[MPlayer-users] Segmentation fault in pre5

[D Richard Felker III]

On Sat, Oct 16, 2004 at 08:33:26PM +0200, Stefan Sassenberg wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 15, 2004 at 07:19:32PM -0700, Corey Hickey wrote:
> > Stefan Sassenberg wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > I frequently have segmentation faults when mencoding a movie.
> > > Unfortunately this happens at different positions. I can provide some
> > > information about this problem. I should add that I had other problems
> > > of similar kind that I only solved by rebuilding mencoder with
> > > ./configure --disable-mmx2 which I'm currently using.
> > > 
> > 
> > Are you saying that it happens at a different position each time you try
> > the same command on the same file? If so, then you probably have
> > unstable hardware. I've found that mencoder is very intolerant of
> > overclocking, probably from a combination of working the CPU very hard
> > and the time it takes to encode.
> > 
> > If you are overclocking, try overclocking a little less; or, try cooling
> > your CPU better.
> > 
> Correct. Just like the other problem I once had that I mentioned above.
> I also thought about hardware problems, but mencoder is the only application
> that shows errors like these and I'm not overclocking. Heat problems
> might be the cause anyway.

anything that happens at a random location each time you run a program
is _definitely_ heat-caused. mencoder doesn't read from /dev/urandom
and pick what to do based on the results. the results of each run are
entirely deterministic and won't vary from one to another.

anyway you probably need to clock down a _lot_! my experience has been
that way before it starts crashing, mencoder will misencode video and
put lots of bad artifacts in it if you've overclocked too much.
overclocking is a very bad idea in general and if you're going to do
it you should always try stuff again without overclocking before
reporting problems as a bug...

rich