Memory Leak in Processing

Question

Using Processing, I am working on a project that pairs video clips and strings from a txt file at random. Whenever I run the program, eventually it stops and I receive a mess of the same error:

JNA: Callback org.gstreamer.elements.AppSink$3@1bf404f threw the following exception: java.lang.OutofMemoryError: Java heap space

I am suspecting that there is a memory leak with how I am handling the creation and deallocation of my Movie object, but I can't figure out what's wrong. setup() is where I first instantiate the Movie object in order to prep for the first iteration. In my draw(), to me it looks like I am resetting the Movie object to null each time before instantiating it again, which to my mind should take care of the memory issue but that does not seem to be the case.

Can anyone provide a solution? In my preferences, I do have my memory increased to 256 MB but I know that increasing the memory only delays the inevitable error. Thank You!

Here is my code:

import processing.video.*;

PFont font;

String[] posts; // strings loaded in setup()
String[] videos = {"1a.mov", "2a.mov", "3a.mov", "4a.mov", "5a.mov", "6a.mov",
                    "7a.mov", "8a.mov", "9a.mov"}; // video clips

String post;
Post first; // First post
Post p; // Next iteration of posts

Movie myMovie;
String clip;
int count; // Iteration counter

int a = 0; // image()
float duration = 0; // Movie duration
float time = 0; // Movie time

void setup(){

  size(displayWidth, displayHeight);
  background(0);

  posts = loadStrings("posts.txt"); // load strings from file
  font = loadFont("HelveticaNeue-Bold-48.vlw"); // load font
  post = posts[int(random(posts.length))]; // use random post

  textFont(font); // Set text font
  textSize(50);
  textAlign(CENTER);
  fill(255, 248, 43); // Yellow fill

  if (frame != null){
    frame.setResizable(true); // resizable window
  }  

  /** Random generation of initial clip and post */
  clip = videos[int(random(videos.length))];
  myMovie = new Movie(this, clip);
  makeTint();
  myMovie.play();
  count++;
  first = new Post(post);
  println("Playing clip: " + clip + " w/ post: " + "\"" + post + "\"");
  println("Iteration: " + count + "\n");
}

/** Will generate random clips and posts after initial clip **/
void draw(){

  if (a == 0){
    image(myMovie, 0, 0);
  }

  image(myMovie, 0, 0);

  duration = myMovie.duration();
  time = myMovie.time();

  /** If clip is at end **/
  if ((duration - time) < 0.1){

    first = null; // Remove first post

    /** Reset clip **/
    clip = null;
    myMovie = null;
    clip = videos[int(random(videos.length))];
    myMovie = new Movie(this, clip);
    count++;

    makeTint();
    myMovie.play();

    /** Reset post **/
    p = null;
    post = posts[int(random(posts.length))];

    println("Playing clip: " + clip + " w/ post: " + "\"" + post + "\"");
    println("Post length: " + post.length());
    println("Iteration: " + count + "\n");

  }
    p = new Post(post);
}

/** Method needed to play clips **/
void movieEvent(Movie m){  
  m.read();  
}

/** Class for displaying post **/
class Post{

  /*******************************************\
   * Function: Post Object Constructor
   * Parameter Description:
   *-----------------------------------------
   * t, text to display
  \*******************************************/
  Post(String t){
    text(t, width/2, height - 150);  
  }

}

Answer 1

Movie has a dispose() method that appears to clean up all the gstreamer allocations. I suspect this may be cause.

In your code try calling: myMovie.dispose(); before set myMovie = null it.

Some times you need to dive into the source code to see all that's available: https://github.com/processing/processing/blob/master/java/libraries/video/src/processing/video/Movie.java

**Also increasing the app memory is perfectly reasonable for general use. 256MB is quite small, mine is set to 1024MB. But i'd fix this leak first before raising it.

Answer 2

I'm facing the same problem, and for me at least the disposte() method didn't solve the issue.

By testing and checking the memory used, I saw that the stop() and loop() functions keep increasing the memory.

The solution I found, is to use jump(0) once the video was over instead of loop() function and pause() and jump(0) instead of the stop().

This stopped the memory leak for me.