Vegas the Memory Vampire: doesn't release RAM back

lman wrote on 1/22/2008, 4:38 PM

Have you tried cacheman? It's a free utility... just google 'cacheman' to find a download site.

DJPadre wrote on 1/22/2008, 5:15 PM

my biggest issue i find with vegas is that if it crashes (yes it does break when u push it.. an di push it quite a bit...) its still running as an active task. In turn taking up Pagefle not to mention just sitting there on the bench in task manager.

Even an app killer which forces closure dont work with this.. u must reboot to get your memory back and that just annoys me to no end..

blink3times wrote on 1/22/2008, 5:41 PM

"Even an app killer which forces closure dont work with this.. u must reboot to get your memory back and that just annoys me to no end.."
=======================================

I can second that. Task manager won't even kill it. A bit of a pain to have to reboot after each crash!

MRe wrote on 1/22/2008, 11:27 PM

"Even an app killer which forces closure dont work with this.. u must reboot to get your memory back and that just annoys me to no end.."

Same here. Has anybody opened an error ticket for this? There is an utility in this site where you can collect the debug information from "hang" app which refuses to die. Probably next time I run it and post a support req with the debugging info.

And this behaviour has come with VP8, V7 never did this. Or is this a Vista thing?

megabit wrote on 1/22/2008, 11:35 PM

Cannot confirm this neither with V7 nor V8. If it ever crashes (and it happens really rarely), the RAM usage as shown by the TaskMan drops way down by almost 1GB, and there is no vegas process left over - never.

Perhaps you were running more than 1 instance of Vegas when it crashed?

ken c wrote on 1/23/2008, 12:51 AM

Although I haven't had issues with not being able to 'kill' Vegas via taskman if it crashes, I *always* have an issue of,

"my pc slows to a crawl after EVERY time I use Vegas, because it doesn't release RAM back to the system"

and that's simply not acceptable... programs like After Effects and Photoshop and Ultra and other apps never lock up memory and don't release it after the programs' been closed (or killed via taskman if need be)...but Vegas consistently, Always, no matter what pc I have used it on, for years, grabs a bunch of RAM and never releases it back, so I have to REBOOT after using Vegas, 100% of the time, to recover my RAM.

Sony, others - what's the story on this? Workaround? I'm tired of having to reboot my pc after Every single Vegas project (even tiny projects, like the one I did yesterday w/a 30-second intro clip and just a half-dozen media assets, rendered to avi, then the pc slows to a crawl til after reboot).

Is the "Vegas sucks up memory and doesn't release it, requiring me to reboot to reclaim memory" problem just me, or is it a problem with the application? None of my Adobe software does this, including AE etc.

thx,

Ken

MRe wrote on 1/23/2008, 1:13 AM

Perhaps you were running more than 1 instance of Vegas when it crashed?
Nope. VP8 crashed again just 5 mins ago (Vista reported that the app has stopped working and needs to be shut down). It left the Vegas-process up and running (Vegas is not shown on the Apps-list in Task Mgr but only in Processes after the crash). It took me also close to 5 minutes to reboot the machine.

I was testing with updated NuGen Visualizer and had just installed Neo HDV update (from Cineform). Might be related to these but may also be a Vista thing. Could the others tell which OS you are using.

My setup is Vista Pro Ultimate; Q6600; Intel BadAxe w. 4GB RAM.

DJPadre wrote on 1/23/2008, 1:58 AM

I can vouch that this happens with V6 V7 and V8
Its not a vista thing. Im running XP

The number of instances doesnt matter, as the broken instance of Vegas remains broken even after being closed. By remains broken i refer to Pagefile usage (ie it doesnt release it)
Ram on the other hand and CPU are dynamic and these arent an issue.

This has been happening since V6, i havent realy treid to break V5 recently so i cant say if it breaks here either..

Chienworks wrote on 1/23/2008, 4:13 AM

Very strange. I have never seen this happen, not with any version of Vegas under Win98SE or WinXP.

The only problem i have that's even slightly related is that VidCap continually uses more RAM as it runs. It does release it all when you exit or it crashes though.

Grazie wrote on 1/23/2008, 4:15 AM

"It does release it all when you exit or it crashes though." - Lol!!!

Hey, I'm starting to understand IT-wit!

farss wrote on 1/23/2008, 4:36 AM

I've seen this problem several times.
Easy enough to deal with. I used to have a .357 loaded with silver bullets however 6 months ago someone called the cops and I had a bit of explaining to do. Got out of OK when I explained I was having a problem with a vagrant vampire. Since then I've just gone back to the old stake and hammer approach.

Bob.

Sunflux wrote on 1/23/2008, 7:03 AM

Here's something I've noticed, and maybe it will help. When your computer slows to a crawl after using Vegas for a while on XP... after you've shut Vegas down do this:

1) Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up the Task Manager
2) End "explorer.exe"
3) This will cause your Taskbar to disappear. Normally WIndows will auto-launch explorer again, but if it does not from the Task Manager use File -> Run -> type in "explorer" and hit Enter.
4) See if your performance is better.

I never shut down my PC. And I've noticed that after a numer of days, always after I've been browsing through a lot of video clips, that my computer will be unexpectly laggy for no particular reason. Nothing in Task Manager shows any CPU usage, but everything is still slow. I discovered quite by accident that restarting explorer.exe completely solved this issue.

Chienworks wrote on 1/23/2008, 7:38 AM

Sunflux, i get *exactly* the same thing from time to time, but in my case under processes explorer.exe will show anywhere from 50% to 90% processor usage. Killing it and restarting it brings the whole system back to snappy.

pmooney wrote on 1/23/2008, 7:55 AM

I've never had any of the problems that are described here with Vegas. I've been using it on Windows XP since version 4 (am now using 8b).

This ranges from Pentium III machines all the way up to dual Xeon Quad Cores. Vegas has never slowed down any of these systems, except during a long render in the PIII days.

Are those of you experiencing the problem using XP with all the latest updates?

Are you using self-built computers?

Just wildly stabbing in the dark there. I've only used Dell computers since 2000, and they've been very reilable for me, even beyond their "normal" expected use life.

baysidebas wrote on 1/23/2008, 9:30 AM

Are you sure it isn't Vista? I run Vista on only one machine, my laptop, and IBM Lotus Notes client has NEVER shut down properly under Vista. It always gives me an "application stopped responding" error when exiting. Doesn't do that with any other version of Windows I run it under.

Kennymusicman wrote on 1/23/2008, 9:35 AM

It's not Vista because it's happening on XP machines too....

Also, Vista is generally better with memory and more able to fully terminate processes which go awol.

Ethan Winer wrote on 1/23/2008, 9:49 AM

> When your computer slows to a crawl after using Vegas for a while on XP... after you've shut Vegas down do this: <

I always ASSumed this was a problem with Quicktime Pro because I have similar problems after using QT independent of Vegas. I'll try ending and restarting explorer.exe the next time this happens and maybe that will save me having to reboot.

--Ethan

Terry Esslinger wrote on 1/23/2008, 10:40 AM

Those of you into Task Manager: A quick question from a dummy. In the CPU usage in the performance tab I have two lines a green one and a red one that show different levels. What does the red one signify?
Thanks

riredale wrote on 1/23/2008, 11:24 AM

No issues here. I am running V7d in an XPprosp2 environment.

I have a small freeware utility called RamPage sitting in my system tray. It shows the amount of unused ram at any given moment.

Open a smallish project, do an MPEG2 render, close the project, RamPage jumps back to where it was before. No change in my system's behavior afterwards, either. My system can stay up for weeks at a time with no ill effects from Vegas.

It has to be something else going on. Since I began using Vegas in 2002 I've never seen any memory leak issues associated with V3, V4, V6, or V7.

Kennymusicman wrote on 1/23/2008, 11:27 AM

Somewher along the lines, you have gone into view and specified "show kernel times"

Cliff Etzel wrote on 1/23/2008, 12:58 PM

Again, I must be one of those who hasn't experienced any of the issues others have.

I run x64 XP Pro with 4GB PC800 Dual Channel Ram with an AMD 3800X2 OC'd to 2.3Ghz. Gigabyte Motherboard, IDE drives, etc.

If you want to experience a Vampire, try Premiere Pro - I've seen it use as much as 2GB of RAM just playing back a rendered time line. Vegas has been rock solid for me so far and uses 1/3 the system resources so I'm not sure if I'm doing something special or what.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt

farss wrote on 1/23/2008, 1:48 PM

Sure PPro uses everything it can. The question is why doesn't Vegas. Editing video, especially HDV is always going to be resource intensive, if your NLE isn't using every resource it can find that's not good, it's a lazy NLE. Oddly enough last time we heard anything from SCS they were saying 4GB isn't enough RAM, hence the push for Win64.
Bob.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 1/23/2008, 9:18 PM

Yeah - it uses RAM, but with PPro 1.5.1 and 2.0, the CPU never got above about 65%. With Vegas - I can hit 95-99% CPU utilization. I've never used CS3 so I can't say.

I'd rather have my NLE utilizing the CPU more than RAM - but using both is ideal.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt

Sunflux wrote on 1/24/2008, 7:21 AM

There are several problems at work, as far as I can tell.

1) Windows seems to have a problem with AVI files (and possibly others - but not MPG), at least that's my experience for the past few years. The more individual files you click on, open or even preview, the more likely explorer.exe is going to eventually do something undesirable... use unexpected amounts of memory, high cpu usage, etc. Usually this results in slow system performance. Most users will never notice this as they don't keep their computer on long enough in a single stretch, or work with enough videos, for the problem to manifest itself.

2) Vegas has a problem relinquishing memory after a video file is opened. And I can't blame this particular issue entirely on the operating system, as shutting down Vegas does restore most memory that was occupied (for me at least).

In my experience Vegas 7 and Vegas 8 are much better at returning memory than Vegas 6 or Vegas 5. Like the first problem, I've noticed that this tends to be an issue more with AVI files (such as Cineform) than MPEG files. Each open file occupies some memory.

When rendering it's disturbing to watch the memory usage keep getting higher, and higher, and higher until it eventually hits the application limit and causes the software to crash. When the render finishes (on one that didn't hit the limit), memory is almost always instantly returned.

Perhaps this is out of Sony's hands - maybe it's a splitter or codec issue. However I've seen it on multiple completely diverse systems over at least the past 5 years.