<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=windows-1252"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<font face="Times New Roman">So just to confirm what your saying, even
if you run x264 10 times with the exact same
settings/source/everything, it reboots at different spots in the encode
and not always at the same spot? While I'm no expert on the inner
workings of x264, I would venture to say that if thats the case its
almost definitely not (directly) an x264 issue since in theory x264
should run basically identically for each of those runs. Think about
it this way, if you take x264 down to the most basic level, its only
really a calculator designed to run predefined mathematical equations
on a set of numbers to generate another set of numbers. Given that
those equations aren't changing (which they obviously aren't assuming
your using the same x264 binary and cli options each time), and that
the input numbers (your source) aren't changing, x264 should in theory
run exactly the same every time. <br>
<br>
Given that all of the above is true and that you are seeing the reboots
at different (and dare I say random) times through the encode, I would
agree with everyone elses view that this is a hardware problem. While
I realize 600W sounds like a lot (and yes it should be plenty), have
you ever actually tested to see how much power your system is sucking
out of the wall? How do you know your power supply isn't defective in
some way that it could be having issues at higher loads? One really
good way to test this is using a little gadget called a Kill-A-Watt
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/kill_a_watt_electric_usage_monitor_review">http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/kill_a_watt_electric_usage_monitor_review</a>).
I've had one of these monitoring my server since I built it a few
months ago (actually its monitoring the UPS since thats in the line
between it, but you get the idea). I've seen my system get as high as
550W when working it to the max (its a dual x5355 quadcore xeon, so you
can imagine, it sucks some juice). <br>
<br>
The only other thing that pops into my head as a possible cause is a
bad ram chip. Specifically one spot on one chip on one piece of ram.
I saw an issue similar to this about a year ago when building a media
center for my father. The system would just "randomly" reboot under
load. There was no definitive way to cause the reboot or any
particular amount or duration of the load similar to your situation.
What actually helped us narrow down the problem was that the ram we
were using (crucial's ballistix tracer line) had led's on it that would
show different things when under different usage. We noticed that when
one particular chip would get to a specific amount of load the reboot
would happen. My guess is that a similar thing could be happening to
you. As your system loads up and allocates the memory, its very
possible that its allocating it to different areas of the physical ram
chips. When your encode hits that spot in the ram, the system goes
nuts and something triggers the reboot to happen. BTW, when we ran
memtest86 on that ram, it performed perfectly in every test also.
Again, this is just a thought, but if you have more then one stick of
ram in there I would be curious to see if you can do a few passes with
some of the sticks removed (and rotate which ones are out obviously
between passes, just make sure you track which is which and put them
back in the original configuration so that we don't skew any future
results of tests that could point to bad ram). <br>
<br>
I hope some of that helped or at least triggered a thought in some one
else for another idea if my theory isn't right.<br>
<br>
<br>
</font>Kevin P. Jacobson wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:34FE9ABABD975D4A9282D6CA2C23C0BD02649EE120@newman.mb.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Sorry for lack of details...
Power Supply is 600W, it should be plenty.
CPU doesn't get over 50C at any time, and I have run it over 68C before with other applications. CPU or memory is not overclocked.
The reboots are random. It always happens on the first pass, it has been at the very beginning of the pass (as soon as I press Enter to execute), half way, 3/4, almost done. A full first pass is supposed to run for around 6 minutes (~23min DVD clip @ ~100fps).
I ran two full passes of all 8 tests from memtest86 on the memory last night, no errors reported.
I have had perfectly fine uptime with this system. For example, DVDShrink also makes use of all four cores and I can run three instances of it at a time, most of the time running more than 10 minutes.
I am very close to installing XP on this machine, I have had some headaches with Vista. While I love linux and use it all day at work, it is just not an option for my desktop at home, sorry Guillaume.
Again, thank you for your time and suggestions.
-Kevin
________________________________________
From: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:x264-devel-bounces@videolan.org">x264-devel-bounces@videolan.org</a> [<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:x264-devel-bounces@videolan.org">x264-devel-bounces@videolan.org</a>] On Behalf Of Tomas Carnecky [<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:tom@dbservice.com">tom@dbservice.com</a>]
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 3:57 AM
To: Mailing list for x264 developers
Subject: Re: [x264-devel] Bug Report/Help?
Kevin P. Jacobson wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I am trying to run x264 on a Xeon X3220 (Quad Core @ 2.40Ghz). I am
using the binaries at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://x264.nl">http://x264.nl</a> and have tried the most recent
(r669) all the way down to r654 without success. My system usually
reboots spontaneously, but sometimes it will just freeze. I am running
Windows Vista Ultimate and have 2GB of RAM (DDR800, Corsair). I am
going to run memtest86 on the computer tonight to rule out a memory
problem, but I think this is related closer to my Quad Core processor
and that is something that I don’t know much about.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Maybe insufficient power supply. You didn't tell how long it takes until
the computer reboots, it it right as soon as you start x264 or after it
runs for some time?
tom
_______________________________________________
x264-devel mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:x264-devel@videolan.org">x264-devel@videolan.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mailman.videolan.org/listinfo/x264-devel">http://mailman.videolan.org/listinfo/x264-devel</a>
_______________________________________________
x264-devel mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:x264-devel@videolan.org">x264-devel@videolan.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mailman.videolan.org/listinfo/x264-devel">http://mailman.videolan.org/listinfo/x264-devel</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>