[x264-devel] Win32 large-address-aware?

[Jeppe Øland]

>>>>>>>>> While testing the new mb-tree code, memory usage runs rather high
>>>>>>>>> :-)
>>>>>>>>> I found that even on a 64-bit Windows, x264 is only allowed to
>>>>>>>>> allocate 2 GB memory.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Try updating to the latest version; the memory usage has been
>>>>>>>> greatly
>>>>>>>> reduced with the "threaded lookahead" change.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I believe I am already running the latest version.
>>>>>>> Encoding 1080p content with --rc-lookahead 250 is a bit hungry.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then don't do that ;)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Values over the default are mostly useless.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm just running some tests on a short clip to see how things measure
>>>>> out.
>>>>> (Even going for --rc-lookahead 100 ran out of memory)
>>>>>
>>>>> Whether or not I should do that long-term is no reason to keep the exe
>>>>> limited if it works fine otherwise.
>>>>> Tomorrow I might be compressing a 4K video with shorter lookahead, and
>>>>> who knows how that would go ;-)
>>>>
>>>> Wait a minute, I just looked again at your original email, which I
>>>> obviously didn't read carefully enough...
>>>>
>>>>> While testing the new mb-tree code, memory usage runs rather high :-)
>>>>> I found that even on a 64-bit Windows, x264 is only allowed to
>>>>> allocate 2 GB memory.
>>>>
>>>> Er.... everyone I've talked to who uses 64-bit Windows has had no
>>>> issues with memory allocations over 2 gigabytes.
>>>
>>> I guess I wasn't being specific enough either.
>>> While the OS is 64-bit, I am actually running the 32-bit executeable.
>>>
>>> To make doubly sure, I just downloaded the latest 32-bit build from
>>> http://x264.nl/, and it runs out of memory at 2 GiB.
>>>
>>> I'm sure the 64-bit version will work fine - but a lot of GUIs wrap
>>> the 32-bit version regardless of OS.
>>
>> I just tried the 64-bit version, and of course it doesn't work with
>> AviSynth :-(
>> There are additional tools available to fix this, but it's still early
>> days == pretty flaky.
>> For the majority of users, a large-address-aware 32-bit version of
>> x264 would go a long way towards solving any current memory issues.
>
> Using avs2yuv is a convenient way to use the 64-bit x264 and 32-bit
> avisynth.

As I already mentioned, there are numerous workarounds available.
None are as easy or convenient as "Install MeGUI and AviSynth" (or
whatever package set you happen to prefer).

Adding the option LargeAddressAware="2" to the vcproj linker section
would all but eliminate the problem for essentially all users.
(It allows x264 to use 4 GiB on 64-bit Windows, or 3 GiB on 32-bit
Windows with PAE enabled).

Regards,
-Jeppe