Thanks for sharing! These things are always interesting.

We've had some similar programs on the forum before, see for example here.

When I stress-test this code @ 1920x1080 I notice that there are a lot of missing frames. At frameCount 500 there are only 58 frames saved, so almost 90% is lost. The reason is most likely that the threads are not synced. So draw() in this test-case is much faster than the FrameSaver apparantly. So the good news is that saveFrame no longer holds up the program. The bad news is that not all frames are saved.

90% is really bad news 

Ok it's the third time I write this message. it's too late for me… 

I wanted to improve this a little and found a workaround: 

It has some limitation due to OutOfMemoryError (handled with try/catch) and slow down a bit on too large images (full HD), but it doesn't skip frames… 

basically there's an ArrayList of PImages ( a store ) keeping a copy of every frame and a FrameSaver instance looking at it. 

hit ' r ' to start adding images onto the store and start the FrameSaver

hit ' r ' again to stop adding frames to the store and to tell FrameSaver to prepare himself to quit, the quit() method is called from within the run() method, because a call at it when re-pressed ' r ' key could cause the saver not to save every frame we wanted to. 

some further improvement could be erasing image from the store when saved, but have to mess with CurrentModificationException

or

Use two arrays filled with a certain amount of images alternatively (e.g. first store: img from 0 to 99, second store with img from 100 to 199, then the first aging with img from 200 to 299 and so on) and feed the Saver switching form one store to another when all images are saved).

And also we could find a way to prevent the sketch to close if the store contains unsaved images, maybe overriding void stop(), but I don't know ho to do it.

Hope this can help.

here's the code:

1. class FrameSaver extends Thread {
2. 
   
3.   boolean running;
4.   ArrayList<PImage> store;
5.   int indexSaved;
6.   int index;
7.   boolean canQuit;
8. 
   
9.   public FrameSaver (ArrayList<PImage> s) {
10.     store = s;
11.     running = false;
12.     index = 0;
13.     indexSaved = 0;
14.     println("\nREADY TO GO !!!\npress 'r' to start recording");
15.   }
16. 
    
17.   public void start() {
18.     canQuit = false;
19.     running = true;
20.     index = frameCount+1;//because it will start saving on the next frame
21.     println("recording frames from frame # "+ index);
22.     indexSaved = 0;
23.     try {
24.       super.start();
25.     }
26.     catch(java.lang.IllegalThreadStateException itse) {
27.       println("cannot execute! ->"+itse);
28.     }
29.   }
30. 
    
31.   public void run() {
32.     while (running) {
33.       if (store.size()>indexSaved) {
34.         try {
35.           store.get(indexSaved).save(dataPath("fromArrayList/frame"+nf(index, 3)+".tiff"));
36.           index++;
37.           indexSaved++;
38.         }
39.         catch(Exception e) {
40.           println("error with "+e);
41.         }
42.       }
43.       else {
44.         quit();
45.       }
46.     }
47.   }
48. 
    
49.   public void quit() {
50.     if (canQuit) {
51.       println("now executing quit() !");
52.       running = false;  
53.       interrupt();
54.       canQuit = false;
55.       imgStore = new ArrayList<PImage>();
56.       fs=new FrameSaver(imgStore);
57.     }
58.   }
59. }

That's a perfect workaround! No frame drop and frameRate > 40 fps. 

Ciao from Italy (too) :)
I tried using two FrameSavers, but maybe it's not a good implementation. The framerate is good but the computer hangs too much. I'll use yours!

Really useful. Thanks for sharing.

Ale · http://60rpm.tv/i