At the top of my sketch, I name an object that will be called from various other places/methods:

Code:

MovieMaker movie; 

I don't instantiate the object yet, not even in setup(), because I won't have the information I need for that until later (say, 30 seconds after the sketch starts running).  So, at a certain point of time, I have a method that gathers the right info and instantiates the object:

Code:

movie = new MovieMaker(applet, width, height, "video" + currentRecordingID + ".mov", 15, MovieMaker.ANIMATION, MovieMaker.HIGH); 

Then I record frames for my movie object, and eventually I call:

Code:

movie.finish(); 

The thing is, I want to reuse this object called "movie" again and again, to make new recordings.  I don't want to use an array of MovieMaker objects, for various reasons.  So my question is, what is the best way to delete/overwrite/recycle an existing, named object ("movie") re-instantiating it, as though it were a new object?

I have tried simply instantiating again, as in "movie = new MovieMaker(...)", but then got this error, which may or may not be related:

Code:

java(442,0xa041e720) malloc: *** error for object 0x42f34490: double free
*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug 

Is there a way to "clear out" an object, or un-instantiate it?  Thanks!

Looks like an error in the QT runtime (C language error).

Looking at MovieMaker.java, I see a dispose() function which does the finish() but also a QTSession.close(). Since the QTSession is created when doing new MovieMaker, it might be the way to go.

In general, the = new Object is enough, the old one looses its reference so is a candidate for garbage collection (GC).
The = null is rarely used but might be a hint if you no longer plan to use this variable and want quicker GC. It should not be useful if you reuse the var.