'Out of memory' problem: disappearing project

[Steve]

Hi all,

I recently upgraded to 5.1.13sp3 from 5.0. Tonight I was editing my first project and after about an hour of editing I got a prompt saying 'out of memory' or 'memory low' or something similar. The prompt asked me to save, quit and reboot to free up some memory. I had saved repeatedly as I was editing, but when I clicked out of the prompt and tried to save, I got the Windows dialog that asks me to name and save the project somewhere...of course this had been done earlier, but now I was unable to save the project, and I finally had to say 'no' to the 'do you want to save'. So I quit and rebooted Pyramix and my project was gone! I was able to salvage 90% of my work from a backup version but this greatly concerns me. The project was very simple: 1 track, 24 bit 44.1k audiobook recording. Lots of edits but way less than usual. I found a post from Dec 06 suggesting upping the virtual memory so I've done that, and I also reduced the undo buffer to 20. I'm concerned because this never happened to me in any version of Pyramix before, even with way more edits/tracks and more apps open at the same time (I only had one instance of Firefox open this time).

If anyone has any ideas on how to prevent this from happening, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Steve

[Ricardo Ryan]

Hi Steve,

This seems to be releated to this known issue, we're woriking hard trying to find a solution to this problem.

http://forum.merging.com/viewtopic.php?t=2917

Regards,
Ricardo

Merging Technologies

[Old Sadie]

This happened to me repeatedly last week. I reported it to Merging UK, but they have not come up with a solution. V5.1 SP3 Build 174. Editing a stereo PMF 24bit 44.1kHz file, about 1000 edits.

Also, this link appears to be dead:

http://forum.merging.com/viewtopic.php?t=2917

Yours,


Jon

[diverse]

Hi Steve,

This seems to be releated to this known issue, we're woriking hard trying to find a solution to this problem.

http://forum.merging.com/viewtopic.php?t=2917

Regards,
Ricardo

Merging Technologies

Hi Ricardo,

Your link comes up with "The topic or post you requested does not exist"

[Silas]

The link is to a thread in the Beta Forum which may not display unless you have access to that area. There are no solutions presented in the thread but there is this:

"Sadly this issue is know to us, as stated in the release notes.

MT001114: Memory: A warning message will be displayed telling you to save your project and exit Pyramix in order to free memory; this will happen if you’re at the limit of the system’s memory. This warning was
added in order to prevent you from losing your work.

For now it seems that this warning message can sometimes appear to late, preventing you from saving your project.
In the meantime try to monitor the Windows Task Manager under the Performance Tab, when the PF Usage reaches 1,5GB it is recommend that you save your project and exit in order to free memory. Does that work for you? "

Hope I'm not mucking up the waters doing this,
Silas

[Steve]

Hi Silas,
Thanks for posting that. I wonder when it was dated. I thought for sure that waiting 3 months before installing a new release would mean all the bugs were reported/known. Or am I in the unlucky minority, along with Jon? I guess I'll be rolling back to 5.0.22sp3 which has its unpleasantries, but at least my projects don't disappear.

Steve

[Silas]

Hi Steve,

It is a known issue - and quite a nasty one I agree. I'm hoping they'll come up with a solution REALLY soon.

Makes me think of the old 'Notes' bug (where projects would be deleted also). I still won't use the Notes Tab out of pure superstition

-Silas

[diverse]

Is it possible to have a list of ALL of the know bugs and workarounds or when you expect to have a remedy in ONE list for the each of the released versions?

I know some if not all are listed here in some place or another different places but a one-stop shop not in hidden forums would really save time in calling support or wasted posts on the forums?

Thanks

AJ

[Silas]

Hi AJ and all,

The 'Known Issues' list for each version is in the Release Notes .pdf which can be found at www.merging.com : Downloads : Documentation
along with much other docs.

Best Wishes,
Silas

[Steve]

Hi,
Dredging up an old post to let Merging know this is still a big problem over here. My dealer suggested I not use any VST or DX plugins due to a possible memory leak issue. This seemed to get me by for a while but I just had the problem happen with a project that only had 1 strip tools and 1 EQ-X on it. It happened again with a project that had the above and a few Dynamics plugins as well as 1 instance of bustools.

So what am I to do? I'm deep into a 10 cd set and rolling back makes me very nervous.

I read the release notes for this version thoroughly before I installed, and nothing like this was mentioned. It's not even mentioned on the forum's 'known issues' section at this moment. Ricardo et al, do you have a solution for me? I am really hoping to have a service pack SOON to fix this problem in 5.1.13sp3.

Thanks
-Steve

[J.Wajer]

*BUMP*

5.1.13 build 174 has not cured that problem. Memory usage builds up when working for a long time on a project. Also, memory usage increases with the amount of edits in a project, not the length of a project. I always work with the Windows Taks Manager on top, monitoring memory and performance. On our systems the critical memory limit seems to be around 1.2 gB, though all of our systems have 4 gB ram.
I advice you also to set the amount of backups to 4, since this bug sometimes erases backups too. Freeing memory (Debug/Clean Up Memory) does not cure this bug too.

[Steve]

*BUMP*

5.1.13 build 174 has not cured that problem. Memory usage builds up when working for a long time on a project. Also, memory usage increases with the amount of edits in a project, not the length of a project. I always work with the Windows Taks Manager on top, monitoring memory and performance. On our systems the critical memory limit seems to be around 1.2 gB, though all of our systems have 4 gB ram.
I advice you also to set the amount of backups to 4, since this bug sometimes erases backups too. Freeing memory (Debug/Clean Up Memory) does not cure this bug too.

I think the problem all along has been 5.1.13 sp3 build 174. After a lot of silence from Merging on this problem my dealer told me it seemed to only be a problem with those with 1.5gb of ram. Now you say it happens with 4gb of ram?? I too typically have a lot of edits (audio books) and this problem is a huge issue for me.

Thanks for speaking up on this. I'm curious why it doesn't seem to be a problem for more people.

Steve

[charlienyc]

is restarting Pyramix a work-around, or do the problems continue until Windows is rebooted?

i have to believe the motherboard chipset combination has something to do with whether others have this problem. we're running an Intel chipset with 4GB ram and haven't had any issues since we got the system. (full disclosure: the builder prompted Intel to create a new BIOS to properly address all 4GB.) i suspect the Asus mobo is far more popular right now.

[J.Wajer]

is restarting Pyramix a work-around, or do the problems continue until Windows is rebooted?

Restarting PMX works for me. But that means going through the whole procedure of manually remounting all audio and opening the project, which can in effect take a minute or so. No big deal, really. Just keep your Windows Task Manager open and monitor PMX's memory usage, thats the only workaround for now. We work with large projects involving 1000's of cuts for 50 minutes shows. When I to do large cut-outs or shifts, I usually restart PMX first

[Ricardo Ryan]

Hi all,

Expect major improvements on the Memory side for Pyramix V6. We believe that this problem will now be part of history or very hard to reproduce since we've corrected some memory leaks.

Regards,
Ricardo

Merging Technologies