iOS: AVCaptureOutput stops working after navigation

Question

I'm using the camera view as a barcode scanner that scans a barcode and launches a segue to another viewcontroller with a webview. This is working fine, and I can navigate back to the scanner from the webview and scan another barcode without issue. However, if I navigate away from the view controller with the camera and return to it, the camera view loads but no longer detects barcodes.

@implementation ProductScanViewController

NSString *loadUrl;     
AVCaptureSession *_captureSession;
AVCaptureDevice *_videoDevice;
AVCaptureDeviceInput *_videoInput;
AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer *_previewLayer;
BOOL _running;
AVCaptureMetadataOutput *_metadataOutput;
@synthesize mWebView;


- (void)viewDidLoad {
    [super viewDidLoad];
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:loadUrl];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
NSOperationQueue *queue = [[NSOperationQueue alloc]init];
[NSURLConnection sendAsynchronousRequest:request queue:queue completionHandler:^(NSURLResponse *response, NSData *data, NSError *error)
 {if([data length] > 0 && error == nil)[mWebView loadRequest:request];         else if (error != nil) NSLog(@"Error: %", error);}
 ];

    [self setupCaptureSession];
}

- (void)setupCaptureSession {

    // 1
    if (_captureSession){        
        return;
    }

    // 2
    _videoDevice = [AVCaptureDevice defaultDeviceWithMediaType:AVMediaTypeVideo];
    if (!_videoDevice) {
        return;
    }

    // 3
    _captureSession = [[AVCaptureSession alloc] init];

    // 4
    _videoInput = [[AVCaptureDeviceInput alloc] initWithDevice:_videoDevice error:nil];

    // 5
    if ([_captureSession canAddInput:_videoInput]) {
        [_captureSession addInput:_videoInput];
    }

    // 6
    _previewLayer = [[AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer alloc] initWithSession:_captureSession];
    _previewLayer.videoGravity = AVLayerVideoGravityResizeAspectFill;

    // capture and process the metadata
    _metadataOutput = [[AVCaptureMetadataOutput alloc] init];
    dispatch_queue_t metadataQueue =
    dispatch_queue_create("com.1337labz.featurebuild.metadata", 0);
    [_metadataOutput setMetadataObjectsDelegate:self
                                      queue:metadataQueue];
    if ([_captureSession canAddOutput:_metadataOutput]) {
        [_captureSession addOutput:_metadataOutput];
    }
}

#pragma mark - Delegate functions

- (void)captureOutput:(AVCaptureOutput *)captureOutput
    didOutputMetadataObjects:(NSArray *)metadataObjects
       fromConnection:(AVCaptureConnection *)connection {

    [metadataObjects enumerateObjectsUsingBlock:^(AVMetadataObject *obj,
                               NSUInteger idx,
                              BOOL *stop) {
         if ([obj isKindOfClass: [AVMetadataMachineReadableCodeObject class]]) {
             //NSLog(@"Capture Output started");

            // 3
            AVMetadataMachineReadableCodeObject *code = (AVMetadataMachineReadableCodeObject*)
            [_previewLayer transformedMetadataObjectForMetadataObject:obj];

            // 4
            Barcode * barcode = [Barcode processMetadataObject:code];

            for (NSString * str in self.allowedBarcodeTypes) {
                 if([barcode.getBarcodeType isEqualToString:str]){
                     [self validBarcodeFound:(barcode)];
                     return;
                 }
             }
         }
    }];
}

- (void) validBarcodeFound:(Barcode *)barcode{
NSLog(@"Found Barcode");

[self stopRunning];
[self.foundBarcodes addObject:barcode];
//[self showBarcodeAlert:barcode];
NSString *alertMessage = @"";
alertMessage = [alertMessage stringByAppendingString:[barcode getBarcodeType]];
NSLog([barcode getBarcodeData]);
NSLog(alertMessage);

NSLog([NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@", barcode.getBarcodeData]);
if ([barcode.getBarcodeType isEqualToString:@"org.iso.QRCode"])
{
 if ([[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%lu",(unsigned long)[self.foundBarcodes count]-1] length] > 0){

    NSString *input = [barcode getBarcodeData];
    [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%lu",(unsigned long)[self.foundBarcodes count]-1];
    NSLog(input);


    if ([input length] >= 13)
    {
        input = [input substringToIndex:12];
    }
    loadUrl = [[@"http://www.mywebsite.co.uk/" stringByAppendingString:input] stringByAppendingString:@"?utm_source=iphone"];
    NSLog(loadUrl);        
    dispatch_sync(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
        [self performSegueWithIdentifier:@"toWebView" sender:self];
    });
}


}

Answer 1

So I've managed to fix this but can't give any real understanding of why it works.

Instead of loading the URL asynchronously during viewDidLoad, I passed the URL with the segue and loaded it from within the ViewController containing the WebView.

Further to this, the variable declarations were encapsulated in curly brackets {} and the @synthesize mWebView was removed. I've no idea why that was causing issues so any possible explanation would be appreciated