Crash/freeze when rewinding with smart motion search
Answered
Hi there,
I have a Windows-based NX Witness system running 4.1, with 16GB RAM, and if I rewind footage on a single camera while the smart motion search is activated (i.e. running man icon clicked on and gridlines on the screen, with red squares showing which part of the camera view is selected), the RAM usage goes up and up and up until it reaches 16GB whereupon the system freezes. I have tested many times using Task Manager to monitor this and it is easy to see. I have to re-start the computer to unfreeze it.
This happens whether I have the other cameras showing, or whether I only have one camera showing. It happens at any speed rewind, it just uses up RAM faster the faster it rewinds, i.e. at 1x speed it could take a couple of minutes, and at 16x speed it might just be 20 seconds.
This happens regardless of whether I actually select some part of the screen, or if I just have no specific part selected and the smart search is just activated. It happens with any camera.
This does not happen when reviewing forwards, only rewinding.
I have another NX Witness system running 3.2 which does not have this problem.
Any ideas?
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Hi Edward Dickey,
Are you willing to share the Teamviewer session with us for log and dump files collected?
If you agree, I'll convert this post to our ticket system. So that you could share the sensitive information with us there.Thank you.
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Hi Wendy,
I appreciate your help. Unfortunately this system is strictly off the internet for security reasons.
I was hoping maybe this problem had come up with others and there might be a patch already for it or something.
Or if there's a setting I can change, that would be great.
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Hi Edward Dickey,
Could you follow the below steps and do one more test for us?
1. Close the Nx client application on the Nx server machine and leave it running the mediaserver service only.
2. Prepare another Windows computer and install Nx client on it. Thus, you will have PC_A for mediaserver service running and PC_B for Nx client running.
3. Configure the setting on both PCs for full dump collected. (See the instruction in this ARTICLE)
4. Launch the Nx client on PC_B and test the same scenario.
5. If the crash happens, collect the Nx dump file and share it with us.We've got a similar issue from one customer that the memory keeps raising on his client machine when he opens the motion tab and leaves it playing. Since the case is on the Nx client, we need to confirm if the memory leakage problem happens on your Nx client only.
Thank you for your cooperation.
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Hi Edward Dickey,
Just checking in to make sure you received our response as it has been a while since we have heard from you. Please let us know if you still need help. We are eager to resolve your question as soon as possible.
Best Regards,
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Hi Wendy,
Sorry I didn't get back to you at the time.
I wanted to clarify - the server itself keeps going happily. It is the client machine I am remotely viewing from that keeps accumulating its RAM usage when Smart Search is in rewind and then freezes once all its RAM is consumed.
This only happens on the Client. The Server is completely fine. This problem started for me after upgrading to 4.1 and I was hoping 4.2 would resolve it but the problem is the same.
I found today that it will also do this if "Objects" in the Notifications Panel is active and you rewind, I guess because this is basically doing something very similar to Smart Search.
Best, Edward
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Hi Edward Dickey,
Thank you. I reproduced the issue you encounter and noticed an increase of the RAM and a little of the CPU. I didn't wait untill it crashed, but I definitely could play back several minutes and my RAM was around increased from 40% (running multiple tasks) to 60% of 16 GB.
But this also makes sense, as soon as you start requesting lots of data, it will be stored in RAM first and if it can't release the data in time, RAM will fill up, and eventually it might freeze or even crash the computer.
Also, it makes sense that playing forward is less strain than playing backwards due to a more complex calculation process.
That being said, can you explain the reason for playing backwards at an increased speed for such a long time?
What are you trying to achieve?In general, we would recommend to playback based on smart search and move from chunk to chunk with the X or Z key (or the mouse), or event based search or objects based search.
Another option could be to use the Preview Search. Also, the use of Thumbnails on the timeline can be useful, to quickly find anything.
JIRA-VMS-21523
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Hi Norman,
Thanks for your reply on this.
On our Windows 10 client, i5 with 8GB RAM, rewinding at 1x speed with smart search on 1 camera came up to crash/freeze point (all 8GB used) in 90 seconds, and rewinding at 16x speed with smart search on 1 camera came up to crash/freeze point in 13 seconds. (Monitored using Windows Task Manager).
This phenomenon was only noticed since 4.1 and now with 4.2.
Additionally, I have now found that if you have "Object" enabled in the Notifications Panel, and then rewind, it will do the same thing, using up all the RAM (fast or less fast depending on the speed of rewind) and thus freezing/crashing the computer.
When I smart search forwards, or fast forward with Object enabled, it does not do this. The RAM stays constant no matter how fast I search.
Playing backwards comes about when trying to search for something. The user is in Live, at the present moment, then presses rewind to check for something, typically whether or not any vehicle or person has come in or left out a driveway or door.
The increased speed, meaning 2 or 4 or 8 or 16 times, is to make it faster, otherwise it would take the user a very long time to find something.
13 - 90 seconds isn't very long. Particularly 13. I've also seen it where a user will start rewinding but then be interrupted by a phone call and take his attention off that camera to answer, then get back to it but it was still rewinding.
We use our NX Witness system for live viewing. We also will review footage for different things. Sometimes in an actual live incident situation, such as where an intruder may have come onto the property and you're rapidly trying to see where they went while radioing a Guard to intercept etc, one's attention can be strained and the user may not remember that they only have a few seconds to rewind or they will crash the computer (which usually takes restarting the computer to get it going again).
Personally, I usually search forwards. But occasionally I do search backwards.
I have 5 main users at one site and 2 of them keep freezing/crashing the client unintentionally due to this problem, despite knowing of it, because like anyone, they are used to pressing forward or rewind on their controls on various electronic devices and it doesn't usually freeze/crash it.
I would be very happy to simply be able to disable "smart search rewind" entirely, and the same with "Object Enabled, rewind".
Thanks for the suggestions on the Preview Search and Thumbnails. I definitely value the thumbnails for being able to check analytics alarms that have happened faster.
But the main problem I have right now is this freezing happening through the innocent use of rewind with these smart points enabled.
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Hi Edward Dickey,
It is quite expected that enabling the objects tab, causes the same scenario, since the mechanics have lots of similarities, especially when rewinding.
At the moment, it seems we cannot offer a short term solution to resolve this. But we are going to implement some changes to the engine we use in a future release (most likely, version 4.4), which might circumvent this scenario, unfortunately, no solid promises can be made at this moment.
Until then, I would encourage the operator to experiment with the other options I mentioned before. These will offer much faster results, than the current workflow.
If you enable the smart search, you can see the results instantly in the notification panel on the right and scroll through the results and if you see the applicable event, you can click-and-hold it and drag it into the grid, and it starts playing at the moment of the event, so you can see where someone went to.
I recorded a short video, to demonstrate this feature. You can see it HERE.
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Hi Norman,
Thanks. Understood.
Well, I very much look forward to 4.4 then. My main concern is to eliminate any accidental crashing. Is there any rough timescale on when that may be released?
I will promote the other means of search that you showed in your video. It is very simple and easy.
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Hi Edward Dickey,
I'm sorry, but I can't provide any rough estimate when the new engine will be part of the release.
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OK. Understood Norman.
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Hi Edward Dickey,
Your issue has been fixed on our Oct/2020 patch.
It is suggested you can try to update to the latest available.Build Number: 33832 Password: 11ytrq 0 -
Hi Ichiro,
Thanks! That totally handled it. Much appreciated.
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