Re: updating an ImageIcon's backing BufferedImage content from multiple threads

From:
Knute Johnson <nospam@rabbitbrush.frazmtn.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:28:20 -0700
Message-ID:
<49d8f844$0$19533$b9f67a60@news.newsdemon.com>
cbossens73@yahoo.fr wrote:

Hi all,

I'd like to use a JLabel's ImageIcon and modify that ImageIcon from
multiple threads.

The ImageIcon is created by passing its constructor a BufferedImage.

I tried to search the Javadocs for BufferedImage/ImageIcon/
MediaTracker
but I didn't find anything really helpful.

All I found was lots of discussiong about people writing 2D Java
games,
which is not my case at all. These discussion enter into technical
details
like VRAM, -Dnoddraw=true affecting VRAM caching, etc.

I'd rather *not* have to deal with those low level details.

What I need is to update the pixels (using BufferedImage's setRGB
(...)
method) from a JLabel's ImageIcon (when creating an ImageIcon from
a BufferedImage) from multiple threads.

I'm making test on OS X 10.4 / JVM 1.5 and I don't know if I'm
seeing things or not: simply modifying the BufferedImage from any
thread
and calling repaint() on the JLabel isn't enough. I'm apparently
seeing
non-updated (old) copies from my BufferedImage depending on the
thread which I'm updating the BufferedImage from.

At this point I'm considering queueing all the modifications "orders"
that
need to be done on my BufferedImage and dequeue them from a unique
thread, ensuring that this thread always sees the one and only
BufferedImage
and then, once the "order queue" is empty, create a new BufferedImage
and
changing the JLabel's ImageIcon to a new ImageIcon(myImage). But this
seems overkill. Would there be a simpler way?

What are the guarantees made regarding a BufferedImage's content
when it's updated from several threads?

More generally, what are the gotchas I should be aware off when
manipulating the pixels of a BufferedImage from multiple threads?

Any infos would be greatly appreciated,

Charles


import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.awt.image.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
import javax.imageio.*;
import javax.swing.*;

public class test extends JPanel implements Runnable {
     final BufferedImage[] bi = new BufferedImage[4];
     final ImageIcon icon;

     public test() throws Exception {
         for (int i=0; i<bi.length; i++) {
             URL url = new URL(
 
"http://rabbitbrush.frazmtn.com/"+Integer.toString(i+1)+".jpg");
             bi[i] = ImageIO.read(url);
         }
         icon = new ImageIcon(bi[0]);
         JLabel label = new JLabel(icon);
         add(label);
     }

     public void run() {
         while (true) {
             for (int i=0; i<bi.length; i++) {
                 icon.setImage(bi[i]);
                 repaint();
                 try {
                     Thread.sleep(1000);
                 } catch (Exception e) {
                     e.printStackTrace();
                 }
             }
         }
     }

     public static void main(String[] args) {
         EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
             public void run() {
                 try {
                     JFrame f = new JFrame();
                     f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                     test t = new test();
                     f.add(t,BorderLayout.CENTER);
                     f.pack();
                     f.setVisible(true);
                     new Thread(t).start();
                 } catch (Exception e) {
                     e.printStackTrace();
                 }
             }
         });
     }
}

--

Knute Johnson
email s/nospam/knute2009/

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