Openshot-qt: Openshot 2.4.3 under Ubuntu 18.04 crashes during export too

[MadEdward]

Describe the bug
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System Details (please complete the following information):

• Operating System / Distro: [e.g. Windows 10, Linux Mint 17.1]
• OpenShot Version [e.g. 2.4.1]

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4. See error

Expected behavior
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[MadEdward]

Problem seems to be the way Openshot uses the RAM. I read a comment on this issue today, and created a 6 GigaByte swap file next to my 3.8 GigaByte RAM. I tried with both swappiness =40 and swapiness=80. And with Quality set at High, Middle and Low. With High my system crashed and got stuck. I needed to do a hard manual reboot to get the system up again. With Low Openshot-qt closed or crashed, but the system kept running. I received the message that ¨Openshot-qt closed unexpectedly, but due to memory shortage no analysis could be made and no error report was sent¨.
It looks like the current Openshot version still keeps exhausting memory and does not release any memory during the process.

[DrSensor]

Same problem here. My machine is intel core i5 with gtx 940mx and 7.7 GB RAM.
Whatever I do some editing or exporting, it keeps my max memory. Seems like everytime openshot play some frame, it will cache it but not free the memory at a specific interval 🤔

EDIT 😅

I change my video editor to shotcut since some issue regarding with unable to resize the window and entering fullscreen mode was fixed (though I need to detach the timeline widget and sometimes it randomly crash). Quite surprised that I don't need to do proxy editing when I add 1080p video to shotcut :open_mouth:

[peanutbutterandcrackers]

Strangely enough, this does not happen to me on my Linux Mint 19 machine with 2 GB RAM and Intel Celeron N3050 @ 2x 2.16GHz

Perhaps you might want to attach the logs, and add some more information regarding the file itself?

However, I think I remember one other problem with Ubuntu 18.04 series somewhere in the issues. I wonder if these issues are related.

[stanwmusic]

It is maxing out my 7.7 GB of RAM then the swap file fills and then last time I didn't stop it in time and it locked down I had to hold the power button until it shut off.It made it to 27.3 % exported with 50 images and a 3.4 minute MP3. I tried changing to medium quality and then low, all to no avail and it is useless and hopeless. and I have been trying to get this one video for over 7 hours now for a friend in Nashville I'm running OpenShot 2.4.4 on Ubuntu 18.04.3 and all 4 cores run at 100% even if I change priority to very low. On this same computer with Ubuntu 14.04 I had no problems with the older version of Openshot. P.S. I use Gnome Flashback Desktop environment with Metacity and no animations etc to save resources and have function over ascetics, so it usually runs very fast and well on most applications. I have used Ubuntu since 6.06 Dapper Drake back in 2006 and tonight is the 1st time I've ever seriously considered going back to Windows™ or getting a Mac.

[ferdnyc]

@stanwmusic

Hmm, if you're running OpenShot 2.4.4 release, that version had some memory-management issues that were only discovered and cleared up shortly _after_ the release, so one thing you might try is downloading a newer Daily Build AppImage from https://openshot.org/download/ and running that — you should see less memory growth, and on complex projects with a large number of Clips (even still images) on the timeline, the difference can be huge.

Definitely don't lower OpenShot's priority, the only effect that has is to let the rest of the OS interrupt it more, which means its operations will take even longer. It'll also make it more likely that the kernel will swap OpenShot out of memory, which will only make the disk thrashing even worse.

Aside from the upgrade from 2.4.4 to a development build, the only other thing I can think to suggest is to check the OpenShot Preferences for a few things:

1. Make sure Debug Mode isn't enabled in the Debug tab, as that causes _huge_ storms of log messages to be generated and written to the log files
2. Crank _down_ the History Limit in the Autosave tab, to reduce OpenShot's memory use in general. (And in fact, separate from / in addition to that change, it's not a bad idea to do an Edit > Clear History right before starting an Export process.)
3. Also, check the Cache tab, make sure you're using the Disk cache mode, and that you have a reasonable amount of disk space allocated for the cache

[stanwmusic]

@stanwmusic

Hmm, if you're running OpenShot 2.4.4 release, that version had some memory-management issues that were only discovered and cleared up shortly _after_ the release, so one thing you might try is downloading a newer Daily Build AppImage from https://openshot.org/download/ and running that — you should see less memory growth, and on complex projects with a large number of Clips (even still images) on the timeline, the difference can be huge.

Definitely don't lower OpenShot's priority, the only effect that has is to let the rest of the OS interrupt it more, which means its operations will take even longer. It'll also make it more likely that the kernel will swap OpenShot out of memory, which will only make the disk thrashing even worse.

Aside from the upgrade from 2.4.4 to a development build, the only other thing I can think to suggest is to check the OpenShot Preferences for a few things:

1. Make sure Debug Mode isn't enabled in the Debug tab, as that causes _huge_ storms of log messages to be generated and written to the log files
2. Crank _down_ the History Limit in the Autosave tab, to reduce OpenShot's memory use in general. (And in fact, separate from / in addition to that change, it's not a bad idea to do an Edit > Clear History right before starting an Export process.)
3. Also, check the Cache tab, make sure you're using the Disk cache mode, and that you have a reasonable amount of disk space allocated for the cache

Thanks for the tips I will try them all.
I only lowered it's priority once to see it it would use less resources , I raised it's priority first , I was just desperate and very very irritated lol . I am still working on the video 10+ hours now. I should have never promised to get it done for them the old version Openshot on 14.04 was great. I will try to get a daily build. There is for sure a memory leak

[stale[bot]]

Thank you so much for submitting an issue to help improve OpenShot Video Editor. We are sorry about this, but this particular issue has gone unnoticed for quite some time. To help keep the OpenShot GitHub Issue Tracker organized and focused, we must ensure that every issue is correctly labelled and triaged, to get the proper attention.
This issue will be closed, as it meets the following criteria: - No activity in the past 180 days - No one is assigned to this issue
We'd like to ask you to help us out and determine whether this issue should be reopened. - If this issue is reporting a bug, please can you attempt to reproduce on the latest daily build to help us to understand whether the bug still needs our attention. - If this issue is proposing a new feature, please can you verify whether the feature proposal is still relevant.
Thanks again for your help!