---
title: CVPixelFormatDescription
framework: corevideo
role: collectionGroup
role_heading: API Collection
path: corevideo/cvpixelformatdescription-42p
---

# CVPixelFormatDescription

An API that provides functions and types for defining custom pixel formats.

## Overview

Overview The Core Video pixel format description API defines functions and types for defining custom pixel formats. You should only use pixel format descriptions if you need to define a custom pixel format.

## Topics

### Creating Format Descriptions

- [CVPixelFormatDescriptionCreateWithPixelFormatType(_:_:)](corevideo/cvpixelformatdescriptioncreatewithpixelformattype(_:_:).md)
- [CVPixelFormatDescriptionRegisterDescriptionWithPixelFormatType(_:_:)](corevideo/cvpixelformatdescriptionregisterdescriptionwithpixelformattype(_:_:).md)

### Retrieving Format Descriptions

- [CVPixelFormatDescriptionArrayCreateWithAllPixelFormatTypes(_:)](corevideo/cvpixelformatdescriptionarraycreatewithallpixelformattypes(_:).md)

### Converting format types

- [CVPixelFormatTypeCopyFourCharCodeString(_:)](corevideo/cvpixelformattypecopyfourcharcodestring(_:).md)

### Data Types

- [CVPixelFormatDescription](corevideo/cvpixelformatdescription.md)
- [CVFillExtendedPixelsCallBackData](corevideo/cvfillextendedpixelscallbackdata.md)
- [CVPixelFormatType](corevideo/cvpixelformattype.md)
- [CVSenselSitingOffsets](corevideo/cvsenselsitingoffsets.md)
- [CVSenselArrayPattern](corevideo/cvsenselarraypattern.md)

### Callbacks

- [CVFillExtendedPixelsCallBack](corevideo/cvfillextendedpixelscallback.md)

### Constants

- [Pixel Format Description Keys](corevideo/pixel-format-description-keys.md)
- [Pixel Format Identifiers](corevideo/pixel-format-identifiers.md)

## See Also

### Data Processing

- [CVBuffer](corevideo/cvbuffer-nfm.md)
- [CVImageBuffer](corevideo/cvimagebuffer-q40.md)
- [CVPixelBuffer](corevideo/cvpixelbuffer-q2e.md)
- [CVPixelBufferPool](corevideo/cvpixelbufferpool-77o.md)