How to actually see a Bitmap taken from an Android heap dump

Question

In the process of tracking severe memory issues in my app, I looked at several heap dumps from my app, and most of the time I have a HUGE bitmap that I don't know of.

It takes 9.4MB, or 9,830,400 bytes, or actually a 1280x1920 image at 4 bytes per pixels.

I checked in Eclipse MAT, it is indeed a byte[9830400], that has one incoming reference which is a android.graphics.Bitmap.

I'd like to dump this to a file and try to see it. I can't understand where is it coming from. My biggest image in all my drawables is a 640x960 png, which takes less than 3MB.

I tried to use Eclipse to "copy value to file", but I think it simply prints the buffer to the file, and I don't know any image software that can read a stream of bytes and display it as a 4 bytes per pixel image.

Any idea?

Here's what I tried: dump the byte array to a file, push it to /sdcard/img, and load an activity like this:

@Override
public void onCreate(final Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    try {
        final File inputFile = new File("/sdcard/img");
        final FileInputStream isr = new FileInputStream(inputFile);
        final Bitmap bmp = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(isr);
        ImageView iv = new ImageView(this);
        iv.setImageBitmap(bmp);
        setContentView(iv);
        Log.d("ImageTest", "Image was inflated");
    } catch (final FileNotFoundException e) {
        Log.d("ImageTest", "Image was not inflated");
    }
}

I didn't see anything.

Do you know how is encoded the image? Say it is stored into byte[] buffer. buffer[0] is red, buffer[1] is green, etc?

Answer 1

See here for an easier answer: MAT (Eclipse Memory Analyzer) - how to view bitmaps from memory dump

TL;DR - Install GIMP and load the image as raw RGB Alpha

Answer 2

OK -- After quite some unsuccessful tries, I finally got something out of this byte array. I wrote this simple C program to convert the byte array to a Windows Bitmap file. I'm dropping the code in case somebody is interested.
I compiled this against VisualC 6.0 and gcc 3.4.4, it should work on any OS (tested on Windows, Linux and MacOS X).

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

/* Types */
typedef unsigned char byte;
typedef unsigned short uint16_t;
typedef unsigned int uint32_t;
typedef int int32_t;

/* Constants */
#define RMASK 0x00ff0000
#define GMASK 0x0000ff00
#define BMASK 0x000000ff
#define AMASK 0xff000000

/* Structures */
struct bmpfile_magic {
  unsigned char magic[2];
};

struct bmpfile_header {
  uint32_t filesz;
  uint16_t creator1;
  uint16_t creator2;
  uint32_t bmp_offset;
};

struct bmpfile_dibheader {
  uint32_t header_sz;
  uint32_t width;
  uint32_t height;
  uint16_t nplanes;
  uint16_t bitspp;
  uint32_t compress_type;
  uint32_t bmp_bytesz;
  int32_t hres;
  int32_t vres;
  uint32_t ncolors;
  uint32_t nimpcolors;

  uint32_t rmask, gmask, bmask, amask;
  uint32_t colorspace_type;
  byte colorspace[0x24];
  uint32_t rgamma, ggamma, bgamma;
};

/* Displays usage info and exits */
void usage(char *cmd) {
    printf("Usage:\t%s <img_src> <img_dest.bmp> <width> <height>\n"
        "\timg_src:\timage byte buffer obtained from Eclipse MAT, using 'copy > save value to file' while selecting the byte[] buffer corresponding to an android.graphics.Bitmap\n"
        "\timg_dest:\tpath to target *.bmp file\n"
        "\twidth:\t\tpicture width, obtained in Eclipse MAT, selecting the android.graphics.Bitmap object and seeing the object member values\n"
        "\theight:\t\tpicture height\n\n", cmd);
    exit(1);
}

/* C entry point */
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    FILE *in, *out;
    char *file_in, *file_out;
    int w, h, W, H;
    byte r, g, b, a, *image;
    struct bmpfile_magic magic;
    struct bmpfile_header header;
    struct bmpfile_dibheader dibheader;

    /* Parse command line */
    if (argc < 5) {
        usage(argv[0]);
    }
    file_in = argv[1];
    file_out = argv[2];
    W = atoi(argv[3]);
    H = atoi(argv[4]);
    in = fopen(file_in, "rb");
    out = fopen(file_out, "wb");

    /* Check parameters */
    if (in == NULL || out == NULL || W == 0 || H == 0) {
        usage(argv[0]);
    }

    /* Init BMP headers */
    magic.magic[0] = 'B';
    magic.magic[1] = 'M';

    header.filesz = W * H * 4 + sizeof(magic) + sizeof(header) + sizeof(dibheader);
    header.creator1 = 0;
    header.creator2 = 0;
    header.bmp_offset = sizeof(magic) + sizeof(header) + sizeof(dibheader);

    dibheader.header_sz = sizeof(dibheader);
    dibheader.width = W;
    dibheader.height = H;
    dibheader.nplanes = 1;
    dibheader.bitspp = 32;
    dibheader.compress_type = 3;
    dibheader.bmp_bytesz = W * H * 4;
    dibheader.hres = 2835;
    dibheader.vres = 2835;
    dibheader.ncolors = 0;
    dibheader.nimpcolors = 0;
    dibheader.rmask = RMASK;
    dibheader.gmask = BMASK;
    dibheader.bmask = GMASK;
    dibheader.amask = AMASK;
    dibheader.colorspace_type = 0x57696e20;
    memset(&dibheader.colorspace, 0, sizeof(dibheader.colorspace));
    dibheader.rgamma = dibheader.bgamma = dibheader.ggamma = 0;

    /* Read picture data */
    image = (byte*) malloc(4*W*H);
    if (image == NULL) {
        printf("Could not allocate a %d-byte buffer.\n", 4*W*H);
        exit(1);
    }
    fread(image, 4*W*H, sizeof(byte), in);
    fclose(in);

    /* Write header */
    fwrite(&magic, sizeof(magic), 1, out);
    fwrite(&header, sizeof(header), 1, out);
    fwrite(&dibheader, sizeof(dibheader), 1, out);

    /* Convert the byte array to BMP format */
    for (h = H-1; h >= 0; h--) {
        for (w = 0; w < W; w++) {
            r = *(image + w*4 + 4 * W * h);
            b = *(image + w*4 + 4 * W * h + 1);
            g = *(image + w*4 + 4 * W * h + 2);
            a = *(image + w*4 + 4 * W * h + 3);

            fwrite(&b, 1, 1, out);
            fwrite(&g, 1, 1, out);
            fwrite(&r, 1, 1, out);
            fwrite(&a, 1, 1, out);
        }
    }

    free(image);
    fclose(out);
}

So using this tool I was able to recognise the picture used to generate this 1280x1920 bitmap.

Answer 3

I found that starting from latest version of Android Studio (2.2.2 as of writing), you can view the bitmap file directly:

1. Open the ‘Android Monitor’ tab (at the bottom left) and then Memory tab.

2. Press the ‘Dump Java Heap’ button

3. Choose the ‘Bitmap’ Class Name for the current snapshot, select each Instance of bitmap and view what image exactly consume more memory than expected. (screens 4 and 5)

4. Choose the Bitmap class name…

5. Select each Instance of bitmap

and right click on it, select View Bitmap

Answer 4

Just take the input to the image and convert it into a bitmap object by using the fileinput stream/datastream. Also add logs for seeing data for each image that gets used.

Answer 5

You could enable an usb connection and copy the file to an other computer with more tools to investigate.

Some devices could be configured to dump the current screen to file system when the start button is pressed. Maybe this happens to you.