Determine if iOS device can support HEVC encoding

Question

My problem is I want to use AVVideoCodecHEVC. I know that it's only available in iOS 11, but device's without the A10 chip do not support it.

So, using if #available(iOS 11.0, *) { let self.codec = AVVideoCodecHEVC } Will throw Cannot Encode error if using a device like an iPhone 6 that doesn't have the A10 chip. Has anyone been able to figure out if a device running iOS 11, can support HEVC?

Answer 1

You can check if an iOS device or Mac has hardware encoding support using VideoToolbox:

/// Whether or not the current device has an HEVC hardware encoder.
public static let hasHEVCHardwareEncoder: Bool = {
    let spec: [CFString: Any]
    #if os(macOS)
        spec = [ kVTVideoEncoderSpecification_RequireHardwareAcceleratedVideoEncoder: true ]
    #else
        spec = [:]
    #endif
    var outID: CFString?
    var properties: CFDictionary?
    let result = VTCopySupportedPropertyDictionaryForEncoder(width: 1920, height: 1080, codecType: kCMVideoCodecType_HEVC, encoderSpecification: spec as CFDictionary, encoderIDOut: &outID, supportedPropertiesOut: &properties)
    if result == kVTCouldNotFindVideoEncoderErr {
        return false // no hardware HEVC encoder
    }
    return result == noErr
}()

A much higher level way to check is to see if AVAssetExportSession supports one of the HEVC presets:

AVAssetExportSession.allExportPresets().contains(AVAssetExportPresetHEVCHighestQuality)

See “Working with HEIF and HEVC” from WWDC 2017 for more info.