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Memory leak leading to long-term crash

I have a private radio running 24/7 with PlayItLive (04 Feb 2017 (v1.14.2.1377))


It keeps consuming more and more memory until it consumes all available memory and eventually crashes, probably when an allocation fails.


My system has 4GB RAM, and as one can see in the atached screenshot , PlayItLive was now using 3.6GB RAM.

When it is first launched  Feb 9th, it used about 170K RAM.

It stopped streaming to shoutcast on Feb 16th, presumably when it failed allocating. So he broadcasts for about a week in Auto mode.


It's always been like that. My configuration is not complicated.

I have 5 track groups

- 468 tracks

- 362 tracks

- 33 tracks

- 466 tracks

- 1 track.


I have 24 clocks and 24 clock schedules (in order to say the time every hour).


What can be going on ?


Thank you.







1 person has this problem

One memory problem I am seeing is every couple of weeks I notice the tracks are crossfading too early and the memory usage is high. I was restarting the software but the last time I went to the playout log and cleared the previously played days / hours and that cured it.

i just logged in to our system to find the same message. the plugin is installed but disabled. the pc is getting formatted and windows 7 reinstalled tuesday so we wont be adding that module once it installed from scratch. fingers crossed that message is only there because the plugin is still installed but disabled. i think we will use ots until the pc is reinstalled. 

Thanks Rich - we aren't using the streaming module as we have a stand alone PC for encoding our streams, in our case it wasn't causing the issue. Having said that, I now discovered it's totally ignoring the clocks and just filling the hours with music, following last night's crash. May have to move back to our previous playout system ASAP, if I can't get to the bottom of the reason.

we use butt for streaming and we bought the £5 now playing pluging. then linked the now playing.txt file to butt shoutcast and it displays whats playing that way

Hi Jason, we moved to PlayIt this Monday - the same memory issue is happening with us - Windows 10, 4gb Memory, i5, and 2TB drive. After about 20 hours on air, PlayIt starts to skip, then about 2 mins after that it just hangs - the audio sticking and programme is unresponsive. Checked this evening as soon as it started to skip and it was running at 99% of memory, then it crashed. Once restarted it's fine again until the memory useage builds up again. Will try Liam's suggestion and ask the presenters to minimize the window once an hour or so.

well i installed it before i went to sleep last night at 2am and our morning show went out at 7am so could of been no more than 5hrs. i am gutted because i will loose all my now playing info if using a different software, but from looking above i see i am not the only one with this problem

Hi Rich,


This is not something I have experienced. How long does it take for the memory to build up?

since installing the shoutcast plugin i am also getting the free up memory error. never get it unless using the plugin. it works fine with altacast but if i use that then you dont get the song information like whats playing. so obviously a problem with the plugin that is using way to much resources. 


3ghz cpu

4gb memory

2tb hdd

windows 7 pro

Hey Liam


I managed to work around the problem.

Since the memory leak is due to the PlayIt Live window being left minimized over time, I created a daily task schedule to maximize and minimize that window after 1 minute. This is enough to trigger a garbage collection and to free up the memory.
In 24hrs, the max. PlayItLive grows is about 1GB so it never consumes all my RAM.


To max/min the window, I used a freeware tool, "nircmd" and the following commands:


nircmd.exe win max title "PlayIt Live" 

nircmd.exe win min title "PlayIt Live"


End of problems. PlayIt Live is now live 24hrs, endless :)

Hello Jason,


I have noticed this issue also on our copy of play it. Our PC has 3gb of ram but gives the same symptoms as Pedro has described.


If I can offer any help with trying to replicate this please let me know.


Thanks,

Liam


1 person likes this

Hi Pedro


Thanks for the update. I was unable to reproduce with the window open. I will keep it minimised and run my memory profiler to see if there are any memory leaks.


Thanks,

Jason

I kept PlayitLive running, its window open and a memory display running, and the memory usage does not seem to increase after 3 days. 


So it looks like the key word to replicate this leak is "minimized"

Hi Pedro


Thanks for getting back to me with this detailed analysis. I will attempt to replicate the issue on my side.


Thanks,

Jason

A few days have passed, and my server PlayitLive ((with no plugins enabled) was now using 2000 MB, way more than the initial 180K.


It was minimized, as I always leave it, because PlayitLive.exe uses only 10% CPU while minimized, but 40% CPU when opened.


However, after I opened PlayItLive window, went to the menu, and opened a dialog (Tracks and Track Groups), a few seconds later, the used RAM suddenly went from 2000MB to 254MB.


So there's some garbage collection or cleaning taking place when PlayItLive UI is used, be it a menu or a dialog box.


But the problem remains, if left untouched (minimized in my case), the application keeps on consuming more and more memory until all system resources are used.


It does not seem related to the Internet Broadcast plugin, since it's not running.


Hi Jason


Ok, I'm starting to run it again. Below the menu Plugin-->Plugin Manager it now says "No plugins running", as I stopped the Internet Broadcast plugin (and shout cast is reporting no connection from PlayIt atm) but I don't know how to completely uninstall the plugin.



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