How to display the same image twice?

programming flash
1

Hello!

I would like to know how could I display the same image I loaded (with Loader) twice on the screen. AddChild dont accept repeated instances, what should I do? Copy the Image? Wont that be slow?
What if I have the GIFPlayer class, I loaded a gif with it, I want to add it twice on the screen, loading more than once could be slow! What should I do?

I searched and found that for Bitmaps I can do this:


        public function duplicateImage(target:Bitmap):Bitmap
        {
            var bitmapCopy:Bitmap = new Bitmap(target.bitmapData);
            return bitmapCopy;
        }

But I didnt tested it to see if its fast enought to create when the game is running.

With gifs, I found a solution, to use the GIFPlayer.loadBytes(), so it will create another GIFPlayer. BUT, if I do this while the game is playing I notice that it is slow, my game hangs when it creates a “copy” when dealing with larger gifs.

I dont know how to solve this, I cant add the same object instance twice to the display list. I was used to program in C, using SDL. There was a function that draws things to screen using a reference to the bitmap data, so I could draw thousands of the same images on the screen with only one bitmap instace :confused:

The GIFPlayer I got from here: http://www.bytearray.org/?p=95

Anyway to solve this? Thank you :stuck_out_tongue: