Using an Animated GIF/JPEGs Effectively

Question

I have an animated GIF in an applet with around 200 frames, moving at a speed of 6 frames per second. However, when just drawing it in paint(), it looks extremely messy with the flashing. Then I tried another tack, and exported the gif as 200 jpeg files and used double buffering to draw it in a JPanel with the following code:
public void load()
     images = new ImageIcon[numImages];
     for (int i=0; i<images.length; i++)
          String num = "" + i;
          if (num.length() == 1)
               num = "00" + i;
          if (num.length() == 2)
               num = "0" + i;
          images[i] = new ImageIcon(dir + imageNm + num + ".jpg");
     setSize(getPreferredSize());
     startAnim();
public void paintComponent(Graphics g)
     super.paintComponent(g);
     if (images[currentImage].getImageLoadStatus() == MediaTracker.COMPLETE)
          images[currentImage].paintIcon(this, g, 0, 0);
          currentImage = (currentImage + 1) % numImages;
public void startAnim()
     if (animTimer == null)
          currentImage = 0;
          animTimer = new Timer(animDelay, this);
          animTimer.start();
     else if (!animTimer.isRunning())
          animTimer.restart();
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
     if (currentImage == numImages-1)
          stopAnim();
     repaint();
public void stopAnim()
     animTimer.stop();
}However, the outOfMemory Exception appears after loading approximately the first 50 stills. Any suggestions, besides having to extend the memory usage?

Answer 1

deltacoder, I tried what you suggested in the code below, to keep the images inside an array of 20 and to rotate them as soon as the image is displayed.
public void init()
     images = new ImageIcon[20];
     for (int i=0; i<20; i++)
          String num = "" + i;
          if (num.length() == 1)
               num = "00" + num;
          if (num.length() == 2)
               num = "0" + num;
          images[i] = new ImageIcon(dir + imageNm + num + ".jpg");
public void paintComponent(Graphics g)
     super.paintComponent(g);
     if (images[currentImage%20].getImageLoadStatus() == MediaTracker.COMPLETE)
          images[currentImage%20].paintIcon(this, g, 0, 0);
          if (currentImage < (numImages-21))
               String numStr = "" + (currentImage + 20);
               if (numStr.length() == 1)
                    numStr = "00" + numStr;
               if (numStr.length() == 2)
                    numStr = "0" + numStr;
               images[currentImage%20] = new ImageIcon(dir + imageNm + numStr + ".jpg");
          currentImage++;
}However, for some reason, it is still laggy. Can you perhaps see why from my code? must41, I am also working on your suggestion. In your thread for loading images, shouldn't there be some sleep time? Otherwise, the thread might get ahead of itself and cause outofmemory exception. And from what I know, whenever garbage collect runs, the code will run laggier than usual no matter what. Perhaps, I should have mentioned earlier, but there is also an AudioClip playing in the background (which does take up memory itself) that I like to match to the images (which i know will match because i made the animation using Flash MX), which is why I can't afford the lag from the garbage collecting.
Perhaps there is a way to combine both of your suggestions?