iOS - UIImageView animation memory leak?

Question

I am currently using a UIImageView to animate a series of images depending on a button pressed by the user. I have about 5 different sets of images, that i have created in NSArrays , such as this:

-(void)initiateAnimations {

punchani = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0001.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0002.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0003.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0004.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0005.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0006.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0007.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0008.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0009.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0010.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0011.png"],
           [UIImage imageNamed:@"punch0012.png"],nil];
}

And then i am using the standard animation code to loop them once:

player.animationImages = punchani;
player.animationDuration = 0.50;
player.animationRepeatCount = 1;
[player startAnimating];

However, as i load more and more/different images into the UIImageView , i eventually get an output that a Memory warning as follows: (subsituted my actual executable with 'appname')

 2013-03-15 20:52:23.065 AppName[2080:907] Received memory warning.

I knew this would probably happen, but ARC forbids me from releasing the arrays. How can i fix this leak? thanks

Answer 1

UIImage imageNamed: caches the images and will release the memory on it's own schedule. Use + (UIImage *)imageWithContentsOfFile:(NSString *)path to load memory directly

Try this answer as well. Remove array of images when animation is over