Duplicate / Copy CVPixelBufferRef with CVPixelBufferCreate

Question

I need to create a copy of a CVPixelBufferRef in order to be able to manipulate the original pixel buffer in a bit-wise fashion using the values from the copy. I cannot seem to achieve this with CVPixelBufferCreate, or with CVPixelBufferCreateWithBytes.

According to this question, it could possibly also be done with memcpy(). However, there is no explanation on how this would be achieved, and which Core Video library calls would be needed regardless.

Answer 1

This seems to work:

- (void)captureOutput:(AVCaptureOutput *)captureOutput didOutputSampleBuffer:(CMSampleBufferRef)sampleBuffer fromConnection:(AVCaptureConnection *)connection {

    CVPixelBufferRef pixelBuffer = CMSampleBufferGetImageBuffer(sampleBuffer);

    // Get pixel buffer info
    const int kBytesPerPixel = 4;
    CVPixelBufferLockBaseAddress(pixelBuffer, 0);
    int bufferWidth = (int)CVPixelBufferGetWidth(pixelBuffer);
    int bufferHeight = (int)CVPixelBufferGetHeight(pixelBuffer);
    size_t bytesPerRow = CVPixelBufferGetBytesPerRow(pixelBuffer); 
    uint8_t *baseAddress = CVPixelBufferGetBaseAddress(pixelBuffer);

    // Copy the pixel buffer
    CVPixelBufferRef pixelBufferCopy = NULL;
    CVReturn status = CVPixelBufferCreate(kCFAllocatorDefault, bufferWidth, bufferHeight, kCVPixelFormatType_32BGRA, NULL, &pixelBufferCopy);
    CVPixelBufferLockBaseAddress(pixelBufferCopy, 0);
    uint8_t *copyBaseAddress = CVPixelBufferGetBaseAddress(pixelBufferCopy);
    memcpy(copyBaseAddress, baseAddress, bufferHeight * bytesPerRow);

    // Do what needs to be done with the 2 pixel buffers

}