QR Code encoding and decoding using zxing

Okay, so I'm going to take the off chance that someone here has used zxing before. I'm developing a Java application, and one of the things it needs to do is encode a byte array of data into a QR Code and then decode it at a later time.

Here's an example of what my encoder looks like:

byte[] b = {0x48, 0x45, 0x4C, 0x4C, 0x4F};
//convert the byte array into a UTF-8 string
String data;
try {
    data = new String(b, "UTF8");
}
catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
 //the program shouldn't be able to get here
 return;
}

//get a byte matrix for the data
ByteMatrix matrix;
com.google.zxing.Writer writer = new QRCodeWriter();
try {
 matrix = writer.encode(data, com.google.zxing.BarcodeFormat.QR_CODE, width, height);
}
catch (com.google.zxing.WriterException e) {
 //exit the method
 return;
}

//generate an image from the byte matrix
int width = matrix.getWidth(); 
int height = matrix.getHeight(); 

byte[][] array = matrix.getArray();

//create buffered image to draw to
BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);

//iterate through the matrix and draw the pixels to the image
for (int y = 0; y < height; y++) { 
 for (int x = 0; x < width; x++) { 
  int grayValue = array[y][x] & 0xff; 
  image.setRGB(x, y, (grayValue == 0 ? 0 : 0xFFFFFF));
 }
}

//write the image to the output stream
ImageIO.write(image, "png", outputStream);

The beginning byte array in this code is just used to test it. The actual byte data will be varied.

Here's what my decoder looks like:

//get the data from the input stream
BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(inputStream);

//convert the image to a binary bitmap source
LuminanceSource source = new BufferedImageLuminanceSource(image);
BinaryBitmap bitmap = new BinaryBitmap(new HybridBinarizer(source));

//decode the barcode
QRCodeReader reader = new QRCodeReader();

Result result;
try {
 result = reader.decode(bitmap, hints);
} catch