Memory exception in image processing loop (Need better solution than GC.collect)

Question

I am making a small application that shows a live webcam feed in a windows form, and also stores watermarked images to drive at a specified interval (Creating a timelapse video is the end goal).

I am using the AForge library for image and video processing.

I have problems were there seems to be a memory leak, even though i try to make sure to use "using" statements at every location where image processing occurs.

Below is the code were the image processing takes place (The NewFrame event)

    private void Video_NewFrame(object sender, NewFrameEventArgs eventArgs)
    {
        try
        {
            if (ImageProcessing) // If the previous frame is not done processing, let this one go
                return;
            else
                ImageProcessing = true;

            using (Bitmap frame = (Bitmap)eventArgs.Frame)
            {
                // Update the GUI picturebox to show live webcam feed
                Invoke((Action)(() =>
                {
                    webcam_PictureBox.Image = (Bitmap)frame.Clone();
                }));

                // During tests, store images to drive at a certain interval
                if (ImageStoreTimer.Elapsed.TotalSeconds > ImageStoreTime)
                {
                    DateTime dt = DateTime.Now;

                    using (Graphics graphics = Graphics.FromImage(frame))
                    {
                        PointF firstLocation = new PointF(frame.Width / 2, frame.Height / 72);
                        PointF secondLocation = new PointF(frame.Width / 2, frame.Height / 15);

                        StringFormat drawFormat = new StringFormat();
                        drawFormat.Alignment = StringAlignment.Center;

                        using (Font arialFont = new Font("Arial", 15))
                        {
                            graphics.DrawString(dt.ToString(), arialFont, Brushes.Red, firstLocation, drawFormat);
                            graphics.DrawString(Pressure.ToString("F0") + " mbar", arialFont, Brushes.Red, secondLocation, drawFormat);
                        }
                    }

                    // Place images in a folder with the same name as the test
                    string filePath = Application.StartupPath + "\\" + TestName + "\\";
                    // Name images by number 1....N
                    string fileName = (Directory.GetFiles(filePath).Length + 1).ToString() + ".jpeg";

                    frame.Save(filePath + fileName, ImageFormat.Jpeg);
                    ImageStoreTimer.Restart();
                }
            }
            //GC.Collect(); <----- I dont want this
        }
        catch
        {
            if (ProgramClosing == true){}
                // Empty catch for exceptions caused by the program being closed incorrectly
            else
                throw;
        }
        finally
        {
            ImageProcessing = false;
        }
    }       

Now, when running the program, i see memory usage going up and down, usually it gets to about 900MB before dropping. But occasionally it will rise to 2GB. Occasionally, i even get an out of memory exception at this line:

Graphics graphics = Graphics.FromImage(frame)

So after spending an hour or so to trying to reshape the code and looking for my memory leak, i at last tried the GC.Collect line that is commented out in the code (Shame). After that, my memory usage stays constant, at less than 60MB. And i can run the program for 24 hours without any problems.

So i read a bit about GC.Collect, and how bad it is, for example that it could take a lot of processing power to do it to often in a program. But when i compare the CPU power used by my program, it does not really change regardless if i comment the line out or leave it. But the memory problem is gone if i collect at the end of the new frame event.

I would like to find a solution to my problem that does not involve the GC.collect function, as i know it is bad programming practice and i should instead find the underlying problem source.

Thank you all in advance!

Answer 1

I'm not good with win forms but I think that this line:

webcam_PictureBox.Image = (Bitmap)frame.Clone();

Will leave previous image undisposed, which leaks memory (unmanaged memory hold by Bitmap). Since Bitmap has finalizer - it will be reclaimed by GC at some future time (or when you call GC.Collect), but as you already understand - it's not a good practice to rely on GC in such case. So try to do it like this instead:

if (webcam_PictureBox.Image != null)
    webcam_PictureBox.Image.Dispose();
webcam_PictureBox.Image = (Bitmap)frame.Clone();

Reasonable comment by Larse: it might be better to not dispose image while it's still being assigned to PictureBox.Image, because who knows, maybe PictureBox control does anything with old image when you are assigning a new one. So alternative is then:

var oldImage = webcam_PictureBox.Image;
webcam_PictureBox.Image = (Bitmap)frame.Clone();
if (oldImage != null)
    oldImage.Dispose();

Answer 2

This worked well for us, https://stackoverflow.com/a/70914235/10876657 before that, we tried using statements and all sorts but one solution might work on one machine, but not on the other, but by referencing the image currently set in picturebox and disposing of it afterwords has worked well, not entirely sure why picture.image is not disposed of automatically when a new image is set (frustrating!) but hey, at least this simple workaround exists