Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

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shader
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2011 22:10

Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

Post by shader »

Hello ppl,

I love Resolume, I just have ooone little problem. I want to record little "video clips" for music tracks at the highest possible resolution (e.g for posting to Youtube). I suspected 1080p would be too much data crunching, I am trying to record at 720p, which seems a nice compromise.

But I get stuck whenever I try to record long compositions at 720p. After some time, often after 30 - 40 seconds, the record button changes itself to "Writing..." and I can't click on it anymore. Also, it never goes back from "Writing..." like you would normally expect when it's done saving. I have to exit Resolume if I want to try again.

The .mov and .wav files are created, but the .mov file stops at 0:40 and the .wav file seems to be corrupted.

Recording goes fine for minutes at 480p, but when the composition is set to 720p this invariably happens after ~half of a minute.

I wondered what the system is doing, perhaps Resolume buffers the frames in memory and my memory is full? Here is a graph of memory usage; at (1) I start recording so apparently Resolume starts buffering; at (2) is when the dreaded "Writing..." appears and Resolume slowly releases memory as it seems to be encoding:

Image

Well, seems the system at its peak still has around 16GB of 24GB memory free, but I don't know if Resolume is a 64 bit app.

Any ideas to resolve this problem?

I am running Resolume Avenue 4.0.1 on Windows 7 64 bit with a Geforce GTX 580.

Cheers!

Joris
Posts: 5186
Joined: Fri May 22, 2009 11:38

Re: Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

Post by Joris »

The record function is not intended as a full fledged video production tool. Instead it is meant to quickly record and then play back a content that has a few effects or modulations applied, so that for instance you do not have to continuously keep moving a fader to achieve a certain look.

You are correct that the problem is Resolume runs out of memory. At that point it should just stop recording, but apparently it's so choked it can't get out of write mode.

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Stickygreen
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Jun 09, 2008 21:33
Location: vancouver

Re: Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

Post by Stickygreen »

Hey Goto10, when resolume is recording, and is writing the new video file, is it being saved to RAM?

Joris
Posts: 5186
Joined: Fri May 22, 2009 11:38

Re: Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

Post by Joris »

When recording, Resolume tries to write the rendered frame immediately. This is done at a very low priority, because you don't want this to interfere with the actual output.

So when it's too busy (lots of effects/clips/pixels), it stores the rendered frame in memory, and tries to write it later. At a certain point, when the memory is 90% full, it will stop recording and write the remaining frames in memory.

Does that answer your question?

edwin
Team Resolume
Posts: 1207
Joined: Thu Oct 07, 2004 10:40

Re: Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

Post by edwin »

On Windows we actually stop recording when the app uses around 1 gb of memory. Because Resolume is 32 bit it can't allocate more memory. When the buttons shows writing be patient because it will come back when everything is written to disk. When you stop recording you might want to stop the playing clips to make more procesor time available for writing the file.
For longer recordings on this resolution you might want to try recording using an external device like a harddisk recorder.

shader
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2011 22:10

Re: Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

Post by shader »

Thanks for the clarification!

I've also had pretty good results recording the output window from the second monitor using Fraps on Windows, but I haven't tried it for very complicated compositions. For now it might be a good workaround.

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Stickygreen
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Jun 09, 2008 21:33
Location: vancouver

Re: Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

Post by Stickygreen »

edwin wrote: For longer recordings on this resolution you might want to try recording using an external device like a harddisk recorder.
How can i do this?

is there a setting in resolume that would allow me to achieve this?

Basic
Posts: 707
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 09:39
Location: UK

Re: Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

Post by Basic »

Stickygreen wrote:
edwin wrote: For longer recordings on this resolution you might want to try recording using an external device like a harddisk recorder.
How can i do this?

is there a setting in resolume that would allow me to achieve this?
I think you just record directly into it. say you using a V4 just have one of the output goings to a hdd recorder. Im sure thats what we used to do. but that was a good few years ago.

Depends on Resolution too i would imagine.

As i say it was a long time a go that we done it.
Resolume Avenue 3.3.3 - MBP i7, 8gb RAM - Snow Leopard (2010). Akai APC20

shader
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2011 22:10

Re: Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

Post by shader »

I can confirm that Fraps also records complicated compositions perfectly! Just make sure that your composition is output to the secondary display. Then just start Fraps and press F9 to start recording.

I also had no problem of dropped frames and audio/video getting out of sync, which happens once every few hundred frames with the internal record function. Even at 1080p it records very smoothly!

So I would definitely recommend Fraps for those who are on Windows and want to capture their compositions at high res.

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Stickygreen
Posts: 202
Joined: Mon Jun 09, 2008 21:33
Location: vancouver

Re: Hi-res recording fails after ~40sec with "Writing..."

Post by Stickygreen »

allowing resolume to route the recorded file would be a great feature, I have a SATA 3 RAID0 with a couple SSD's so i would love to use this for the recorded compositions, but instead it writes to my OS's SATA 2 SSD drive.. could be alot faster, if i had some choice.

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