At a show yesterday, about 6 hours in, I suddenly could not load any media files into my media bin. When I drag the media files in, nothing happens. I then tried doing it through the “import media” method, but still could not load any media files in. No error messages or anything, just nothing happens when I drag it in or thorugh the “import media” method.
Could it be a memory thing? As I said, this was about 6 hours into the show. I was constantly loading and unloading media files during those hours, and then suddenly, VDMX just broke haha. The only way I could load media files again was if I restarted VDMX, but that wasn’t an option as the show was continuous. Has anyone come accross this problem?
I’m running latest VDMX on M1 Max Macbook on latest Ventura.
Memory leaks exists, even with VDMX. There is hardly any solution. I do sets mostly from 22.00 till 06.00H. Loading and unloading media while performing i try to avoid. Sometimes the sets go without any glitch or problem but i know i can push VDMX, my hardware and myself to the limit so i just have a second and sometimes a third Macbook with me and a videomixer so when shit hits the fan i just switch to another machine and as a plus i have more layers available.
Yeah that doesn’t sound great at all and certainly made a huge mess at the show (work).
As a Resolume user, I can only express my condolences to you. However, I advise you to get to the bottom of the matter with Vidvox Support as far as possible in order to avert such a situation in the middle of operation as much as possible.
But I know similar situations throughout and that’s more frustrating than just annoying.
I wish you better success and sources of error rectification, with LG bennoH.
Yes I think having a secondary laptop connected to some sort of video switcher would be a good idea. If anything goes haywire, I can quickly switch to laptop B and quickly restart laptop A.
I ended up outputting through other new media files through NDI from another laptop on that day.
I’ve had this happen during development (while building projects for later performance). For me it happens the other way around, media bins accept nothing from the first second of loading the project (so I just quit and reload). I never add/remove media during live sets so I have no experience with this live.
And very much seconding having two systems and a videomixer to swap instantly in case of problems!! After I started doing that both my sanity / stresslevels and also artistically my sets improved vastly (I got an Atem Mini with 4 inputs, then I could also introduce a third or fourth, system so now I swap seamlessly between two systems loading different projects throughout the set plus having the third backup playing pre-rendered in case something goes wrong, I also just added a live cam of the stage on the fourth input that turns out has been a brilliant double backup-backup).
To comment on all that others have mentioned above.
I’ve never unloaded media during a performance, but I add media all the time to new pages or existing ones.
The type of media that you are importing is very important. There’s a lot of video codecs out there that do not work on Macs at all. AV1 is one of them and has become very popular for YouTube 4K videos. Making sure you do not load corrupted, or incompatible media is a must, and especially during a show.
I always carry a Raspberry Pi or Recorder/Player as a backup during shows. Either an HDMI switcher or mixer, or you can get a monitor that captures and plays back video, record a little during your show, and switch over while you restart your computer.
You can run multiple versions of VDMX app at the same time, just duplicate the app. I wouldn’t go extreme with this setup, but if something hangs, you can switch over to the application behind it.
I’ve used other applications such as MadMapper, Lumen, and QLab to switch over to while I restart VDMX – it’s much easier than you’d think, but also I don’t have to do it often.
If your system works, don’t update it. I know this sounds counter intuitive, but Apple releases so many bug inducing bits of code in their updates, and people just keep “auto-update my mac” enabled. Auto updates can literally kill a stable system setup in one go (with any application). I think right now there are a lot of bugs with OSX 13.5.
I’m on an M1 Max MBP running 12.6.7 and I’ve only had VDMX crash 5 times this year (and I use it almost daily). It sounds like OSX 13.5 is doing something weird. Also, a not on that for users who run VDMX under Rosetta 2, Apple made Rosetta 2 to slowly fade out Intel / non-Apple Silicone devices. So if you use things like the v002 Quartz composer plugins, do not update to a version that will eventually kill Rosetta 2 all together.
All my media files are HAP codec. I normally try to avoid loading and/or unloading media files during shows, but the host of that show was so unorganised that they kept giving me new media files for upcoming performances so I had to constantly load new media files.
So the host of the show was exporting HAP files while you were there and giving them to you on the spot? Or were you encoding them on your machine while performing?
Okay, so you are running VDMX while encoding media and playing back. Some additional questions may point to the issue:
Where are you saving these HAP files while they encode (external drive, internal SSD, external SSD)?
Where is the source media being pulled from while encoding (external drive, internal SSD, external SSD)?
Where are the active HAP files that are running in VDMX stored (external drive, internal SSD, external SSD)?
How do the newly encoded files end up in your media bin? Are they auto imported using the import folder feature or do you drag and drop them into the media bin?
What software are you using the encode these files into HAP?
How many files are you encoding at the same time?
How many HAP files are you playing back at the same time out of VDMX?
Do you have any other applications open?
How much memory does your M1 Max have?
How much additional space is remaining on your internal SSD? Are you beyond 85% the drives capacity?
What does the activity monitor show when you put this much load on your machine?
to the limit so i just have a second and sometimes a third Macbook with me and a videomixer so when shit hits the fan i just switch to another machine and as a plus i have more layers available.