Observations on the memory usage of S5 since the 64 bit update

[PhilMassey]

First a recap of how I saw it prior to the 5.6 update, pretty much back to S2 where I started.

Being one who watches Task Manager frequently for the way programs use memory. I have always kept an eye on how the Sequence Editor uses memory. During a config update I would open a sequence, apply the config and close again. As each sequence was opened the memory usage would increase. And after closing, not all the memory would  be released. After some number of sequences, probably depending on their sizes, the program would crash, possibly but not always requiring a reboot. This usually happened when the memory in use reached a little over 4 GB according to Windows.  To preempt the crash I would shut down the program and restart when the memory got to about 4 GB. During the process of updating my 60 odd sequences, I would restart (or crash) perhaps 7 to 10 times. It almost became a game of chicken.  How long could I go before it crashed?  Maybe just ONE more….

Now we fast forward to S5 5.6 and the 64 bit upgrade, and doing much the same thing, opening and closing many sequences, the memory usage can go much higher. I have seen 8 GB  in use so far  and  have not had a crash while opening and closing many sequences, one at a time.

As an experiment, I also opened 20 sequences at the same time in tabs, consuming a reported 15GB of memory.  Disk file sizes total about 4 GB. Still no sign of any instability. The sequences play fine and can be worked on.. This was not possible in the 32 bit versions.

So, an upgrade which may have gone almost unnoticed, just may have been one of the most significant of all.

A big thank you to all the developers.

Phil

[k6ccc]

Very nice!

 

[Box on Rails]

Thanks Phil this is a good thing.... I'm guessing this is why every sequence I opened in 5.6 for the first time that was previously saved in an earlier version, prompts me to save the file even when I have not made any changes to the sequence. 

[PhilMassey]

That might also be because the Preview has been changed, and the the change is being updated to the sequence.

[Brad Stucky]

Thanks, Phil for sharing that exploration of memory usage. This must explain the occasional and sudden crashes I was having.  I don't often have more than 3 or 4 sequences loaded at a time, but I could never understand what I was doing wrong to have the program suddenly lock up or exit.  I haven't noticed that since the 64bit update.  
An observation I did notice is that CPU usage is now much higher when loading a sequence. +80% during first part of the load as apposed to 25-35% before the update.  I can't say that the sequence is loading any quicker since I have been adding more pixel props and additional rows of effects which I'm fairly certain add to the load.  Also, I haven't timed the loading since I often jump to a web-browsing session or something else while a sequence is loading.  (Most of my sequences take 2-3 minutes or more to load using an i7-3770 with 16g of ram.) Many thanks to the LOR team for this update and the new features.

[MattBrown]

8 minutes ago, Brad Stucky said:

Thanks, Phil for sharing that exploration of memory usage. This must explain the occasional and sudden crashes I was having.  I don't often have more than 3 or 4 sequences loaded at a time, but I could never understand what I was doing wrong to have the program suddenly lock up or exit.  I haven't noticed that since the 64bit update.  
An observation I did notice is that CPU usage is now much higher when loading a sequence. +80% during first part of the load as apposed to 25-35% before the update.  I can't say that the sequence is loading any quicker since I have been adding more pixel props and additional rows of effects which I'm fairly certain add to the load.  Also, I haven't timed the loading since I often jump to a web-browsing session or something else while a sequence is loading.  (Most of my sequences take 2-3 minutes or more to load using an i7-3770 with 16g of ram.) Many thanks to the LOR team for this update and the new features.

The higher CPU usage while a sequence is loading is due to calculations for the spectrogram audio display (which also supplies data to the Audio motion effect). You can turn off spectrogram calculations on a per sequence basis by selecting Sequence > Sequence info and changing the Audio Info field. Beware that changing it to waveform only will also leave most of the Audio motion effect without data.

http://www1.lightorama.com/help/sequence_information_dialog.htm

Matt