The VideoLAN Forums

Im using VLC to watch IPTV provided by RingGold. I beleive they are using Minerva encoders. I start VLC with the following command line:

vlc.exe --vout directx --intf http -vvv udp://@225.1.1.23:2001

VLC memory usage constantly rises, about 60 megs per hour, till all system resources are consumed and the app crashes with an access violation.

If I change streams, memory usage is reset, but I have the need to let the player stay on a single stream indefinetly.

System is Windows 2000, 2.8ghz Xeon, 256 megs RAM.

I should add, this happens with 0.8.1 release and also the 0.8 beta from a month ago.

I use vlc-0.8.1 as streaming server under Linux, I had this problem before.

In my case, I modify the code,

modules/packetizer/mpeg4video.c (line 235)

// modified by sau
//p_dec->fmt_out.p_extra = malloc( p_dec->fmt_out.i_extra );
p_dec->fmt_out.p_extra = realloc( p_dec->fmt_out.p_extra, p_dec->fmt_out.i_extra );

PS. I am not the author of mpeg4video.c, so I am "not" sure it is ok.
But you can give a try. I hope someone can tell me is it ok for
modifing the file or not.

Thanks, the patch makes sense. I just applied it to the development version.

R.Cade: could you try tomorrow's nightly build on http://www.videolan.org/~videolan and see if you still have the problem.
If you do, then describe what kind of stream you are receiving (MPEG TS ? what codecs ?).
You can also try to disable the video/audio decoding to see if you still have the leak (using --codec dummy).

I did try the nightly build (2 weeks ago), but with the same problem.

Using --codec dummy showed stable memory usage, so it would seem to be the decoder.

The codec VLC reports using is mpgv and mpga, but I'm pretty sure the stream is actually MPG2 based. Is there any way to get more information on the stream?

Thanks.

Read the 2 postings above yours reply again please...

winXP 081

I saw the memory leak too, and tried a different decoder (ffmpeg) for my MPEG-2 TS on UDP, and now it is stable.