Memory Allocation Error

[peliosis]

I do some matchmoving with sequence in background and everything is ok until houdini fills memory caching this sequence, then I got the well known error.

I have 2 gigs of ram and it fails with 1.4 filled up so this may be some setting problem (perhaps cop cache?) But even it I'd change the setting there still is a certain amount of ram which will be filled up one time (my seq is 19000 frames:))

To tell the whole truth, this crap happens only on windows, linux doesn't seem to have a problem with that:).

What to do?

Houdini is kind enough to save my work when exiting but still it's no workflow friendly to restart it every 15 minutes.

[AdamJ]

I remmember a while ago I had a problem with the windows version crashing as soon as it reached ~1.2gigs in memory usage. Guess the problem is still there. Yep .. linux version doesn't seem to have that issue.

[peliosis]

I remmember a while ago I had a problem with the windows version crashing as soon as it reached ~1.2gigs in memory usage.  Guess the problem is still there.    Yep .. linux version doesn't seem to have that issue.

27698[/snapback]

That's probably it . Thanks. But doesn't it make houdini under windows unusable?

Maybe other windows guys encounter it also? Is there any workaround apart from monitoring ram usage with bare eyes:)?

I still can't switch to linux 100%

[stu]

I was running into the same problem. It's a windows thing - it has a per process memory limit of 2 gigs (although it's actually a little less than that). If you're running out of memory well before that number, try increasing your virtual memory.

This problem is going to disappear with the 64 bit Windows OS, however.

[edward]

If you're using COPs, just lower the maximum memory usage for it. Then it will automatically swap tiles out as necessary.

[peliosis]

If you're using COPs, just lower the maximum memory usage for it. Then it will automatically swap tiles out as necessary.

27715[/snapback]

Yes, thank you, I've also found a magic button "clear cache".

It makes me able to work longer, but at last there comes the moment of demise.

[edward]

I don't understand. For a sufficiently low maximum cache setting such that it doesn't exceed the maximum allowed address space available, it should never crash due to memory allocation.

[malexander]

If you are reading your sequence directly from files to the BG image, you can query how much memory is being used by the texture cache via the texcache hscript command:

> texcache

texcache -a off -r 2048 2048 -m 10000 -M 500

-M : set the texture cache size in MB

-m : set the number of textures to cache

-r: maximum texture size

-a on|off : auto-flush cache

> texcache -M 100

will set the texture cache usage to 100MB, and

> texcache -a on

will free textures once the cache is done with them, which may help your situation.

[peliosis]

I'm reading from a cop.

This is strange because even if I set the cache to 512 or 256 it doesn't get freed, fills up ram...dead end, I have to flush cache manually.

[sibarrick]

I'm reading from a cop.

This is strange because even if I set the cache to 512 or 256 it doesn't get freed, fills up ram...dead end, I have to flush cache manually.

27730[/snapback]

Yup I've seen the same thing. Reported to Sesi a couple of weeks back.

[peliosis]

Yup I've seen the same thing. Reported to Sesi a couple of weeks back.

27738[/snapback]

Ha, but (!) even if I flush cache, ram is being filled anyway because after flush there is less free memory than before caching started.

Another question which arouse is where to change flip cache storing when rendering a flipbook. Default is c:/.../temp, should I change windows environment variable or is it possible to set inside houdini?

Just created 5 gigs on my c: :)

[peliosis]

Ha, but (!) even if I flush cache, ram is being filled anyway because after flush there is less free memory than before caching started.

Another question which arouse is where to change flip cache storing when rendering a flipbook. Default is c:/.../temp, should I change windows environment variable or is it possible to set inside houdini?

Just created 5 gigs on my c: :)

27739[/snapback]

Hmm, I set 512MB cache, resterted the machine and it looks like everything behaves ok, houdini does not exceed certain amount of ram:)

Don't know why but since it works I'm happy.

Perhaps it had something to do with my windows.

There are some other issues worth mentioning, sometimes when I run houdini the sequence in the backgroung plays very slow, but after a restart is speeds up significantly. Same under windows and linux, strange behaviour looks random.

Not to bother you but perhaps somebody has similiar experience.