mxf smart rendering, and memory leak in V9

megabit wrote on 8/17/2009, 7:42 AM

I have been quiet on this forum for some time, due to my (the third already) neck spine surgery. I have now returned to editing, and come across what many people complained about in V8, but what I was lucky enough to not ever suffer from: the memory leaks while rendering in Vegas.

I'm talking V9 now (both 32 and 64-bit versions), When I render my HQ EX material to HQ MXF, I'm witnessing two things:

1. Whether I set to no-re-compress long GOP in the preferences or not, with EX mxf Vegas ALWAYS does the "smart-rendering" thing

2. When smart rendering, it consumes more and more RAM, until the whole system freezes and all I can do is the hard reset.

Anyone can confirm this? Sorry if this has been already discussed..

Comments

megabit wrote on 8/17/2009, 9:13 AM

Update:

This is only a problem when running both V9 (32 and 64 bit) under Vista x64 - rendering under XP shows NO memory leaks!

Please comment

Piotr

megabit wrote on 8/17/2009, 1:21 PM

Another update:

After doing some more testing, I can now say that under Vista x64, ALL Vegas version I have currently installed (8.1, 9.0a 32 and 64 bit) share the same strange behaviour:
- rendering to MXF is always "smart", regardless of the "long-GOP no-recompres" setting in Preferences
- each time the message "No re-compression required" shows in the preview window, there is a drastic increase of RAM used shown in Task Manager; it goes up to all 8GB I have on my PC, and freezes Vista

The only exception is VP 8.0c, in that once I disable smart render in Preferences, it will not smart render, and the RAM usage is low and constant throughout the whole render. Once I enable smart rendering, the same memory leaking occurs as with the other versions.

Please help!

Piotr

jabloomf1230 wrote on 8/17/2009, 7:40 PM

Try adding a simple FX (such as brightness/contrast) to the timeline, but don't change anything from the default settings. This usually fools Vegas into not smart rendering,when the check box fails.

megabit wrote on 8/18/2009, 12:12 AM

Yes, but the main problem here is the memory leak...

megabit wrote on 8/18/2009, 5:55 AM

Anybody ?!

I'm almost decided to do a clean Vista x64 install...I hate to do it, as it was absolutely trouble-free so far.

I DO need the functionality of smart rendering mxf from my XDCAM EX footage; however - when it only kicks in - the RAM usage increases until the whole system is frozen. It doesn't happen with exactly the same projects under XP, so I reckon something has gone south with my Vista x64 installation.

Unless somebody confirms this IS actually Vegas fault. It's an easy experiment: just put some raw mxf files on the timeline, and try to render it out to mxf - but make sure smart rendering is actually happening. Is your RAM usage stable, or does it go high as well?

I described this in a support ticket, but all I got from it was the suggestion that I attach a file of up to 20 MB in size (???)...

Guys, please help me resolve this!

Piotr

megabit wrote on 8/19/2009, 6:43 AM

Even though nobody even cared to deny or confirm my observations, I feel obliged to share with you guys what I found.

I just did another test, this time using Vegas 9.0a 32-bit on my Vista (32bit) laptop, and a 5 mins, unedited mxf file from my Sony XDCAM EX. The outcome is identical - i.e. Vegas is smart-rendering, and after some 30% of the clip reaches the memory limit (3 GB) on the laptop, then it slows the whole machine down to a crawl, heavily trashing to the swap file on disk.

Same thing under VP 8.0c.

This is definitely a bug - mxf smart-rendering under Vista (ANY flavor) in Vegas (ANY version) causes heavy memory leaking, and is unusable!

The same project behaves OK under XP.

PS. Luckily enough, I saved myself reinstalling my old, good Vista x64 on the main editing station:)

Worth noting is that SCS "cannot reproduce what I see on my end". Oh well...

Laurence wrote on 8/19/2009, 7:50 AM

I haven't seen what you're seeing, but I do have a problem with long GOP mpeg2 clips. The problem I run into is that you can only have so many of them in a project before Vegas runs out of memory and crashes. I get around this by prerendering raw footage into large sections, but I wish this wasn't an issue. Like you I am using Vista 64.

ramirot wrote on 8/19/2009, 9:17 AM

Hi,
Did you know that in Vegas 9 you can put the files out of the Ex1 without using Clip browser?
Nothing to do with your problem, but is good to know.
R

farss wrote on 8/19/2009, 2:53 PM

Not ignoring your plight however V8.0c is running very nicely with my XDCAM EX footage under XP 32. I see no compelling reason to change.
For me even V9.0a under XP 32 is working well enough to get the odd job done. Anything serious goes back to V8.
I had planned to finally ditch my old P4 system running Win2K but it and V6 still earns it's keep with no grief.

Bob.

winrockpost wrote on 8/19/2009, 3:42 PM

not everyone has mxf footage to test,

FWIW i rendered some hdv to hq mxf, then put that on a new timeline and smartrendered to hq mxf,, ram steadily went up to 2.5 g ,then leveled out and finished the render

edit: this is vegas 8c 32bit, 9 still in the trash waiting for the cleanup crew

megabit wrote on 8/25/2009, 4:10 AM

Well, I've given up.

Nobody on this forum, or SCS support, is able to re-create the memory leak I'm experiencing when smart-rendering MXF under Vista. I shall add that I have this in either Vegas version, and on 2 different machines running Vista 32 and 64 bit, respectively.

I have just tried the "smart-render" aspect of my problem, using it with my old HDV stuff. No problem at all; memory usage graph being an absolutely flat line in Task Manager throughout the whole render!

So, the problem is limited to smart-rendering MXF ONLY, and under Vista ONLY. Any fresh ideas?

BTW, where is the "Ignore 3rd party codec" option now (in VP 9)? Cannot find it...

Piotr

john-beale wrote on 9/3/2009, 8:08 AM

I never saw a memory leak with V9a/b on my old machine which was a P4. Just got a quad core duo (4 GB RAM, still running WinXP SP2, 32bit) and on that box, I DO see a memory leak on V9b, when rendering out 1080i Cineform source material to MainConcept AVC/AAC (MP4) at a custom resolution, 640x360 pixels. The memory usage climbs steadily and crashed Vegas at 94% complete on a 3 minute long project. I closed everything else, and it just barely managed to complete. Very annoying, obviously.

I also tried rendering this project to Sony AVC, which died immediately (error message was something like "Problem cannot be determined"... great.)

megabit wrote on 11/12/2009, 3:37 AM

Well, I never had the problem of memory leak when smart-rendering MXF under Vista resolved. Even in VP 9.0c...

However, with the new 9.0c's capability of smart-rendering EX MP4, I don't have this problem at all!

Smart-rendering clips re-wrapped to mxf cause RAM usage hit the ceiling; the same clips in their native EX MP4 format (smart-rendered to MP4) - do not...

Just what to think of that?

LoTN wrote on 11/14/2009, 2:51 PM

Piotr,

You'll find the option in the "internal" preferences tab.