BitmapFactory.Options.inBitmap causes tearing when switching ImageView bitmap often

Question

I\'ve encountered a situation where I have to display images in a slideshow that switches image very fast. The sheer number of images makes me want to store the JPEG data in mem

Answer 1

You need to do the following things in order to get rid of this problem.

1. Add an extra bitmap to prevent situations when ui thread draws a bitmap while another thread is modifying it.
2. Implement threads synchronization to prevent situations when background thread tries to decode a new bitmap, but the previous one wasn't shown by the ui thread.

I've modified your code a bit and now it works fine for me.

package com.example.TearingExample;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.graphics.Bitmap;
import android.graphics.BitmapFactory;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.Button;
import android.widget.ImageView;

import java.util.ArrayList;

public class MainActivity extends Activity {
    ArrayList images = new ArrayList();

    private Bitmap[] buffers = new Bitmap[2];
    private volatile Bitmap current;

    private final Object lock = new Object();
    private volatile boolean ready = true;

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);

        images.add(R.drawable.black);
        images.add(R.drawable.blue);
        images.add(R.drawable.green);
        images.add(R.drawable.grey);
        images.add(R.drawable.orange);
        images.add(R.drawable.pink);
        images.add(R.drawable.red);
        images.add(R.drawable.white);
        images.add(R.drawable.yellow);

        final ImageView imageView = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.image);
        final Button goButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button);

        goButton.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
            @Override
            public void onClick(View v) {
                Runnable runnable = new Runnable() {
                    @Override
                    public void run() {
                        int position = 0;
                        int index = 0;

                        while (true) {
                            try {
                                synchronized (lock) {
                                    while (!ready) {
                                        lock.wait();
                                    }
                                    ready = false;
                                }

                                BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();

                                options.inSampleSize = 1;
                                options.inBitmap = buffers[index];

                                buffers[index] = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), images.get(position), options);
                                current = buffers[index];

                                runOnUiThread(new Runnable() {
                                    @Override
                                    public void run() {
                                        imageView.setImageBitmap(current);
                                        synchronized (lock) {
                                            ready = true;
                                            lock.notifyAll();
                                        }
                                    }
                                });

                                position = (position + 1) % images.size();
                                index = (index + 1) % buffers.length;

                                Thread.sleep(5);
                            } catch (InterruptedException ignore) {
                            }
                        }
                    }
                };
                Thread t = new Thread(runnable);
                t.start();
            }
        });
    }
}