Increased incidence of crashing problems

[Bob Hartzell]

I am getting more reports of crashing. I wonder if it could be related to sp2 for xp. There has always been a certain fraction of people who have problems and I have made some headway by reducing the number of resources required but it is unclear how to positively fix whatever the problem is there. The interface is aggressive with the paged dialogs and the drawing canvas. Any ideas are appreciated.

[gusmus]

Hi Bob, You've probably got this stuff,, but just in case not, you can grab the sdk debugging kit and the sp2 developers kit from here.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/security/p...2/default.aspx

I have had no problems at all with sp1 but I loaded sp2 and dumped it about 4 hours later. It not only caused frequent crashes but half of my apps wouldn't even run. I'd actually reccomend that unless you are working in a high risk security enviroment then forget it, seems to me that the cons far outweigh the pros.
Actually I've just done a test with KM and it isn't such a hog.
Before: system resources used 16%, Free ram 85%
After (Koolmoves loaded): system resources used 48%, Free fram 59%. =99mb
This is on my old faithful "celeron 1300mhz, 382 mb ram, XP+SP1.
If I run the same test on the P4 3.6mhz 1gb ram XP+SP1 it seems to fare much worse.
System resources before 18% used. After: 52% used
Free Ram before 94%: After 65% = 290mb
That's a big discrepancy on the two systems,, The Pentium 4 is using almost 200mb of ram more than the Celeron for the same app.

EDIT: You have to remember that this is what the OS has assigned to the program and not what it's actually using, but then again it's being loaded with a big fun file and with the browser open and playing the swf.

[Bob Hartzell]

Very interesting. I would be interested in numbers for a very small movie, flash mx, and photoshop. If the cpu loading is mostly associated with the size of the internal animation structures, I have an idea how to solve that problem.

[FLASHPULSE]

I ran KoolMoves on SP2 for a week with no problems. I removed it because I didn't like the extra memory it used. This could be an issue for those who have low memory.

[tmoore935]

I have no problems with sp2. I did download a special version of sp2 from microsoft that was supposed to replace ALL the security updates in one file (250 megs). And Yes I downloaded it with a 56k modem. I have used pretty much all of its defaults. I have half a gig of memory so there is no issue there and all my programs including koolmoves seem to work fine.

As for koolmoves, This version 4.4.5 seems to never crash but I have had earlier versions that crashed all the time. At that time I complained on this forum. One example was if I keep reopening koolmoves, I was guarenteed a crash.

my computer specs are listed on my footer if that helps. I use the home edition of xp.

[docree]

Sometimes, when I close the Score/Timeline KM crashes.
This is usually after adding actionscript inside the MovieClip edit.
I'm running latest KoolMoves version 4.4.5.
Win 98
128 Memory
ATI graphics card [think old and basic]
P3 [win 98 shows P2]
Very Good SoundBlaster card
[I don't care what anybody says, cause I never had their problems and I'm an audio pro.]
Pretty much a bare bones system. [Was considered top notch around 98 - 2000]
______________________
It seems that the most errors are coming from the noobs
switching from other "doomed" software.
I think they don't understand what the software is about and
probably don't have their system configured for any basic multimedia design.
It is bad to use dell or some other "dummy" pc for multimedia design.
Doc'Ree

[blanius]

The only time I've had a crash is if I exit KM with a new project open that hasn't been saved.

Curious to note my version in the About says 4.5

[necromanthus]

No crashing problems on XP-SP2 !
As I said many times before,KM may interact with some resident programs (AntiVirus,FireWalls,etc).

[Bob Hartzell]

Sometimes, when I close the Score/Timeline KM crashes.
This is usually after adding actionscript inside the MovieClip edit.

-> Are you saying that you are editing movie clip frames? Are you adding the action script using the actions/sounds page of the timeline or views > actions and sounds or the movie overview?

[gusmus]

I am going to start a new thread with an instruction manual for XP CPU resources,, the data has been lifted from several sites but compiled into a reasonably understandable format,,, PLEASE DON'T start making changes to your system if you DON'T know what you are doing,, get help.
The thread is called "TWEAKING XP", it is not aimed at KM users in general, it is aimed at XP users in general for whatever purpose "Call it a crash barrier if you like", Sorry it's a HUUGE post,, couldn't condense it any more. I suggest that you print it out, read it and use it at your leasure. Cheers

[FLASHPULSE]

Your title reminds me of http://www.tweakxp.com/

[gusmus]

Nahhh it's better than that Flashpulse,, It's a damned big document and I had to split it into 3 posts to get it on the forum lol,, it really does work if you are careful but as most users are more interested in the XP GUI than they are in their computers performance then I think that maybe it's all a waste of time... The crashes will continue and to be honest,, 99% of the crashes are the users fault and NOT the program. Cheers

[FLASHPULSE]

Originally posted by gusmus
and to be honest,, 99% of the crashes are the users fault and NOT the program. Cheers

agree

[docree]

Originally posted by Bob Hartzell
-> Are you saying that you are editing movie clip frames? Are you adding the action script using the actions/sounds page of the timeline or views > actions and sounds or the movie overview? [/B]

Yes, editing movie clip frames.
After editing/adding action script, in the actions/sounds page of the score/timeline overview,
it crashes [50/50] on exit of the "over view" while viewing actions/sounds page.
[That's a mouth full.]

The work around is to switch the over view to another page before exiting.
Doc'Ree

[gusmus]

I would be interested in numbers for a very small movie, flash mx, and photoshop. If the cpu loading is mostly associated with the size of the internal animation structures, I have an idea how to solve that problem.

I'll do a run through on that later tonight when I finish what I'm doing Bob, but it would be a big help if others could do the same and publish the results along with their system config so you can get a reasonably accurate idea of what is going on within the different systems,, I know that celeron is a nice smooth chip,, I also know that P4 can be very fast but it becomes a resource hog to justify the speed but AMD is a blind alley because hardly anyone will admit that they have overclocked the cpu almost to the point of frying the system (And this is probably the source of half of the crash complaints). Honesty please. If you're frying fish on your CPU,, we don't care,, just give truthful results so that Bob can improve the Program. Cheers.

[gusmus]

OK Bob, I'm doing this on the fly. I have IE open, Outlook running and I have 84% of my system resources free + 248megas of ram free out of 382 megas,
Enter KM:my system resources have dropped to 54% free and my free ram has dropped to 195 megas,, that means that i have used 53 megas to run the program.
Loading movie/fun file leybol2/index.fun 302Kb
system resources 52% FREE RAM 148 megas. So it confirms my old numbers on the celeron,, CPU usage is about 45% and Ram usage is about 90 megas on a basic Celeron 1300mhz with 382mb ram and NO overclocking,, seems to me that I have plenty in reserve.

Now for MM Flash mx: same basic setup with IE and Outlook running.
Oh dear, Oh dear. Just started Flash MX and my system resources are now at 43% but my ram usage is now at about 270 megas and I haven't even loaded a file yet, wonder what I can do with my spare 118 megas???
loading a small .fla 25kb
FLA loaded and it only sucked up another 10 megas,, let's try it with a SWF 234Kb (swf equivelent of the leybol2 fun file)
memory went ziippppp, all the way to the botton until the virtual memory kicked in and now I have 119 mb free but the comp is suffering,, you can tell by the jerky mouse.
Seems to me that Flash MX is a real hog when it comes to memory,, but the cpu usage stayed steady all the way through.

Photoshops turn
Memory dropped to about 65 megas free before the Virtual memory kicked in and that was just loading the program, I now have104 megas free(thanks to virtual memory)
system resources are at 54% (not bad)
Going to load a 350kb JPEG now
That was fun,, cpu usage was stable at about 53/54% but the ram dropped to 95 free when it was loading and then recovered to 126 mb free after it finished loading.

CPU resources were reset between each test.
Ram was defragged after each test.

Well there you go,, hope it helps.
I used the celeron 1300 because I thought it was probably the closest to an average KM user machine.. Seemed a bit silly to do this on the P4 3.6mhz because probably less than half of us have anything that fast.

[Glops]

It still crashes on Win2K ....with like a random time generator....
lol..

[Bob Hartzell]

Yes, editing movie clip frames.
After editing/adding action script, in the actions/sounds page of the score/timeline overview,
it crashes [50/50] on exit of the "over view" while viewing actions/sounds page.
[That's a mouth full.]

-> Is this correct:
You are inside a movie clip.
You have both the timeline and movie overview screens open.
You edit/add action script in the actions/sounds page of the timeline.
You close the movie view screen and then you frequently get a crash.

[gusmus]

I received a rather interesting e-mail this morning. It went so far as calling me a liar and that my system couldn't possibly do what I say it can without crashing.
As far as crashing is concerned then I think it would be obvious that if I suffered from crashes then I would have mentioned something on the forum long before now.
As far as my system is concerned, here is my reBUTTal in the form of a screen capture , so stick that where it is most comfortable Sir JERK. I won't mention his name for fear of embarrasing the poor chap but he knows who he is but if I receive any more crap like he sent me this morning then I will ,, believe me. Cheers

[docree]

Ok Bob,
Attached is a capture of the situation.
I tried to crash KoolMoves for a while...
It did not crash in the situation shown.
However, it did crash when I added "shape properties"
to the mix.
DocRee