iPhone video camera streaming

Question

Hi,

Can anyone confirm how an app like this is done?

PocketCam

Is the way to capture the camera's video stream using AVFoundation?

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/AVFoundation/Reference/AVCaptureVideoDataOutput_Class/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009544

To be clear, I dont want to capture the video and save it, I want to stream it over a wireless network as an IP camera.

thanks,

Answer 1

I can't confirm how PocketCam works, however, as of iOS4, AVFoundation is the correct way to do this. You will receive a callback with the frame you need. At that point you would push the frame as an image to some server computer listening on the network waiting for frames. Keep in mind that you could be receiving a lot of frames and you may not have enough bandwidth to push all of them depending on the quality/size/resolution of the frames. Here is a technical note from Apple that discusses how to implement frame captures with AVFoundation.