out of memory error with animations

I understand your description of the problem, but it would be helpful to me if you could post your code. Using too many images will be able to take down your application with a memory error. I've had it when I wanted to use 6 huge pictures at once. Lowering the resolution worked for me. Nonetheless, code would be helpful. Thanks!

Hi Ernest,

Yep, I'm running into the same problem with another app that doesn't have the frame animation but it does have a number of images, so it's hanging up from one activity to the next now that I'm plugging in background images. But it's in the same place - going from one activity to the next. Each activity works fine when uncoupled.

I'm not sure what code you want to see that might be helpful. The animation is just like in crystal ball, with about 42 frames of .png images. Each of these is 21KB. Plus the animation file.

In a second, simpler (without animation) app I'm running into the same thing as I add the artwork. In this case, an activity with nine ImageButtons and background image where any of the buttons goes to the next activity with five ImageButtons and a background image.

The background images are in the respective xml files: android:src="@drawable/background4" for an ImageView or other images in ImageButtons. I tried to use images that were the right size; I could make them smaller but it seems that then you get into image quality issues and in general, I think this is possibly delaying the inevitable?

From the android developer docs I was thinking that dumping the images in onStop(); would keep them from piling up, but I'm not sure of the syntax.

[http://developer.android.com/training/basics/activity-lifecycle/stopping.html When your activity receives a call to the onStop() method, it's no longer visible and should release almost all resources that aren't needed while the user is not using it. Once your activity is stopped, the system might destroy the instance if it needs to recover system memory. In extreme cases, the system might simply kill your app process without calling the activity's final onDestroy() callback, so it's important you use onStop() to release resources that might leak memory.]

The stackoverflow link in my original post refers to Bitmap images, which I've learned are the PNG or JPG images and I see Bitmap factory comments in the LogCat, and it has code to optimally scale images, but I don't understand how to implement it.

I have a feeling the solution is somewhere in the vicinity of right in front of my face.

Thanks!

Ok I watched the video and recreated the sample app using the crystal ball animation images. This is only good for images that are the same size, but that's ok for these animation frames. Without the box checked, I got up to 38 msec load time, while with it the longest I got was 18, a significant percentage difference. So I see that this is helping as advertised, but still don't see how to apply this to the animation as it runs through the array of images.

I'll keep poking at it but in the meantime here's the code:

package com.example.bitmapstuff;

import android.app.Activity; import android.graphics.Bitmap; import android.graphics.BitmapFactory; import android.os.Bundle; import android.view.Menu; import android.view.View; import android.widget.CheckBox; import android.widget.ImageView; import android.widget.TextView;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {

int mCurrentIndex = 0;
Bitmap mCurrentBitmap = null;
BitmapFactory.Options mBitmapOptions;

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

    final int[] imageIDs = {R.drawable.ball01, R.drawable.ball02, R.drawable.ball03, R.drawable.ball04, 
                            R.drawable.ball05, R.drawable.ball06, R.drawable.ball07, R.drawable.ball08,
                            R.drawable.ball09, R.drawable.ball10, R.drawable.ball11, R.drawable.ball12, 
                            R.drawable.ball13, R.drawable.ball14, R.drawable.ball15, R.drawable.ball16,
                            R.drawable.ball17, R.drawable.ball18, R.drawable.ball17, R.drawable.ball18, 
                            R.drawable.ball21, R.drawable.ball22, R.drawable.ball23, R.drawable.ball24                              
    };

    final CheckBox checkbox = (CheckBox) findViewById(R.id.checkbox);
    final TextView durationTextview = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.loadDuration);
    final ImageView imageview = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.imageview);

    mBitmapOptions = new BitmapFactory.Options();
    mBitmapOptions.inJustDecodeBounds = true;
    BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.ball01, mBitmapOptions);
    mCurrentBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(mBitmapOptions.outWidth, mBitmapOptions.outHeight, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
    mBitmapOptions.inJustDecodeBounds = false;
    mBitmapOptions.inBitmap = mCurrentBitmap;
    mBitmapOptions.inSampleSize = 1;
    BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.ball01, mBitmapOptions);
    imageview.setImageBitmap(mCurrentBitmap);

    imageview.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
        @Override 
        public void onClick(View v) {
            mCurrentIndex = (mCurrentIndex + 1) % imageIDs.length;
            BitmapFactory.Options bitmapOptions = null;
            if (checkbox.isChecked()) {
                bitmapOptions = mBitmapOptions;
                bitmapOptions.inBitmap = mCurrentBitmap;
            }
            long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
            mCurrentBitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), imageIDs[mCurrentIndex], bitmapOptions);
            imageview.setImageBitmap(mCurrentBitmap);
            durationTextview.setText("Load took "+ (System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime));
        }
    });
}

}

xml: <RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:paddingBottom="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin" android:paddingLeft="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin" android:paddingRight="@dimen/activity_horizontal_margin" android:paddingTop="@dimen/activity_vertical_margin" tools:context=".MainActivity" >

<TextView
    android:id="@+id/loadDuration"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:text="@string/hello_world" />

<CheckBox
    android:id="@+id/checkbox"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_alignBaseline="@+id/loadDuration"
    android:layout_alignBottom="@+id/loadDuration"
    android:layout_alignParentRight="true"
    android:text="CheckBox" />

<ImageView
    android:id="@+id/imageview"
    android:layout_width="wrap_content"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:layout_centerHorizontal="true"
    android:layout_centerVertical="true"
    android:src="@drawable/ball01"
    android:contentDescription="crystal ball" />

</RelativeLayout>

Janine Suvak well done, so awesome!