Son of Resolve and Memory Usage

I wasn't sure whether to append this to a thread that I started over a week ago. I decided it best just to start a new one.

I am finalizing a project that consists of three parts. Each part has its own timeline in which I was focussing the editing for that particular part. Now I'm combining all three.

When the previous memory leak (if that's what it was) happened, I was just going from one timeline to another and it sent Resolve to using over 180gb of memory (total system is 64; 40 gb is allotted for Resolve.)

I "fixed" that by closing everything down and reopening and upgrading from 18.4 to 18.6. Since that time Resolve has been using the lowest amount of memory I've ever seen it use: at most around 15gb.

Now I'm back to putting all three timelines together in one long timeline. I started with just the first one where it was. Then added the next one. It needed to render everything (and this particular timeline has a fair amount of Fusion work to it). I left it for an hour and when I came back I discovered it was stuck a short way in. I couldn't get it to play at all. I checked Activity Monitor and to my horror saw that it was like 380gb. (Luckily no smoke was coming out of the computer.)

I was able to save. Then I force closed Resolve and brought it back up and it is playing and finishing the render. Meanwhile Activity Monitor shows a very sensible 14.76 gb in used, give or take.

Any guesses what happened?

I would guess that there’s a plugin behaving badly in that second timeline you added. Guessing you can see where in the render it stalled. I’d open the timeline and see if there are any plugins near there that might be causing trouble. Then I’d temporarily disable them and see if that “fixes” it.

I don't have any plug-ins or else I don't understand what you mean.

After I closed it all down it ran through okay. Then I added the third (and final) timeline and it all stalled again. I'm adding by going to a different timeline, cmd-a, cmd-c and then going back and pasting it in.

When this happened last week I was going from one timeline to another.

I really think there is something in that procedure that is causing a problem.

Are you using Fusion at all?

If you're having trouble with the assembly, James, why don't you just render out the 3 timelines separately and then comp those renders?

That would be an easy workaround

I know I know I know

I don't have a good excuse. I feel like a marathon runner with a single minded focus of just getting over the finish line.

Actually I guess I sort of have an excuse. Even after I get all of these timeline ducks in a row I KNOW that I'm going to be going through everything wanting to make little edits. So keeping all the clips intact gives me that leeway.

The worst thing I have to do is just close Resolve and reopen if it gets out of line with memory use. That's annoying but it's working.

Joe: There are "moments" where there is a lot of Fusion work in the clips. And then there are lots more moments where there are. Where I think I really messed up in my planning was not rendering those high intensive moments. I might yet still do that.

Oh, and PS My name isn't really Jim or Jiminy or James. It's Andy. Jim Cricket has been an alias I started using on social media. Just like Jiminy Cricket I like to whisper insights in people's ears.

Hi Andy
Welcome! If it were me and I were curious I’d either render in place or disable all those Fusion clips and just see if that solves the problem. Just to localize it to what part of Resolve is going bananas resource wise.

If my posts haven't made clear by now, I have a serious love/detest relationship with computers. I only really use them because I have no choice. Sometimes I will try to figure things out as you suggest, but more often than not, it becomes wasted time and effort. I just don't have that sort of analytical mind or patience. So I tend to just plow through as best I can.

That is the reason I still keep a computer with XP and a very old version of Photoshop. They're like old blue jeans. And I stopped upgrading Photoshop even before they started the subscription service. CS2 has more tools than I ever need.

As does Resolve!

But I admit, Resolve is some sort of miracle. I don't know how they figured it all out. But I don't want to know either.

You and Uli and Marc have been something of a Godsend. I appreciate the time you all take to help little old me.

IThere are "moments" where there is a lot of Fusion work in the clips. And then there are lots more moments where there are. Where I think I really messed up in my planning was not rendering those high intensive moments. I might yet still do that.

I think you'd get better results if you rendered those out separately in source res, then brought them back into your Edit timeline as finished VFX shots. Do that, and it'll be less stress on the system.

For about 10-11 years, I was a big fan of rendering out each timeline/virtual reel for features (R1, R2, R3, etc.) to a visually-lossess format like 4K ProRes 444, then starting a new session and rendering that out as a single flattened file. (This is what we used to call a "longplay" in the linear videotape world.) However, Resolve has been so robust in the last 18 months, I gave up on that and now will routinely run with long timelines with 1200-1500-1800+ shots, and "so far" there's no problem. Resolve 19 has actually been more reliable than 18.6 (and 18.6 was fine as far as I'm concerned).

With very complicated transitions, graphics, or VFX, then we do render those out separately, but other than that, it just goes straight through. We do tend to run the renders slow: no more than 25fps, even down to 10fps if there's some extreme NR or OFX going on. But it can work.

Yeah, there is one shot in particular that when the whole thing is rendering, it all really slows down. In that "chaos" scene I'm using Fusion to move around multiple clips all around the screen. I don't expect to re-edit any of that. So that one will be relatively easy to do.

Most all of the other Fusion stuff is very simple one-node things like a Delta Kay.

AND TODAY'S PROBLEM IS.....

Something that happens rarely (thank goodness) but has happened more than once or twice.

All of a sudden when I move the positioning of a clip, I can't see where it's moving to. It just stays where it is, even though the x,y coordinates are changing. To be able to see the result I have to either move the clip back and forth, or the timeline head back and forth.

Same thing with the zoom scaling.

Also (like has happened with a memory leak) when I go to save, I see no progress of the saving, and "Edited" still appears up at the top bar.

And right now Resolve is using a very low 9.62 gb. And it was with a session in which I had only opened Resolve about 15 minutes before.

And I'm sure I can fix this by shutting down and reopening Resolve, as usual.

This has to be a bug, right?

Can you reproducibly make this happen with your project INCLUDING the save doesn’t work thing? If so you’ve found the holy grail for reproducing a bug that’s been around now for years.

We’ll be happy to help you submit this if it’s really reproducible at will.

If you mean reproduce it at will, no absolutely not.

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to when this happens. At least that I've been able to notice so far. The first time it happened I thought it was a memory thing, but this time the memory use was very low, at least relatively speaking.

I've been working all evening and the memory use is only around 10gb.

Beats me.

Jemas, I do a second timeline with teh same length and parameters of the main one and i call that "FUSION".

let's say that at 01:02:03:04 there is a fusion effect, I do it in the FUSION timeline, and once I'm ok with it, I [RENDER IN PLACE] and put that in teh main timeline, so all teh final export is smooth like butter.

Walter: You're obviously more sensible than I am.

But I hear you and Marc. Going forward I need to start doing that.

Well, I thought I had this problem fixed after upgrading from 18.4 to 18.6 but it has started doing it again.

I found Resolve at around 75gb of memory so I shut it down while I was correcting some things in Affinity. THen I needed to reopen the project to see how it looked with the changes.

The only work I then did was relinking the TIFF sequence and having a look at it. Then I made a very small correction to a TIFF background by enlarging it slightly and moving its position slightly.

Then I went to look for some drawing stored five feet away. And about five minutes into that I started hearing the fan of the computer going. I checked Activity Monitor and it was 80gb. As I type this it's staying right there.

I thought by going from 18.4 to 18.6 it might have fixed something that had gotten corrupted. But now after a week it appears to be back to what it was doing before.

Not really asking for suggestions at this point. I know I should upgrade the o/s but I'm really dubious that's going to change anything. When I first bought this machine 2 years ago and started in with Resolve 16, it was all working fine.

Maybe I should downgrade to Resolve 16.

1) what's the size of that tiff file?
2) is it a compress tiff?
3) does have layers?

It was a TIF sequence, one of countless TIF sequences in these three movies.

There were twelve TIFs actually, averaging around 600KB (yes, with a K)
They are drawn letters that are part of the titles.
One layer: letter with transparent background.

It's an animated movie and is built on TIF sequences. Drawings scanned, made into TIFs, and made into TIF sequences. Most sequences are short consisting of 12 to 24 frames but a few extend to 50 to over 100. Most are speed changed to 50% and looped and also repeated in different parts of the movie.

Before you react at any of that: I've been doing it this way for the two and a half years I've had this laptop. I can't say for certain this has never happened before because I usually don't have Activity Monitor open like I'm doing now. But I can't really remember having to reboot Resolve to get it going again.

Can you post a project archive that triggers the issue and put it on a cloud service?
I could try on my M1 Pro.

What do you mean by a project archive? A drt file?

I've been working with Resolve this morning. I have had to edit a still image TIF file that was a placeholder in the timeline and change it into a TIF sequence of 12 frames. It's not exactly the same as what I was doing last night, but similar enough in that I'm editing and relinking TIF sequences.

I've had Resolve open for a few hours: 17.24 gb memory use.

It just did the other problem again.

Memory use is only 18.78 so it's not overloaded.

I copy a TIF sequence so that I can place the copy next to the first one (as a looped cycle of 24 frames on 2's).

But I can't see the new copy.

But I can see it play in the preview window.

But I can't save the project.

When I close down Resolve it asks me if I want to save. I choose save, and it just goes back to the project: doesn't save and doesn't close.

I will now close Resolve. And I am 100% certain when I reopen I will be able to see the clip.

1) size of the tiff
2) are those compressed?
3) do they have alpha?
4) are "layered tiff" like the one you get in photoshop?

Average 200 to 250 KB (again with a K)

Yes compressed. I just double checked my settings (because I seldom change them) and notice I have it on ZIP compression. I usually use LZW. Not sure how it got to ZIP, but it's probably been at that setting for months.

Of the ones I worked on today 24 have alpha and 12 do not. I could explain why but it might be too much information for you. Simply put as possible all of these are cartoon characters that I place over other animation and background. So I need their own background to disappear. Originally I started making a green screen colored background that I would remove with Fusion using a DeltaKeyer. Then upon advice from this forum, I ditched that and now create them with a transparent (alpha) background.

But again, I really don't think the files themselves are the problem. I have literally hundreds of these set up in these movies (and also previously made another one ONLY with the fake green screen. None has ever given me any problem, let alone like what I"m facing.

As I predicted, I closed Resolve and reopened it and everything is working. Also since I last opened Resolve it is behaving itself at a steady 18.43 gb memory.

Which is to say, I am seeing this as a sporadic problem. I don't know how else to explain why I am seeing both the memory leak thing and the disappearing clip thing only over the past recent two weeks. I've been working on this film for over a year and the previous one for over a year. Never saw this happen before.

When Walter is asking about size, I’m quite sure he means pixels, not file size. In particular with compressed TIFFs of cartoon art, the file size doesn’t tell us much.

Sigh

There is no constant size of that.

some are in the range of 500 x 800
some are in the range of 1200 x 1500

Those should not pose any problems. From a .drp I'm afraid I can't see much, a .dra would help. But since it's sporadically, maybe nothing will happen at all.
If you experience that memory meltdown again, generate a log right away and post that to a cloud service.

Okay. I'm getting confused among all my different problems. I think I did that before and no one found anything.

Just to be clear though I am seeing two distinct problems:

One is the memory leak and I've seen anywhere from 80gb to 300+gb of memory use. The latter didn't result in anything not working. But one time it caused Affinity to stop working.

The other is the clips that I would place in the timeline and even though I can't see the "object" of the clip, it still plays as if it is there. And when that I can't save the project. But if I close and reopen Resolve, everything works again. But the last time this happened the memory use was below 20gb.

One is the memory leak and I've seen anywhere from 80gb to 300+gb of memory use. The latter didn't result in anything not working.

What? Are you talking about RAM? It should have crashed by then. Or do you refer to storage space? That can be cache.

Okay. I'm getting confused among all my different problems...

Could you please download, run and post the system config info from EtreCheck. This is a free app used by admins on Apple forums to gather config info. It is totally safe and does not install any malware. There is a paid version but you don't need that. Just run it, export the report, and paste those results here.

https://etrecheck.com

uli: i'm talking about in Activity Monitor the tab that says "Memory"

joeman: when i have time i will. but write a report for what? you mean after one of these occurences? I can't possibly run anything during them because i never have any idea when they will occur.

I believe Joe is suggesting you run the check AFTER the problem occurs. Hopefully it’ll have left traces of the issue.

It’s just an app that automatically gathers a report of your system hardware and software config, and recent problems. It can be run anytime. Please run it and post the full results here. It is free and totally safe to run. It is Mac only and frequently used by the admins of Apple support forums.

Okay give me a little time. I'm trying to focus on finishing this #*$%^@^@@^& thing.

Resolve behaved itself all day today, and I was doing much the same sort of edits as before, if that means anything.

If you have the time after the project, I'd suggest this to exclude any hardware issues:

- Export a .drp of your project.
- Free up any reasonably fast external storage.
- Install a fresh Sonoma to it.
- Boot from there.
- Install DR Studio.
- Import your .drp into the empty Library.
- Try again.

If it happens again, it might be a hardware issue. If not, your main installation might be damaged somehow.

do you run multiple project at the same time?
do you have multiple monitors and if so, are ALL attached to the same gpu card?

i dont even know how to run multiple projects

i have two monitors all attached to the same computer (built in gpu, not a separate card as far as i know)

@ Walter:
In a Mx Mac you can't have monitors connected to different GPUs, eGPUs are not supported any more.
So, that's not the issue.

@ Walter:
In a Mx Mac you can't have monitors connected to different GPUs, eGPUs are not supported any more.
So, that's not the issue.

right, it is one of those integrated one.

I meant "multiple softwares running at the same time".... not multiple resolve project per se....

I have sometimes DR and TVAI running at the same time without any issues, and with only 32 GB VRAM.

Walter: by necessity, I have often needed to have Affinity and Resolve open at the same time. It helps when I'm editing a sequence in Affinity to then, when finished, relink that in Resolve and see the result.

I have had Firefox open at the same time, but was already told not to do that. So I've had it open at a mimimum (or simply forgot).

I've tried to see some correlation of multiple programs open but honestly haven't. That doesn't mean there isn't any, but I just don't see it. It just feels random.

It would be too ironic that opening Activity Monitor causes a problem with Resolve memory use, so I just don't think about that.

Over the past few days, Resolve hasn't gone over 20gb memory (usually around 12 to 15) and I have had all these programs open at one time or another. Also have sometimes left Resolve open all night.

It just feels very random. But it also feels like when it does happen, it will go up and up without stopping....or at least I haven't tried to see how far it will go.

Sounds to me like either a Resolve bug or - less likely - an issue with the graphics driver. Very unlikely to me that it’s a hardware failure.

All I want to know is when does Black Magic start paying me for finding all these bugs?

They pay you all the time by not charging you for a subscription;-)

All I want to know is when does Black Magic start paying me for finding all these bugs?

lol... resolve once upon a time was half a million dollar....

Uli: You're right. I have to keep reminding myself of that fact.

Also- the list of things done in 19.1 looks really promising to me. They may have convinced marketing that they need more time to work on what the users are asking for - which includes bug fixes.

I agree, Joe - I was pleasantly surprised at the number of improvements that had been requested over the years. Definitely heading in the right direction with quality-of-life additions as well as substantial features.

Quality of life additions???? What do they have? A soothing AI voice that turns on when you're pulling your hair out and goes "There, there. Everything will be alright." ???

PS I'm beginning to suspect that this "memory leak" thing is due to something with the rendering process.

Resolve has been behaving itself over the past 3 or 4 days. Today, as I was finishing up the project, I decided to delete all the rendering files and regenerate them. I knew it would take awhile so I started it playing and left for about 45 minutes. When I got back in, I could hear a repeating sound up where the computer was. And I discovered that it got stuck just a few minutes in and it was just stuttering like a broken record.

I opened Activity Monitor and found it over 90gb.

I closed Resolve, reopened it and continued the rendering which then was uneventful but it again rose the memory use dramatically.

Maybe this is just normal?