Retrieving movie codec under iOS?

Question

I am trying to find the codec used to compress a movie. I am sure if I need to somehow use CMFormatDescription and get a CMVideoCodecType key. I am stuck as to how to get past the metadata array. Any ideas on how to retrieve the codec?

AVURLAsset* movieAsset = [AVURLAsset URLAssetWithURL:sourceMovieURL options:nil];
NSArray *tracks = [movieAsset tracksWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeVideo];

if ([tracks count] != 0) {
    AVAssetTrack *videoTrack = [tracks objectAtIndex:0];

    //
    // Let's get the movie's meta data
    //

    // Find the codec
    NSArray *metadata = [movieAsset commonMetadata];
 }   

Answer 1

A Swift approach to retrieving the audio and video codec associated with a movie:

func codecForVideoAsset(asset: AVURLAsset, mediaType: CMMediaType) -> String? {
    let formatDescriptions = asset.tracks.flatMap { $0.formatDescriptions }
    let mediaSubtypes = formatDescriptions
        .filter { CMFormatDescriptionGetMediaType($0 as! CMFormatDescription) == mediaType }
        .map { CMFormatDescriptionGetMediaSubType($0 as! CMFormatDescription).toString() }
    return mediaSubtypes.first
}

You can then pass in the AVURLAsset of the movie and either kCMMediaType_Video or kCMMediaType_Audio to retrieve the video and audio codecs, respectively.

The toString() function converts the FourCharCode representation of the codec format into a human-readable string, and can be provided as an extension method on FourCharCode:

extension FourCharCode {
    func toString() -> String {
        let n = Int(self)
        var s: String = String (UnicodeScalar((n >> 24) & 255))
        s.append(UnicodeScalar((n >> 16) & 255))
        s.append(UnicodeScalar((n >> 8) & 255))
        s.append(UnicodeScalar(n & 255))
        return s.stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet(NSCharacterSet.whitespaceCharacterSet())
    }
}

Answer 2

I think it's definitely harder than it should be

    #define FourCC2Str(code) (char[5]){(code >> 24) & 0xFF, (code >> 16) & 0xFF, (code >> 8) & 0xFF, code & 0xFF, 0}

    if ([assetTrack.mediaType isEqualToString:AVMediaTypeVideo])
    {
        for (id formatDescription in assetTrack.formatDescriptions)
        {
            NSLog(@"formatDescription:  %@", formatDescription);

            CMFormatDescriptionRef desc = (__bridge CMFormatDescriptionRef)formatDescription;
            //CMMediaType mediaType = CMFormatDescriptionGetMediaType(desc);

            // CMVideoCodecType is typedefed to CMVideoCodecType

            CMVideoCodecType codec = CMFormatDescriptionGetMediaSubType(desc);

            NSString* codecString = [NSString stringWithCString:(const char *)FourCC2Str(codec) encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
            NSLog(@"%@", codecString);

        }
    }

Answer 3

A slightly more readable version of @jbat100's answer (for those who were as confused as I was with that #define FourCC2Str, hah)

// Get your format description from whichever track you want
CMFormatDescriptionRef formatHint;

// Get the codec and correct endianness
CMVideoCodecType formatCodec = CFSwapInt32BigToHost(CMFormatDescriptionGetMediaSubType(formatHint));

// add 1 for null terminator
char formatCodecBuf[sizeof(CMVideoCodecType) + 1] = {0};
memcpy(formatCodecBuf, &formatCodec, sizeof(CMVideoCodecType));

NSString *formatCodecString = @(formatCodecBuf);