[PD] GEM: pix_image reloading image already loaded

[Etienne Desautels]

Hi all,

I did for an interactive video installation a pd-GEM patch, a kind of 
video sequencer. I'm on mac os 10.3.5 with pd 0.37 and GEM 0.90. I use 
pix_image to load images on a rectangle and I have 2 problems with it.

First, pix_image have a system to keep each loaded image in the 
computer memory for using it later if you reload the _exact_ same 
image. But if you load a lot, say hundreds, of images, that will use a 
lot of memory. I'd like to know if there's a way to avoid this, a way 
to release this memory ?

Secondly, I think there's a bug in pix_image (and pix_multiimage also). 
It's suppose to use the data image in the cache if you reload the 
_exact_ same image, but it doesn't seem to work. That make my first 
problem even worst because each time you reload the same image, gem 
will put it another time in memory, so the memory will grow 
indefinitely. I did the test with pix_image and pix_multiimage and on 2 
different computers (powerbook 667 with an ATI and a dual G4 1GHz with 
an nVidia). Each time I reload the same image, I can see the memory 
usage of pd growing. The only way to release the memory is to quit pd. 
It's not an acceptable solution for me because my installation is 
running all day long and at some point PD hang because there's no more 
memory and swap.

You could try it by using the help patch of pix_image and keep 
reloading the same image and watching the memory usage of pd in top.

Thank you for your help.

Etienne