = CGDataProviderCreateWithData(NULL, &buffer), width*height*depth, NULL );

CGBitmapInfo bitmapInfo = kCGBitmapByteOrderDefault | kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast;

CGImageRef image = CGImageCreate(width, height, 8, 32, width*depth, CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(), bitmapInfo, ref, NULL, true, kCGRenderingIntentDefault);

UIWindow* parentWindow = [self window];

NSDictionary *options = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:[NSNumber numberWithBool:YES], kCVPixelBufferCGImageCompatibilityKey, [NSNumber numberWithBool:YES], kCVPixelBufferCGBitmapContextCompatibilityKey, nil];

CVPixelBufferRef pxbuffer = NULL;
CVReturn status = CVPixelBufferCreate(kCFAllocatorDefault, width, height, kCVPixelFormatType_32ARGB, (CFDictionaryRef) options, &pxbuffer);

NSParameterAssert(status == kCVReturnSuccess);
NSParameterAssert(pxbuffer != NULL);

CVPixelBufferLockBaseAddress(pxbuffer, 0);
void *pxdata = CVPixelBufferGetBaseAddress(pxbuffer);
NSParameterAssert(pxdata != NULL);

CGColorSpaceRef rgbColorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(pxdata, width, height, 8, depth*width, rgbColorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst);

NSParameterAssert(context);

CGContextConcatCTM(context, parentWindow.transform);
CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, width, height), image);

CGColorSpaceRelease(rgbColorSpace);
CGContextRelease(context);

CVPixelBufferUnlockBaseAddress(pxbuffer, 0);

return pxbuffer; // chuck pixel buffer into AVAssetWriter

Thought i would post the whole code as i may help someone else.

Cheers

Answer 1

Note: I'm assuming 8 bits per channel. Adjust accordingly if this is not the case.

To move the alpha bits last, you need to perform rotation. This is usually expressed most easily through bit shifting.

In this case, you want to move the RGB bits 8 bits right, and the A bits 24 bits left. These two values should then be put together using bitwise OR, so that becomes argb = (rgba >> 8) | (rgba << 24).

Answer 2

Even better, don't encode your video using ARGB, send your AVAssetWriter BGRA frames. As I describe in this answer, doing so lets you encode 640x480 video at 30 FPS on an iPhone 4, and up to 20 FPS for 720p video. An iPhone 4S can go all the way up to 1080p video at 30 FPS using this.

Also, you'll want to make sure you use a pixel buffer pool instead of recreating a pixel buffer each time. Copying the code from that answer, you configure the AVAssetWriter using this:

NSError *error = nil;

assetWriter = [[AVAssetWriter alloc] initWithURL:movieURL fileType:AVFileTypeAppleM4V error:&error];
if (error != nil)
{
    NSLog(@"Error: %@", error);
}


NSMutableDictionary * outputSettings = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
[outputSettings setObject: AVVideoCodecH264 forKey: AVVideoCodecKey];
[outputSettings setObject: [NSNumber numberWithInt: videoSize.width] forKey: AVVideoWidthKey];
[outputSettings setObject: [NSNumber numberWithInt: videoSize.height] forKey: AVVideoHeightKey];


assetWriterVideoInput = [AVAssetWriterInput assetWriterInputWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeVideo outputSettings:outputSettings];
assetWriterVideoInput.expectsMediaDataInRealTime = YES;

// You need to use BGRA for the video in order to get realtime encoding. I use a color-swizzling shader to line up glReadPixels' normal RGBA output with the movie input's BGRA.
NSDictionary *sourcePixelBufferAttributesDictionary = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys: [NSNumber numberWithInt:kCVPixelFormatType_32BGRA], kCVPixelBufferPixelFormatTypeKey,
                                                       [NSNumber numberWithInt:videoSize.width], kCVPixelBufferWidthKey,
                                                       [NSNumber numberWithInt:videoSize.height], kCVPixelBufferHeightKey,
                                                       nil];

assetWriterPixelBufferInput = [AVAssetWriterInputPixelBufferAdaptor assetWriterInputPixelBufferAdaptorWithAssetWriterInput:assetWriterVideoInput sourcePixelBufferAttributes:sourcePixelBufferAttributesDictionary];

[assetWriter addInput:assetWriterVideoInput];

then use this code to grab each rendered frame using glReadPixels():

CVPixelBufferRef pixel_buffer = NULL;

CVReturn status = CVPixelBufferPoolCreatePixelBuffer (NULL, [assetWriterPixelBufferInput pixelBufferPool], &pixel_buffer);
if ((pixel_buffer == NULL) || (status != kCVReturnSuccess))
{
    return;
}
else
{
    CVPixelBufferLockBaseAddress(pixel_buffer, 0);
    GLubyte *pixelBufferData = (GLubyte *)CVPixelBufferGetBaseAddress(pixel_buffer);
    glReadPixels(0, 0, videoSize.width, videoSize.height, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, pixelBufferData);
}

// May need to add a check here, because if two consecutive times with the same value are added to the movie, it aborts recording
CMTime currentTime = CMTimeMakeWithSeconds([[NSDate date] timeIntervalSinceDate:startTime],120);

if(![assetWriterPixelBufferInput appendPixelBuffer:pixel_buffer withPresentationTime:currentTime]) 
{
    NSLog(@"Problem appending pixel buffer at time: %lld", currentTime.value);
} 
else 
{
//        NSLog(@"Recorded pixel buffer at time: %lld", currentTime.value);
}
CVPixelBufferUnlockBaseAddress(pixel_buffer, 0);

CVPixelBufferRelease(pixel_buffer);

When using glReadPixels(), you need to swizzle the colors of your frame, so I've employed an offscreen FBO and a fragment shader with the following code to do this:

 varying highp vec2 textureCoordinate;

 uniform sampler2D inputImageTexture;

 void main()
 {
     gl_FragColor = texture2D(inputImageTexture, textureCoordinate).bgra;
 }

However, there is an even faster route on iOS 5.0 to grab OpenGL ES content than glReadPixels(), which I describe in this answer. The nice thing about that process is that the textures already store content in BGRA pixel format, so you can just feed the encapsulating pixel buffers right to an AVAssetWriter without any color conversion and still see great encoding speeds.

Answer 3

I realize this question has been answered, but I wanted to make sure folks are aware of vImage, part of the Accelerate framework and available in iOS and OSX. My understanding is that vImage is used by Core Graphics to do CPU-bound vector operations on bitmaps.

The specific API you want for to convert ARGB to RGBA is vImagePermuteChannels_ARGB8888. There are also APIs to convert RGB to ARGB/XRGB, to flip an image, to overwrite a channel, and much more. It's kind of a hidden gem!

Update: Brad Larson wrote a great answer to essentially the same question here.

Answer 4

Yep its 8 bits per channel, so is it something like:

int depth = 4;
int width = 320;
int height = 480;

unsigned char buffer[width * height * depth]; 

glReadPixels(0,0,width, height, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, &buffer);

for(int i = 0; i < width; i++){
   for(int j = 0; j < height; j++){     
    buffer[i*j] = (buffer[i*j] >> 8) | (buffer[i*j] << 24);
    }
}

I cant seem to get it working

Answer 5

I'm sure that the alpha-values can be ignored. So you can just do memcpy with the pixel-buffer array shifted by one byte:

void *buffer = malloc(width*height*4);
glReadPixels(0, 0, width, height, GL_RGBA, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, &buffer);
…
memcpy(pxdata + 1, buffer, width*height*4 - 1);

Answer 6

+ (UIImage *) createARGBImageFromRGBAImage: (UIImage *)image {
    CGSize dimensions = [image size];

    NSUInteger bytesPerPixel = 4;
    NSUInteger bytesPerRow = bytesPerPixel * dimensions.width;
    NSUInteger bitsPerComponent = 8;

    unsigned char *rgba = malloc(bytesPerPixel * dimensions.width * dimensions.height);
    unsigned char *argb = malloc(bytesPerPixel * dimensions.width * dimensions.height);

    CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = NULL;
    CGContextRef context = NULL;

    colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
    context = CGBitmapContextCreate(rgba, dimensions.width, dimensions.height, bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast | kCGBitmapByteOrderDefault); // kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big
    CGContextDrawImage(context, CGRectMake(0, 0, dimensions.width, dimensions.height), [image CGImage]);
    CGContextRelease(context);
    CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);

    for (int x = 0; x < dimensions.width; x++) {
        for (int y = 0; y < dimensions.height; y++) {
            NSUInteger offset = ((dimensions.width * y) + x) * bytesPerPixel;
            argb[offset + 0] = rgba[offset + 3];
            argb[offset + 1] = rgba[offset + 0];
            argb[offset + 2] = rgba[offset + 1];
            argb[offset + 3] = rgba[offset + 2];
        }
    }

    colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
    context = CGBitmapContextCreate(argb, dimensions.width, dimensions.height, bitsPerComponent, bytesPerRow, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst | kCGBitmapByteOrderDefault); // kCGBitmapByteOrder32Big
    CGImageRef imageRef = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(context);
    image = [UIImage imageWithCGImage: imageRef];
    CGImageRelease(imageRef);
    CGContextRelease(context);
    CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);

    free(rgba);
    free(argb);

    return image;
}