Psychopy: Using MovieStim3 for a video rating task crashes with: “[Errno 24] Too many open files”

[trettenbrein]

Maybe it is more appropriate to report this here: Based on the error message I suspect that MovieStim3 doesn't close opened files properly? What could be done to close the files after displaying them and hence (hopefully) avoid this error (and crash)?

OS (e.g. Win10): Windows XP (but crash also occurs on MacOS High Sierra, though without producing an error message - on the Mac PsychoPy simply freezes)

PsychoPy version (e.g. 1.84.x): 1.90.2 (on both platforms)

Standard Standalone? (y/n) Y. Standalone versions as provided on the web site for both, Win XP and MacOS High Sierra

What are you trying to achieve?: I've set up a task using builder where participants have to rate videos (n = 300) on a Likert scale. Roughly halfway through the task PsychoPy crashes and produces the error message given below.

What did you try to make it work?: I've tried setting up a minimal working example containing just one routine that is repeated 300 times, playing the clip and then displaying a scale. Even in this simplistic scenario PsychoPy crashes halfway through.

What specifically went wrong when you tried that?: Complete error message:

Running: D:\Lab_pc_9_trajanvideo_ratings\rate_videos.py

4.6403 WARNING Monitor specification not found. Creating a temporary one...
16.3675 WARNING User requested fullscreen with size [1024 768], but screen is actually [1680, 1050]. Using actual size
17.7338 ERROR Error in framebuffer activation
17.7338 WARNING Framebuffer object (FBO) not supported on this graphics card
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "D:\Lab_pc_9_trajanvideo_ratings\rate_videos.py", line 1086, in
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\psychopyvisual\movie3.py", line 134, in __init__
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\psychopyvisual\movie3.py", line 180, in loadMovie
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\moviepyvideo\io\VideoFileClip.py", line 81, in __init__
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\moviepyvideo\io\ffmpeg_reader.py", line 32, in __init__
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\moviepyvideo\io\ffmpeg_reader.py", line 256, in ffmpeg_parse_infos
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsubprocess.py", line 745, in __init__
OSError: [Errno 24] Too many open files
Error in atexit._run_exitfuncs:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libatexit.py", line 24, in _run_exitfuncs
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\psychopy\data\experiment.py", line 366, in close
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\psychopy\data\experiment.py", line 351, in saveAsPickle
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\psychopytools\filetools.py", line 149, in openOutputFile
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libcodecs.py", line 896, in open
IOError: [Errno 24] Too many open files: u'D:\Lab_pc_9_trajan\video_ratings\data/test_rate_videos_2018_Sep_28_1556.psydat'
Error in sys.exitfunc:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libatexit.py", line 24, in _run_exitfuncs
func(targs, *kargs)
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\psychopy\data\experiment.py", line 366, in close
self.saveAsPickle(self.dataFileName)
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\psychopy\data\experiment.py", line 351, in saveAsPickle
fileCollisionMethod=fileCollisionMethod) as f:
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libsite-packages\psychopytools\filetools.py", line 149, in openOutputFile
f = codecs.open(fileName, mode=mode, encoding=encoding)
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy2libcodecs.py", line 896, in open
file = __builtin__.open(filename, mode, buffering)
IOError: [Errno 24] Too many open files: u'D:\Lab_pc_9_trajan\video_ratings\data/test_rate_videos_2018_Sep_28_1556.psydat'

[peircej]

There were a couple of fixes to MovieStim3 in the summer:
https://github.com/psychopy/psychopy/commits/master/psychopy/visual/movie3.py

Could you try using the latest version of that file:
https://github.com/psychopy/psychopy/blob/master/psychopy/visual/movie3.py
(or the 3.0.0 beta of PsychoPy) to see if this is already fixed?

[trettenbrein]

I tried using PsychoPy3_PY2 v3.0.0b10 but now no video will play at all; the minimal working example script crashes when it tries to load the first video:

#### Running: D:\Lab_pc_18_zeissvideo_rating\test\test.py

6.6901 WARNING User requested fullscreen with size [1024 768], but screen is actually [1680, 1050]. Using actual size
7.3675 ERROR Error in framebuffer activation
7.3675 WARNING Framebuffer object (FBO) not supported on this graphics card
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "D:\Lab_pc_18_zeissvideo_rating\test\test.py", line 105, in
depth=0.0,
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy3_PY2libsite-packages\psychopycontriblazy_import.py", line 120, in __call__
return obj(args, *kwargs)
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy3_PY2libsite-packages\psychopyvisual\movie3.py", line 134, in __init__
self.loadMovie(self.filename)
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy3_PY2libsite-packages\psychopyvisual\movie3.py", line 180, in loadMovie
self._mov = VideoFileClip(filename, audio=(1 - self.noAudio))
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy3_PY2libsite-packages\moviepyvideo\io\VideoFileClip.py", line 91, in __init__
fps_source=fps_source)
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy3_PY2libsite-packages\moviepyvideo\io\ffmpeg_reader.py", line 33, in __init__
fps_source)
File "C:\Program Files\PsychoPy3_PY2libsite-packages\moviepyvideo\io\ffmpeg_reader.py", line 269, in ffmpeg_parse_infos
if "No such file or directory" in lines[-1]:
IndexError: list index out of range
Exception WindowsError: 'exception: access violation reading 0x00000000' in > ignored

I tried creating a new experiment using the PsychoPy3 coder that was just supposed to play a video file and it produced the same error message.

Lastly, replacing just movie3.py in my installation of PsychoPy2 also didn't work.

[peircej]

Ouch! OK, I'll need to look into that :-/

[trettenbrein]

Okay, that'd be great! I'm trying to use PsychoPy for rating video files, so this bug is extremely annoying as it makes the PsychoPy practically unusable for my purposes. :/

[peircej]

Hi there. I've just worked out why video wasn't working in recent versions on some graphics cards, so hopefully that will fix the problem.

[trettenbrein]

Hi, that sounds very promising. Is there any way in which I can test the fix to see whether it resolves the issue?

[peircej]

You could download the current source of these 2 files from github

• psychopy/visual/window.py
• psychopy/visual/movie3.py

or you could wait for the new standalone distros, which I'm currently testing

[hoechenberger]

@trettenbrein Has this been fixed for you?

[trettenbrein]

@trettenbrein Has this been fixed for you?

When I last checked in October it still wasn't working, so I ended up not using PsychoPy for this task. (Which is why I haven't looked into this since.)

I currently don't have access to the computers were these problem occurred (neither the Mac nor Windows machines), but I'd be happy to look into this again in a few weeks (beginning of January), if you want me to?

[hoechenberger]

Hi @trettenbrein, that would be nice of you, yes! :)

[trettenbrein]

My apologies, I totally forgot about this and only now stumbled upon the open issue again. I just tried to run the old script with PsychoPy 2020.2.4 and had no issues, so this seems to have been fixed in the new version as suggested by @peircej.

[peircej]

Many thanks Patrick