uint8_t buffer to cv::Mat conversion results in distorted image - c++

Question

I have a Mipi camera that captures frames and stores them into the struct buffer that you can see below. Once the frame is stored I want to convert it into a cv::Mat, the thing is that the Mat ends up looking like the first pic.
The var buf.index is just part of the V4L2 API, useful to understand which buffer I'm using.
//The structure where the data is stored
struct buffer{
void *start;
size_t length;
};
struct buffer *buffers;
//buffer->mat
cv::Mat im = cv::Mat(cv::Size(width, height), CV_8UC3, ((uint8_t*)buffers[buf.index].start));
At first I thought that the data might be corrupted but storing the image with lodepng results in a nice image without any distortion.
unsigned char* out_buf = (unsigned char*)malloc( width * height * 3);
for(int pix = 0; pix < width*height; ++pix) {
memcpy(out_buf + pix*3, ((uint8_t*)buffers[buf.index].start)+4*pix+1, 3);
}
lodepng_encode24_file(filename, out_buf, width, height);
I bet it's something really silly.

Answer 1

the picture you post has oddly colored pixels and the patterns look like there's more information than simply 24 bits per pixel.
after inspecting the data, it appears that V4L gives you four bytes per pixel, and the first byte is always 0xFF (let's call that X). further, the channel order seems to be XRGB.
create a cv::Mat using 8UC4 to contain the data.
to use the picture in OpenCV, you need BGR order. cv::split the received data into its four color planes which are X,R,G,B. use cv::merge to reassemble the B,G,R planes into a picture that OpenCV can handle, or reassemble into R,G,B to create a Mat for other purposes (that other library you seem to use).