No-Life Channel: Memory leak?

[kintaro]

Hi,

I'm using VLC (0.8.6.i) to watch the TV channel called Nolife (from a Freebox from French access provider Free). When I watch this stream the memory consumption of VLC is increasing (from 20 Mo to 175 Mo in 45 minutes). And thus when I try to switch to another stream or to close VLC the process takes 100% CPU and is difficult (sometimes impossible) to kill.

This phenomenon occurs only on this stream I don't know what to do.

For info : I have a Athlon XP 3200, 1Go Ram, an NVidia card and Windows XP Pro SP2.

[VLC_help]

Have you tried 0.9.2 or nightlies?
http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/win32/latest/

[kintaro]

I've tried to downgrade to 0.8.6.c, I've tried to upgrade to 0.9.2 and even 0.9.4(nightly). I've always got the same problem (and I've discovered in another forum that other people have the same problem).

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Does it happen with other free channels?

[kintaro]

Apparently not I've tried with France 2 and France 5 and I have no problems...

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Can you test with other channels ? Do you have any messages?

[kintaro]

I will try this evening. I have no error message displayed. Maybe something in a log file?

[edit]
Someone who has the same problem has posted this log
http://pastebin.com/m5336129

[mandhyl]

Hi everybody,

I'm the author of the previous log file. It was made by VLC media player 0.9.4 with the "clock synchronisation" option set to disabled. But disabled or not this ending option not resolve the problem. I have tried a lot of customisation of preferences settings like increase the size of buffers for RTSP demultiplexers, acces modules or codecs whitout any result.

On others channels we haven't the errors like "main debug: decoded 120/122 pictures" or "main warning: late picture skipped (9157)", it's only on this stream.

To discredit the default video output rendering mechanism I have tried to force an OpenGL output, whithout no success. I have tried disabling the sound modules too, error always present.

Many people have this problem whith this stream.

Wee need your help, thancks for your replies.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

I changed the title because it is only in No-Life.

I tried wihtout success to call the people from Free, who are probably having issues with that stream...

I'll ask our Mr.Leak to work on it

[actionthomas]

Hi everyone !

I also have this problem... Hope you'll debug it

And I don't want to be an ass, but it's Nolife (one word), not No-Life

Thanks to the team !

[mandhyl]

But, where is Mr. Leak ?

[ivoire]

He will try to have a look at this issue tonight or next night...

[ivoire]

I had try to reproduce the problem yesterday with the latest vlc (trunk). Running under valgrind during 15min can't show any "significant" leak.
So some question:
* could you test with the latest version of vlc (from http://nightlies.videolan.org/) because a lot of meleaks have been removed recently ?
* is it only on windows ?

Thanks for reporting, I will check again tonight.

[mandhyl]

Update vlc to the the latest version not resolve the errors. On linux or windows xp, same symptoms.

Thanks to you Ivoire for had a interrest to this problem.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

What about testing with --codec ffmpeg,all ?

[ivoire]

On linux or windows xp, same symptoms.

Could you try to run vlc under valgrind on linux ? (if you have time)?

[actionthomas]

I had try to reproduce the problem yesterday with the latest vlc (trunk). Running under valgrind during 15min can't show any "significant" leak.
So some question:
* could you test with the latest version of vlc (from http://nightlies.videolan.org/) because a lot of meleaks have been removed recently ?
* is it only on windows ?

Thanks for reporting, I will check again tonight.

I tested with the latest nightly, memory usage still grows while playing Nolife.
I could see it with Process Explorer. It grows of about 2,5MB/minute (don't know if that helps!).

edit: after a while, the video froze, with the message "main error: decoder is leaking pictures, resetting the heap" shown in the message log.
http://actionthomas.free.fr/fbxtv/vlc.png

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Can you try with --codec ffmpeg,all ?

[actionthomas]

I started vlc from the command line with "vlc --codec=ffmpeg,all -vvv", then I opened the stream.
Memory usage was still growing.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

OK, let's do it in another way:
vlc -vvv -Vdummy
-Adummy

vlc --no-video
--no-audio ?

Combinations of above?

[actionthomas]

I tried :
vlc -vvv -Vdummy -Adummy
vlc -vvv --no-video --no-audio
vlc -vvv -Vdummy --no-audio
vlc -vvv --no-video -Adummy

Still the same thing problem, memory usage grows.

Eh merde...

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

vlc --no-video --no-audio leak de la même façon ?

[actionthomas]

Oui, 3,6 Mo de mémoire utilisée en plus par minute...

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Suicide.

[mandhyl]

:/

it's not cool.