Choosing between UIIMagePickerController and AVFoundation - ios7

I have app, which takes photos, crops them to fit display and uses it as overlay for next photo. I use UIIMagePickerController for that, and it works perfectly for me, however I realized I need to take photos only in landscape orientation. As it's written in UIImagePickerController class reference, it supports portrait mode only. I know there are several workarounds, and it is possible to use it in landscape, but I've red that there's a risk Apple will reject my app.
On the other hand, AVFoundation looks like a bit overkill for my needs.
Do I really need to use AVFoundation?

I'd use AVFoundation since its much more flexible than ImagePicker, it's always a good idea to future proof your design. And it's not all that tough to set up an AVCapture session, just look at the Demo Apps and see how it's done.

Related

How to change aspect ratio of photos taken using AVFoundation?

I am using AVFoundation to take pictures instead of UIImagePicker due to how customizable the user interface presented to the user can be. When using it the aspect ratio that the picture is saved as is the same as the iPhone's video feed. What I want to happen is to have the pictures saved in the same aspect ratio as normal pictures are.
The way that I am currently approaching this is to overlay a black bar in the excess preview display and then just crop the photo after saving it as an image.
However, this feels very crude. I assume that it is a common thing to use the AVFoundation as a way of taking photos and so I assume I must be missing something!
I have used this example code. And I have read through the AVFoundation documentation but can only assume that I am missing a function. I have also read through similar questions to this which describe the process by which I might go about cropping images, but that isn't really my concern.
On the other hand, if there is no standard way to do this, please do let me know so that I can stop worrying that I am approaching it in a convoluted way.
Also, I am using Objective-C so if answers contain code, please could you use the same language?

Objective-C, Methods for animating gui

I've created many types of interfaces using the Cocoa API — some of them using documented basic animation techniques and others simply by experimenting (such as placing an animated .gif inside an NSImage class) — which had somewhat catastrophic consequences. The question I have is what is the correct or the most effective way to create an animated and dynamic GUI so that it runs optimally and properly?
The closest example I can think of that would use a similar type of animation would be something one might see done in flash on any number of interactive websites or interfaces. I'm sure flash can be used in a Cocoa app, although if there is a way to achieve a similar result without re-inventing the wheel, or having to use 3rd party SDKs, I would love to get some input. Keep in mind I'm not just thinking of animation for games, iOS, etc. — I'm most interested in an animated GUI for Mac OS X, and making it 'flow' as one might interact in it.
If u wish to add many graphics animations, then go for OpenGLES based xcode project for iOS. That helps u to reduce performance problem. You can render each of the frames in gif as 2D texture.
I would recommend that you take a look at Core Animation. It is Apples framework for hardware accelerated animations for both OS X and iOS. It's built for making animated GUIs.
You can animate the property changes for things like position, opacity, color, transforms etc and also animate gradients with CAGradientLayer and animate non-rectagunal shapes using CAShapeLayer and a lot of other things.
A good resource to get you started is the Core Animation Programming Guide.

ios app question video effects

I am trying to piece together a solution to let users take and edit videos in an app. I have seen the 8mm app and am wondering how they did it... and made it so smooth.
At first I was thinking the effects might have been a series of pngs streamed together like a animated gif and then placed on top of the real video. but then for merging the images to the video I am at a loss. Also the app is so smooth I think it has to be using some low level Core.media Framework but am not sure.
Any ideas or advise on where to begin?
Thanks
AVFoundation combined with OpenGL ES 2.0 (with shaders) provides great performances for adding effects to camera / video in realtime (and even better with the ios 5 but i can't say too much due to the NDA).
You probably read most the documentation of AVFoundation to start with, because there is a lot going on. One method that might be of interests is this one:
- (void)captureOutput:(AVCaptureOutput *)captureOutput didOutputSampleBuffer:(CMSampleBufferRef)sampleBuffer fromConnection:(AVCaptureConnection *)connection;
which allow you to work directly with blocks of data representing video information coming from the camera. You can then modify this data to change the video information, for example, adding additional content or pictures on top of the video frame. You can use Open GL ES to do this processing.

360 degree video in MPMoviePlayerController

I am trying to develop an iphone application which needs to show a 360 degree video like the one and rotate the video as per the phone movement. How can i do this? Is it possible to do this with normal MPMovieplayer controller?
I don't think you can do this with a normal MPMoviePlayerController, but there are several libraries out there to achieve this. Have a look here:
PanoramaGL
Panorama 360
They work with OpenGL and you can embed them in your Objective-C code.
EDIT:
As #Mangesh Vyas kindly pointed out those are intended to use with fixed images only. However they might be a suitable starting point for embedding video as well, if you modify the code accordingly. They already do the handling of direction, accelerometer etc. so you don't have to implement all that yourself.

How to make orientation response faster in ipad?

I have ipad application which has 3 tableviews with holds data like label,image,property lists etc, as while performing orientation it has some overlapping,slow response compared to native apps,
I have tried some methods like willRotateToInterfaceOrientation etc,
is that any thing that make sense to make orientation faster?
To the best of my knowledge, it is a set speed/time. I would believe Apple has set it so that there is a uniform feeling throughout apps. As with pretty much everything, I'm sure there is a way to do it, but I am not sure if Apple approves it for App Store apps, or if it is just a hidden detail.