OutOfMemoryException When Creating a Large Bitmap in CF.NET

Question

My compact framework application creates a smooth-scrolling list by rendering all the items to a large bitmap surface, then copying that bitmap to an offset position on the screen so that only the appropriate items show. Older versions only rendered the items that should appear on screen at the time, but this approach was too slow for a smooth scrolling interface.

It occasionally generates an OutOfMemoryException when initially creating the large bitmap. If the user performs a soft-reset of the device and runs the application again, it is able to perform the creation without issue.

It doesn't look like this bitmap is being generated in program memory, since the application uses approximately the same amount of program memory as it did before the new smooth-scrolling methods.

Is there some way I can prevent this exception? Is there any way I can free up the memory I need (wherever it is) before the exception is thrown?

Answer 1

I'd suggest going back to the old mechanism of rendering only part of the data, as the size of the fully-rendered data is obviously an issue. To help prevent rendering problems I would probably pre-render a few rows above and below the current view so they can be "scrolled" in with limited impact.

Answer 2

And just as soon as I posted I thought of something you can do to fix your problem with the new version. The problem you have is one of CF trying to find one block of contiguous memory available for the huge bitmap, and this is occasionally a problem.

Instead of creating one big bitmap, you can instead create a collection of smaller bitmaps, one for each item, and render each item onto its own little bitmap. During display, you then just copy over the bitmaps you need. CF will have a much easier time creating a bunch of little bitmaps than one big one, and you shouldn't have any memory problems unless this is a truly enormous bunch of items.

I should avoid expressions like "there is no fix".

One other important point: make sure you call Dispose() on each bitmap when you're finished with it.

Answer 3

Your bitmap definitely is being created in program memory. How much memory the bitmap needs depends on how big it is, and whether or not this required size will generate the OutOfMemoryException depends on how much is available to the PDA (which makes this a randomly-occuring error).

Sorry, but this is generally an inadvisable control rendering technique (especially on the Compact Framework) for which there is no fix short of increasing the physical memory on the PDA, which isn't usually possible (and often won't fix the problem anyway, since a CF process is limited to 32MB no matter how much the device has available).

Your best bet is to go back to the old version and improve its rendering speed. There is also a simple technique available on CF for making a control double-buffered to eliminate flicker.

Answer 4

Since it appears you've run into a device limitation that is restricting the total size of Bitmap space you can create (these are apparently created in video RAM rather than general program memory), one alternative is to replace the big Bitmap object used here with a plain-old block of Windows memory, accessing it for reading and writing by PInvoking the BitBlt API function.

Initially creating the memory block is tricky, and you'd probably want to ask another SO question about that (GCHandle.Alloc can be used here to create a "pinned" object, which means .NET isn't allowed to move it around in memory, which is critical here). I know how to do it, but I'm not sure I do it correctly and I'd rather have an expert's input.

Once you've created the big block, you'd iterate through your items, render each to one small bitmap that you keep re-using (using your existing .NET code), and BitBlt it to the appropriate spot in your memory block.

After creating the entire cache, your rendering code should work just like before, with the difference that instead of copying from the big bitmap to your rendering surface, you BitBlt from your cache block. The arguments for BitBlt are essentially the same as for DrawImage (destination, source, coordinates and sizes etc.).

Since you're creating the cache out of regular memory this way instead of specialized video RAM, I don't think you'll run into the same problem. However, I would definitely get the block creation code working first and test to make sure it can create a big enough block every time.

Update: actually, the ideal approach would be to have a collection of smaller memory blocks rather than one big one (like I thought was the problem with the Bitmap approach), but you already have enough to do. I've worked with CF apps that deal with 5 and 10MB objects and it's not a huge problem anyway (although it might be a bigger problem when that chunk is pinned - I dunno). BTW, I've always been surprised by the OOMEs on BitMap creation because I knew the bitmaps were much smaller than the available memory, as did you - now I know why. Sorry I thought this was an easy solve at first.