WPF Animation "Cannot freeze this Storyboard timeline tree for use across threads"

Question

I currently have a listbox that has its selected item bound to a property on my ViewModel. Whenever the selected item isn't null I want to perform an animation on it. However I keep getting the following error "Cannot freeze this Storyboard timeline tree for use across threads" and from research sort of understand why this is happening. However I am unsure of what approach I need to take to get the behavior I want.

<Storyboard x:Key="ShowItemEdit">
    <DoubleAnimation
        Storyboard.TargetName="lstItemList"
        Storyboard.TargetProperty="ListBox.Width"
        To="{Binding ActualWidth, ElementName=UserControl}"
        Duration="0:0:0.40" />
    ...
</Storyboard>

<Style x:Key="ListStyle">
    <Style.Triggers>
        <DataTrigger Binding="{Binding SelectedItem, Converter={StaticResource IsNullConverter}}" Value="False">
            <DataTrigger.EnterActions>
            <BeginStoryboard Storyboard="{StaticResource ShowItemEdit}" />
        </DataTrigger.EnterActions>
        </DataTrigger>
     </Style.Triggers>
</Style>

<ListBox x:Name="lstItemList" Style={StaticResource ListStyle}" SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedItem}">
    ...
</ListBox>

Drew Marsh · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-03T20:51:40.497

43

Can you post your Storyboard? It sounds like you have some kind of Binding in the Storyboard definition.

Ok so, as I suspected, it's because you're using a Binding in your Storyboard. You can't do this because WPF attempts to freeze all the resources leveraged by a template for efficiency and when you use a Binding on a Freezable, in this case the Storyboard, it prevents it from being able to be frozen.

edited Nov 03 '09 at 20:51

answered Nov 03 '09 at 20:00

Drew Marsh

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I added the storyboard code. I do bind the 'To' property since I don't want to hardcode the width. – jwarzech Nov 03 '09 at 20:43
1

That's your problem then, I will explain. – Drew Marsh Nov 03 '09 at 20:47
Thanks for the explanation! Any suggestion on how I can achieve this storyboard (with binding) without having to connect the datatrigger to the control? – jwarzech Nov 03 '09 at 21:26
Ehhh, based on what I can guess you're trying to do with the animation how about instead of setting a Width on the the ListBox you set it's HorizontalAlignment to Stretch and then give it a Margin and this storyboard animates the Margin to 0 instead of the Width to the ActualWidth of the UserControl? – Drew Marsh Nov 03 '09 at 22:33
3

This happened to me not due Binding, but using Dynamicresources! Thanks for the hint! – dba Dec 02 '15 at 08:52
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This happened to me too with DynamicResources. How can I use dynamic resources in this case? I need to reference a colour which I have in a Resource Dictionary – Ben Hayward Nov 11 '17 at 12:32

score 11 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

11

There is a technique that you can use to get around the Freezable issue that allows you to use a binding for the "To" value of your animation (rather than hard-coding a value there). Its pretty straightforward and I've outlined it here.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

Community

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answered Jan 30 '13 at 16:34

Jason Frank

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score 3 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

3

Old question but might be useful for other people. Sometimes creating the Storyboard in the code-behind can be simpler: https://stackoverflow.com/a/10848781/779521

edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

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answered Jun 01 '12 at 10:44

Sverrir Sigmundarson

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WPF Animation "Cannot freeze this Storyboard timeline tree for use across threads"

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