How to mute the capture sound in AVFoundation?

Question

I want to take the image using AVfoundation without any sound (yes, I have kept in mind, user choice will implement this feature)

Two questions on stack overflow which gave the most information:

• AVFoundation, how to turn off the shutter sound when captureStillImageAsynchronouslyFromConnection? (no answer accepted and confirmed)

• Muting AVCapture shutter sound on iPhone (AVCaptureVideoDataOutput is suggested)

Both of the answer refers to capturing video frame, which I believe is correct. The problem is that AVfoundation library isn't really easy to master and I can't really get the hang of it (capturing image using AVCaptureStillImageOutput was itself tough for me).

Answer 1

i found the code to do it here..

http://www.benjaminloulier.com/articles/ios4-and-direct-access-to-the-camera

Important parts outlined..

Setup Your Session Like this

-(void)initialize_and_Start_Session_without_CaptureSound
{
    /*We setup the input*/
    AVCaptureDeviceInput *captureInput = [AVCaptureDeviceInput 
                                          deviceInputWithDevice:[AVCaptureDevice defaultDeviceWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeVideo] 
                                          error:nil];
    /*We setupt the output*/
    AVCaptureVideoDataOutput *captureOutput = [[AVCaptureVideoDataOutput alloc] init];
    /*While a frame is processes in -captureOutput:didOutputSampleBuffer:fromConnection: delegate methods no other frames are added in the queue.
     If you don't want this behaviour set the property to NO */
    captureOutput.alwaysDiscardsLateVideoFrames = YES; 
    /*We specify a minimum duration for each frame (play with this settings to avoid having too many frames waiting
     in the queue because it can cause memory issues). It is similar to the inverse of the maximum framerate.
     In this example we set a min frame duration of 1/10 seconds so a maximum framerate of 10fps. We say that
     we are not able to process more than 10 frames per second.*/
    //captureOutput.minFrameDuration = CMTimeMake(1, 10);

    /*We create a serial queue to handle the processing of our frames*/
    dispatch_queue_t queue;
    queue = dispatch_queue_create("cameraQueue", NULL);
    [captureOutput setSampleBufferDelegate:self queue:queue];
    dispatch_release(queue);
    // Set the video output to store frame in BGRA (It is supposed to be faster)
    NSString* key = (NSString*)kCVPixelBufferPixelFormatTypeKey; 
    NSNumber* value = [NSNumber numberWithUnsignedInt:kCVPixelFormatType_32BGRA]; 
    NSDictionary* videoSettings = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:value forKey:key]; 
    [captureOutput setVideoSettings:videoSettings]; 
    /*And we create a capture session*/
    self.session = [[AVCaptureSession alloc] init];
    /*We add input and output*/
    [self.session addInput:captureInput];
    [self.session addOutput:captureOutput];


    /*We start the capture*/
    [self.session startRunning];

}

You will get the camera output in the following method.. I make a image and add it to my parent View..You can change it to your need

#pragma mark AVCaptureSession delegate
- (void)captureOutput:(AVCaptureOutput *)captureOutput 
didOutputSampleBuffer:(CMSampleBufferRef)sampleBuffer 
       fromConnection:(AVCaptureConnection *)connection 
{ 
    /*We create an autorelease pool because as we are not in the main_queue our code is
     not executed in the main thread. So we have to create an autorelease pool for the thread we are in*/
    if (captureImageNow)
    {

    NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];

    CVImageBufferRef imageBuffer = CMSampleBufferGetImageBuffer(sampleBuffer); 
    /*Lock the image buffer*/
    CVPixelBufferLockBaseAddress(imageBuffer,0); 
    /*Get information about the image*/
    uint8_t *baseAddress = (uint8_t *)CVPixelBufferGetBaseAddress(imageBuffer); 
    size_t bytesPerRow = CVPixelBufferGetBytesPerRow(imageBuffer); 
    size_t width = CVPixelBufferGetWidth(imageBuffer); 
    size_t height = CVPixelBufferGetHeight(imageBuffer);  

    /*Create a CGImageRef from the CVImageBufferRef*/
    CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB(); 
    CGContextRef newContext = CGBitmapContextCreate(baseAddress, width, height, 8, bytesPerRow, colorSpace, kCGBitmapByteOrder32Little | kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedFirst);
    CGImageRef newImage = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(newContext); 

    /*We release some components*/
    CGContextRelease(newContext); 
    CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);

    /*We display the result on the custom layer. All the display stuff must be done in the main thread because
     UIKit is no thread safe, and as we are not in the main thread (remember we didn't use the main_queue)
     we use performSelectorOnMainThread to call our CALayer and tell it to display the CGImage.*/

    /*We display the result on the image view (We need to change the orientation of the image so that the video is displayed correctly).
     Same thing as for the CALayer we are not in the main thread so ...*/
    self.captureImage = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:newImage scale:1.0 orientation:UIImageOrientationRight];

    /*We relase the CGImageRef*/
    CGImageRelease(newImage);


    [self performSelectorOnMainThread:@selector(AddImageToParentView) withObject:nil waitUntilDone:YES];

    /*We unlock the  image buffer*/
    CVPixelBufferUnlockBaseAddress(imageBuffer,0);

    [pool drain];
        captureImageNow = NO;
    }
}