[MEncoder-users] Can you slow down mencoder?

[Pete Davis]

> On Thu, Aug 18, 2005 at 09:45:57PM -0500, Pete Davis wrote:
> > >
> > > On Thu, Aug 18, 2005 at 11:08:37AM -0500, Pete Davis wrote:
> > > > What version of mencoder are you using?
> > > >
> > > > I believe 1.0pre7 has problem running multiple instances of mencoder
> > > > simultaneously. I know it was periodically causing me problems to
> run
> > > > multiple instances, but switching a more recent build (from CVS)
> fixed
> > > that.
> > >
> > > Huh? This is nonsense, they have no knowledge of one another..
> > >
> > > Rich
> > >
> >
> > Rich,
> >
> > I'm aware the processes are isolated, but the fact remains that when
> running
> > 2 or more instances of mencoder 1.0pre7, it was crashing periodically.
> It
> 
> This means you have a hardware problem, probably cpu overheating or
> bad ram.
> 

Rich, on the advice of someone here, I did run a RAM test. No problems
found. I don't think it was CPU overheating either. I had the problem for
several weeks while running pre7. It was fairly reliable and happened at
least a dozen times, again, only when running 2 or more instances of
mencoder.


But again, the problem went away as soon as I upgraded and has not come back
since. That was about a month ago. The machine is constantly running at 100%
CPU because it runs boinc as well as doing pretty much 24 hour transcoding,
so if it was a CPU overheating issue, surely it would have cropped up again
by now.

> > only happened when I had 2 or more instances running and the problem
> went
> > away when I upgraded later out of CVS.
> >
> > I have no explanation for it.
> 
> See above. Random crash like that is ALWAYS caused by hardware
> problems.
> 

I've been a programmer, professionally, for about 18 years and I can say
without a doubt that that statement is absolutely, 100% false. I'm sure
hardware problems can be the cause of many random crashes, but certainly not
"ALWAYS".

Any number of things can cause "apparently random" crashes like that. Bad
pointers being one of the more common. They seem random only because we
don't know what the exact cause is. But it wasn't terribly random. There was
one thing that every crash had in common, and that was 2 or more instances
of mencoder running.

In fact, I'm tracking down a bug right now that's causing similar apparently
random crashes (on another machine). I have absolutely no doubt that it's a
bug in my code.

Pete