Vegas the Memory Vampire: doesn't release RAM back

ken c wrote on 1/22/2008, 3:17 PM

Hi - as long as I've used Vegas, it always seems to be a memory 'vampire' that doesn't release RAM back after it's been used. Had this problem from the early days, up through V7 (I'm still using V7 for production til all the bugs in V8 are worked out).

Anybody have any tips? I'm using 4 gigs of RAM in a winxp e6660 dualcore machine.. still has this problem, even when I launch V7 and do a quick render, small project, my whole computer slows to a crawl after I close vegas, so I have to reboot to get my memory back. I'm using default settings in Vegas from what I remember.

Thanks,

Ken

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JoeMess wrote on 1/24/2008, 8:38 AM

You appear to have more than sufficient hardware to run Virtual PC on your system, and then run Vegas within it. You will only have a minor reduction in performance, but it will allow you to run Vegas "sandboxed" so you don't have this overall system instability. When Vegas tanks, kill the virtual machine, and restart it. You are back to a fresh boot in seconds instead of minutes. My understanding is that the current version of Virtual PC is free on the Microsoft website. It would be worth a try for you if Vegas is costing you lots of non-billable hours because of its stability issues on your system.

Joe

murk wrote on 1/25/2008, 12:29 AM

I too have run in to the problem where the Vegas process is unkillable. I discovered that it was actually a faulty MIDI driver (MIDISport 2x2) that caused this. I found that using SysInternals Process explorer I was able to locate the exact MIDI driver handle and close it, and as soon as I do, the Vegas process is able to shutdown. I suspect this is a similar situation to what you are experiencing. It is likely the Vegas is waiting for I/O completion from a faulty hardware driver.

I Recommend getting SysInternals Process Exlporer and experiment closing handles until the Vegas process closes.

Once you identify the handle get another SysInternals tool "Handle" and make a little script to close the handle when Vegas dies hard.

Here is a sample script that I use to close the faulty MIDI handle:
http://cid-003b9500e726e19b.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/VegasTools

The .PS1 script is where the work is done

ken c wrote on 1/25/2008, 7:25 AM

sunflux, thanks - I'll try that re killing explorer.exe from within taskmgr.exe and then restarting it...

I have never had problems rendering from, or using, Vegas (at least not much), as I try to use uncompressed large avi source files for everything, and wavs vs mp3s... so it's not using the program that's a problem, it's that after a long render, eg several hours, it consumes a lot of RAM and even after closing Vegas, the computer is now slowing to a crawl, requiring a reboot to work like it should. (and I have a 4-gig ram e6600 dualcore system)..

-k

chaboud wrote on 1/25/2008, 11:52 AM

"and that's simply not acceptable..."

It's more than not acceptable, it's not *possible*. If a user-mode process is killed (processes tab in Task Manager), its allocations go with it.

Are you guys killing a hung process?

Also, if Windows is tight on RAM (or, sometimes, even when it isn't), it pages out (or flags, for pages backed by an exe) code it isn't running. You'll feel this when you switch to an app that you've had running in the background for a while (like a web browser). This can often take several minutes (or more) to wind itself out.

Dreamline wrote on 1/25/2008, 11:56 AM

I know this doesn't help much but ram is released on my pc after restarting Vegas. There is no reason to reboot. This fact has always made me very happy because I have programs that require a reboot. I use winxp sp2 Athlon 64. I don't update this pc anymore because it runs so well.

ken c wrote on 2/8/2008, 7:26 AM

UPDATE:

I'm glad to report that I don't see this memory-nonrelease problem to be an issue in Vegas 8a, which I'm currently now using for the first time in production; eg I've been able to launch/close, use my pc for days with V8.0a with no memory problems, though I always have those with V7. Glad to see it was apparently fixed!

(I took awhile to start using V8 in production, since I'm mainly used to V7, glad I finally started using it, the memory issue being cleared up alone, is an important one to my workflow).

Thanks all,

Ken