VideoMeld issues & feedback

[StephaneR]

Hi Chris

I started using VideoMeld just a couple of days ago and have to say, that how much can be done with that piece of software is just amazing. As far as I can tell for now, it just has everything I was looking for (and most definitely a lot more)

However, I'm posting a comment in this thread, because I am experiencing the same stability issues described by JakubM. Maybe there is also some additional info that could help you...

- program becomes unresponsive in many occasions (difficult to really describe a clear pattern)
- error message "TCanvasD2D" in various occasions, typically when playing with settings and preview in the video effects dialog, but also when melding the movie to a file
- when melding the video, often getting only partial rendering of some parts of the movie
- typically having problems when using static pictures; png seems to be more stable than jpg, but it does not fix it all; sometimes the pictures are missing in the final video file, or video effects are not applied properly or missing altogether
- the problem seems also to occur randomly: e.g. the "TCanvasD2D" error never happens twice exactly at the same place during rendering

Been playing yesterday with a short project, containing one video clip (mp4 ~4 minutes), one mp3 music intro, a few static pictures and a couple of captions. Didn't manage to render it completely with "Youtube 720" settings (various problems occured, as described above). With "Youtube 360" settings, it worked like a charm... Obviously, can't really call that full HD

Also very strange, rendering apparently is much faster on an older machine. My brand new laptop (100+ GB free space on both HD + SSD drives, i7 quad CPU, more than enough RAM...) exhibits all the symptoms above. The first rendering attempt of that 4 minutes project took over an hour... and produced an unusable file (one of the static images at the beginning remained in front during the rest of the movie, hiding the video clip). In average, the rendering is significantly faster on my older laptop (~2 years old, no SSD, i5 CPU). Both laptops are running Windows 8.1.

It does look like a memory leak - or worse, memory overwriting.
I hope that you could fix it soon... If that is of any help, I could send you the project files.

Stéphane

[StephaneR]

Hi again,

one more info: I just did one more test...
Rendering of the exact same project (see my previous post) on my Windows 7 workstation worked without a glitch, and the produced video file is clean

Is there any known compatibility issue with Windows 8.1 ?
Btw, running VideoMeld with Win 7 compatibility settings does not help on Win 8.1.

Stéphane

[GoldWave Inc.]

Make sure that "DirectX software emulation mode" is checked under "Options | Configure VideoMeld", otherwise video drivers will cause significant problems.

Also try zooming in on a small section of the project to see if that improves performance. Viewing the entire project may causes slowdowns and stability problems on some systems.

A number of stability and speed improvements are in the works for the next update, so please keep the feedback coming after the next update.

[GoldWave Inc.]

Also use View | Section Detail | None to make things faster and more stable.

[JakubM]

Hi Chris,

I did try DirectX software emulation mode, but the result was effectively unworkable, as the video preview ceased to work entirely.

In regards to the crashes, I have been monitoring memory usage. What I observe is that the amount of memory used by VideoMeld grows steadily during playback. Some of this memory is freed up when playback stops, but not all of it.

As an experiment, I tried playing back the same initial 15 seconds of a 1920x1080 video three times in a row. Before the first attempt, VideoMeld had taken up 100 MB of memory. During that attempt, memory usage reached about 400 MB, and dropped to 200-something MB after I ceased. On the second attempt, usage crossed 500 MB, and stayed over 300 MB after playback ceased. On the third playback, usage crossed 600 MB, and stayed at above 500 MB after I stopped playback.

In each case, it was literally the same segment of the video being played, so it makes no sense for the same video data to be loaded three times and (at least partially) kept in memory three times.

The crashes themselves, they occur (at least on my machine) when memory usage approaches 1,300 MB. I tried continuing the above experiment, and I was able to reach crashing point after a mere nine playbacks of the same 15 second video segment.

[GoldWave Inc.]

Does the project contain just one video section? If not, what effects and types of sections are in the project?

[JakubM]

This particular project was basically a speech, so I used one video file, but cut up into multiple sections. The video was actually running parallel in two separate instances on two tracks, where on one track I would use the entire view, while the other track was zoomed in for a close-up. Wherever I cut from one to the other, I split the section so that I can disable whichever track is not being displayed (the only time both tracks had active sections simultaneously was when I was cross-fading from one to the other). It goes without saying, only one audio track was used - and I actually saved the audio track separately into a WAV, because I find this works faster than using the audio track straight from the video file.

In this particular project, the only effect I used was the zoom effect on one the tracks. However, on top of the video there are also three separate layers of a static overlay (why three separate layers? Because there's no alpha channel option).

Further to my previous experiments, I have found that I can greatly extend the working time of VideoMeld by working with all video disabled except when I need to preview a cross-fade. In videos like the one above, which are fairly routine (and make up about 70% of the weekly projects I do), I can work fairly efficiently without video enabled most of the time. When I did this, the memory issue doesn't seem to appear - as long as only audio (and the static overlay images) are running, memory usage grows very gradually, and then cuts back properly (as far as I could see) after I stop. But any time I enabled video to preview something, memory would be eaten up again.

[GoldWave Inc.]

I've uploaded another update. Please let me know if that helps. I'm not sure what you mean by an "alpha channel option". What effect are you trying to achieve?

[JakubM]

Great! I'm downloading now, and will try it out today!

In regards to the alpha channel, the effect I am trying to achieve is to have varying levels of transparency in the overlay. Basically, I'm using the overlay to place a logo on top of the video. VideoMeld allows me to easily make the background colour transparent, but the result is that the edges of the logo are very sharp. I have "kind of" solved this problem by having three overlays that together combine into one image. I layer the overlays on top of the other, using the fade graph to make the bottom and middle layers partially transparent. This combination enables me to basically make the edges of the logo partially transparent.

Some programs, such as VirtualDub, allow you to configure the transparency of an overlay by using a greyscale image as an alpha map/channel. With an alpha map, transparency for the image is calculated on a pixel-by-pixel basis depending on the shade of the corresponding alpha map pixel.

[GoldWave Inc.]

I've uploaded another update to fix a freeze problem with the effects list.

The Mask effect in VideoMeld would be similar to using a greyscale image as the alpha channel. Ideally it would be better to use a transparent version of the logo directly. VideoMeld can use transparent PNG images.

[StephaneR]

Hi guys

I've just installed version 1.27

Not sure if it really helps. The "memory limit" mentioned by JakubM seems to be exactly the same for me. Regardless of what I'm doing, as soon as the memory usage reaches approx 1300MB, Videomeld starts acting weird (crash, hangs, error msgs, etc...). Operations that involve video processing, typically preview, apparently eat up a lot of memory and do not release it afterwards. This also includes video rendering process.
That last part, however, seems to run much smoother and faster than before. Well done about that! Again, as long as the limit of 1300MB is not exceeded, all is fine. When it hits the limit, trouble starts...
Lokking forward to the next update

Stéphane

[GoldWave Inc.]

Extensive testing for memory leaks was done in the latest updates. On my test systems, memory usage remained consistent and didn't increase after the initial preview. What video effects are in the project? What types of files are you working with (WMA, MP4, ...)? If you have a simple project that contains just a single video file, does that exhibit the same problem?

[StephaneR]

The project I first experienced problems with contains the following:
- 1 video track + included soundtrack, containing a single mp4 file
- 1 audio mp3 for introduction music, with fade-in/out volume correction
- several png pictures, mostly used as overlay on some parts of the video
- 2 caption overlays
- 1 scrollling caption at the end of the video (credits)
- effects: aspect ratio correction on all items + fade-in/out transition on some items
- total duration: 3'40"

At project opening, VideoMeld uses ~100 MB.
When rendering using YouTube 720 preset, used memory jumps up to ~1.4 GB and goes down to ~1.1 GB after it. In the resulting mp4 file, some overlay pictures are missing and all fade transitions are very abrupt (no fade).
Rendering a 2nd time with the same settings, memory goes up to 1.4 GB again (and down to 1.1 afterwards), but some additional overlay pictures disappear from the output video...

I noticed, that as long as the total used memory remains below 1.3 GB (as stated by JakubM), everything works fine.
Typically, rendering the same project with YouTube 360 preset is ok.

As you suggested, I tested it with a very simple project, containing only the main video file. No effect except aspect ratio correction. With this, the memory usage is much lower and I did not manage to trigger the critical problems I had on the full project. However, looking again at memory usage, it looks like there are some resources that are not completely released after being used. With that simplified project:
- at project opening ~95 MB
- during first rendering ~415 MB
- after rendering ~150 MB
- during rendering ~440 MB
- after rendering ~170 MB
- during rendering ~445 MB
- after rendering ~180 MB
- during rendering ~450 MB
- after rendering ~180 MB
... I did not try any further

On the other hand I tried the following:
- just after opening again the simplified project, the used memory is 95 MB (private bytes)
- moving the mouse over the "star" on the top corner of the video track ==> 99 MB
- opening the video effects dialog (click on the star) ==> 137 MB
- close the dialog (cancel) ==> 102 MB
repeating the last 3 steps, I obtain the following memory usage values:
104 - 139 - 105 - 106 - 142 - 106 - 111 - 146 - 114 - 115 - 148 - 115 - 117 - 149 - 115 - 116 - 152 ...
It is not much, but it seems to allocate 2-3 MB more each time the video effect is opened.

Then I started playing a bit, first adding again one overlay picture, with fade-in/out transitions. When rendering (i.e. melding to file), memory usage jumped to 1.1 GB and came down to ~850 MB afterwards.
Adding a second picture, also with fade transitions, it peaked at 1.5 GB and I got the error message "Cannot create texture for 'TCanvasD2D'.

Again, the magic limit of 1.3 GB was exceeded and real problems started

Is there anything else I could do to help finding the cause of the problem?

Greetings,
Stéphane




ps: I did some more testing on another PC (Windows 7 pro instead of 8.1)
I have here another project, which is simpler than the one described above, but longer.
- 2 source mp4 files, inserted in several sections
- 11 png overlay pictures
- 1 scrolling caption fro credits at the end
- some fade-in/out transitions
- total duration: ~11 minutes

rendering with YouTube 260 preset, it runs all the way to the end.
Memory consumption is much lower than on Win 8.1:
it remains steady just below 400 MB for a long time, then suddenly
it starts going up, apparently just after a fade-out transition,
then increases again in a place where there is nothing particular in the
video and peaks at 953 MB. Just after that, the progress bar goes totally
black and the progress values continues to 100%.
At the very end (when reaching 100%) there is an error msg popping up:
---------------------------
Error
---------------------------
Access violation at address 6640F8C0 in module 'd2d1.dll'. Read of address 00000000.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
The msg appears a large number of times. Clicking ok just opens between 1 and 5 new
pop-ups. Impossible to get rid of it. Can only kill the application from the task manager.

The generated video is something like "myprojectVM61.mp4" instead of "myproject.mp4"
and the file is corrupt. From a certain point, which I suppose corresponds to the memory
peak during rendering, the screen goes totally black and only audio remains...
I also tried to used different settings, with an even lower output resolution, with the same
result...

Another test: after removing ALL png overlay pictures, the rendering ran through like a charm,
without memory peak nor error msg and the output video was clean. But of course, I am then
missing the overlay pictures

[StephaneR]

Hi Chris

here is one more information that will hopefully be useful... I have identified which part of my project is causing the trouble.

It seems that using fade-in/out effects cause very high memory usage, i.e. using the fade transition from the effects toolbar.
When creating fade-in/out effects "manually", using only the fade graph (F7), there is no memory usage issue.
I could then render my project without a glitch, including in full HD !

So, I have now a solution that I can work with
However, it would be so much nicer to use the "effects", which are in most cases much easier to handle and offer a lot more possibilities...

Greetings
Stéphane

[GoldWave Inc.]

After hours of testing, there does not appear to be any simple solutions to the problem. The excessive memory usage occurs within Direct2D or FireMonkey, possibly due to memory fragmentation or caching. At the application level, there is no indication of a memory leak.

If you have a stable video driver (many are not) and a high end video card with a lot of on-board memory, then you can turn off the "DirectX software emulation mode" setting under Options | Configure VideoMeld. That will allow memory usage to be divided between the main memory and the video card's memory, but that merely delays the problem. Work will continue to optimize VideoMeld to reduce the overall amount of memory required.

Converting VideoMeld to a 64 bit application or avoiding DirectX or FireMonkey entirely would be a long term solution, but that probably won't happen in near future.