MS is lagging on me!!!, please help me

[meerkat234]

i was making a movie and suddenly it starderd lagging, then i did a recording and i said into the mic "hey! where did he go!" and then i played it to hear it and it said something like this "ha wer di hego! like ten times faster than i originally said it. Then i went onto the internet to see if my whole computer was lagging and it turns out the only thing lagging is movie storm. (by the way i only had 2 tabs up at the time they were moviestorm and firefox). Please help me and i don't want any thing confusing like this

"So first you have to get your video card and swap it with a 3.1 fummler and then get a defragger and put it next to your mechant refuller." yeah, that's what i don't want

just tell me something like this "open your control panel click on visual and then click on perfomance" that's what i DO want.

please help me

[keithlawrence]

i Please help me and i don't want any thing confusing like this

"So first you have to get your video card and swap it with a 3.1 fummler and then get a defragger and put it next to your mechant refuller." yeah, that's what i don't want

just tell me something like this "open your control panel click on visual and then click on perfomance" that's what i DO want.

Welcome to Moviestorm
I had the same thing happen to me a while back. I just restarted the thing (either the program or the whole computer) Don´t know why it happend but now it´s gone.
Hope it helps

[primaveranz]

There seems to be a Java leak in Moviestorm that builds up over time and cause the lag effect. However I do find that certain programs like Skype or Firefox can aggravate the problem if they are running at the same time so I shut them down first. The only other solution is to save and restart MS from time to time.

I also find that sometimes when I start MS the screen never fully appears, so after a while I have to kill Javaw.exe in Control Panel / Processes and restart. You then get a message saying MS appears to already be running but you ignore it and start anyway and it works fine.

HTH

[tree]

i was making a movie and suddenly .......

just tell me something like this "open your control panel click on ........

please help me

in development (before get to the rendering stage) i like to use these settings :



Once all the work is done and everything is ready for rendering it's time to turn the graphics up to 11.
I make many incremental copies along the process; even closing and re-opening Moviestorm when some major additions are made so i can be sure it will run at render time.

Moviestorm just runs faster in it's own window separate from windows and the higher graphics settings are only useful at render time.
The less props on set the better when developing the acting of the characters....

Good luck and happy Moviemaking :-)

[Mneros]

yup what everyone said. but the most Important one is the restarting MS from time to time. Java leak - memory leak, eventually brings MS to a stop.

every once and a while you just need to save, exit and restart MS.

[Branes]

yup what everyone said. but the most Important one is the restarting MS from time to time. Java leak - memory leak, eventually brings MS to a stop.

every once and a while you just need to save, exit and restart MS.

You guys take this kind of nonsense with such a grain of salt!!! WE SHOULD BE OUTRAGED AT HAVING TO PUT UP WITH THIS KIND OF INCOMPETENCE!!!!

This is a program breaking bug. How can they continue to advertise this POS! Any program with this kind of pricetag on it with a serious memory leak is stealing from the public. It's criminal. This is a bug that should have been fixed the second someone noticed it. Not fixing it sends a huge message to the user public that they don't give a ***** about the quality of their product or even if their users can get proper use out of it. No user should have to shut down any program "from time to time" to compensate for a major bug. It is the responsibility of the company that made this program to produce a product that does what it claims to do. Anything else is perpetrating a fraud on the public!!!!

They have the nerve to charge over $200 for a program that can't even load a gig in ram without slowing down!!!! That's criminal. I've got 16gb of ram with an ATI 6950 video card and AMD Phenom II 3.4ghz CPU and this program starts jerking after only about 50 frames in Camerawork view. This is totally and absolutely unacceptable for a program that costs this much. So, someone at Moviestorm please tell me why you haven't bothered to fix this program breaking bug!!!!

My late wife was head of the software quality council for one of the largest tech companies in the world before she died. And I'm a former IT manager so I have some knowledge of how a software company should do business. And this is just plain shoddy workmanship!! And the fact that they haven't even attempted to fix this issue tells me that this is not a company I want to do business with. And I'm going to make my opinion of this product known online in more than one location until they fix it.

[Nahton]

This is a program breaking bug. How can they continue to advertise this POS! Any program with this kind of pricetag on it with a serious memory leak is stealing from the public.

I'm not entirely sure the Java memory leak problem is native to Moviestorm and may be more of a Java issue. We once rolled out a corporate screen-saver built with Java and had to uninstall it after a few weeks due to.....(guess what).....a java memory leak. The screen-saver was tying up all the PC memory over time if the users didn't reboot frequently enough and we couldn't push out patches or updates.

In lieu of waiting for Sun Microsystems to fix the problem you may want to check out this thread were Ben suggests a memory setting tweak:

Changing the Maximum Memory Allocated to Moviestorm

I should add a caveat that I don't know if this post is relevant since the 1.5 upgrade but I'm sure the MS staff will clarify that once they emerge from their slumber.

Good Luck

[corthew]

You guys take this kind of nonsense with such a grain of salt!!! WE SHOULD BE OUTRAGED AT HAVING TO PUT UP WITH THIS KIND OF INCOMPETENCE!!!!

If you've ever done any serious programming you'll know that thousands of lines of code can very easily hide the causes of small things. Memory leaks are small things.
They can add up quickly but the actual leak is usually very small.
And it usually has nothing directly to do with the software that is leaking.

Moviestorm is written on the 32bit Java platform. Java is well known for its memory leaks.

So why do people use java when it has such an outrageous bug?

Because the benefits outweigh the problems.

The Java memory leak, which MovieStorm suffers for, may not even be a problem with the Java platform. It could be hardware related. Or an inherent weakness in the language Java was compiled in.

Its certainly not incompetence though for such leaks to exist. They have existed since the early days of programming.

During a demonstration of how stable Windows Millennium was, Bill Gates experienced the blue screen of death.

If you want to enjoy the amazing things you can do with this software you'll need to restart it from time to time and suffer crashes that make no sense.
They give good support here though as long as you understand that they are real people who have created a great piece of software and want it to work flawlessly.

Trust me, someone writes the amount of code required for this software and has it working as well as it does...They are not incompetent.

But if you believe they are you are welcome to do it better.

More options for machinima software are always welcome.

[urbanlamb]

Welcome to Moviestorm
I had the same thing happen to me a while back. I just restarted the thing (either the program or the whole computer) Don´t know why it happend but now it´s gone.
Hope it helps

I think there is a rather large memory leak in moviestorm i watch it eat up massive amounts after awhile. I have to shut it down a lot while doing certain activities like the animations is bad. I watched one day as 5 java moviestorm applets were open over time. Anyhow I just repeatedly start and restart the thing. It appears to be a bit better with this new release but not much.

also it seems that the number of add ons you have installed lags it more

and if there are broken add ons it lags it even more..

its a laggy piece of software to be honest i just get used to it.. ..

I as a rule kind of usually stay away from software using java but well i broke the rule with this particular program cause i kinda like it. I dont think that anything can be done about it unless the makers of moviestorm decide to stop using java .. /shrug

edit wow this is an old thread nevertheless moviestorm still leaks its javas..

[primaveranz]

Yeah we should all kill ourselves. Life is so unfair.

[urbanlamb]

yes life is truly hard in 3D land lol

once upon a time there were no program with these capabilities that the regular hobby working stiff could afford only people who had access to big movie studios could get their hands on this the rest of us had to just play with paper dolls but now we have leaky java software and i loves it

[luxaeternam]

One of the redeeming virtues of Java memory leaks (like Windows BSOD or anything else that freezes your system) is that it forces the user to cultivate patience (a great virtue) thus reducing the chances of apoplexy or aneurysm or any other attack leading to all-round apoptosis.

So just chill and enjoy the creative process which is excellent for one's mental well-being ...

[Cybrosia]

Thanks, Branes. My wife has long lamented that I am one of the most cynical, cruel, self-righteous, judgmental SOBs on the face of this planet. I showed her your post. She now thanks the Lord she has me. I am forever in your debt.

crusoe

[primaveranz]

Thanks, Branes. My wife has long lamented that I am one of the most cynical, cruel, self-righteous, judgmental SOBs on the face of this planet. I showed her your post. She now thanks the Lord she has me. I am forever in your debt.

crusoe

Post of the week!

[Branes]

If you want to enjoy the amazing things you can do with this software you'll need to restart it from time to time and suffer crashes that make no sense.
They give good support here though as long as you understand that they are real people who have created a great piece of software and want it to work flawlessly.

Trust me, someone writes the amount of code required for this software and has it working as well as it does...They are not incompetent.

But if you believe they are you are welcome to do it better.smile.gif

More options for machinima software are always welcome.


Thanks, Branes. My wife has long lamented that I am one of the most cynical, cruel, self-righteous, judgmental SOBs on the face of this planet. I showed her your post. She now thanks the Lord she has me. I am forever in your debt.

So just chill and enjoy the creative process which is excellent for one's mental well-being ...



I enjoy the creative process, but if you were an artist and bought a tube of say, Vermillion and it turned out to be Cerulean Blue, you might feel cheated, especially if you couldn't return it.

Ok, guys. I owe someone an apology. I overreacted. I could give you a lot of reasons like it's the holiday season and I'm a widower and I miss my wife, or my patience just ran thin or whatever. But, I admit I probably was a little too aggressive and insulting. Sometimes I forget that the people who developed this stuff are real people with human feelings, not just an impersonal corporation. So, I apologize to any and all for the way I said what I said, not the content.

The fact is that I've worked with this program for a few days now, and I can't get more than a 1/2 hour's work out of it before I have to restart it, because of all the jerkiness. And I go to Task Manager and check processes and there are four instances of java32 running. And I find it almost impossible to accept that they didn't see this when they were creating the program, if it is, in fact, a Java issue.

And why, since Java has such a poor reputation, was this program built on the Java platform in the first place? Just to make it Mac compatible?

I have to say, I haven't paid for the program, so my rant was more in the line of a frustrated trial user. Frustrated, because, like a lot of you, I really wanted a good alternative to The Movies, or something cheaper than Iclone, for doing machinima.

But I really don't think it's asking too much of a $200 program to function properly. I mean, what kind of programs cost $200 or more today? Photoshop, Autocad...serious professional programs that function almost flawlessly.

Sure, there are bugs. But this memory leak has apparently been known for quite some time and so far, I've seen no indication that the developers have admitted it or are working to fix it. At least, I saw no such posts when I did a search for "memory leaks" in the forum.

Crusoe, I don't think expecting a product to work is either cynical, self-righteous or cruel. Ok, I'll admit that some of the things I said were rough. But I think my statements concerning the state of the software business was realistic, not cynical or self-righteous. I'm happy for you that your wife feels lucky to have you. Mine felt lucky to have me when she was dying of breast cancer and I had to threaten her doctor with a malpractice suit to get her suitable pain medication. Sometimes, you have to be harsh. I'm a former Marine Sergeant so sometimes I treat everyone like a screwup private. LOL. But I'm so cruel, I stayed with my wife till the second she breathed her last. I held her hand as she left. But that's neither here nor there and has no bearing on this discussion.

In the late 90's I was partners in a webhosting company before the ISPs started giving away webspace. We had 24/7 tech support and there were only the two of us. I got woken up in the middle of the night I don't know how many times by irate customers wanting to know why their site wasn't functioning properly. And I got in touch with my partner at 4 am and we worked on it until it was working properly. THAT is called customer care. We didn't expect our customers to find a workaround until we felt ready to fix the problem.

What irks me is this is business as usual in the software world and that's why I made that rant. You guys are all making excuses for a product that does not work as advertised. Oh, it's Java's fault, it's something I've learned to live with, Windows has BSOD's. Would you live with an oil leak in a new car or a hole in the roof of a new house?
The principle is the same.

Maybe in this case, it's not the fault of the Moviestorm developers. Maybe it is Java, but then they should have used another 3d engine.

This started with Bill Gates and his buggy OS's. We never had software or hardware issues like this on Amiga. But over time, we've become programmed to accept that when we buy something nowadays, it just might not work and to not feel cheated by that.

But, you can't tell me that the software industry, gaming in particular, although this isn't a game per se, hasn't been given a free pass as far as putting out shoddy products and not being held responsible for it. Some companies work hard to put out patches to fix problems...others don't bother. If the product is bad, they ignore it and go on to the next project. That, my friends, is known as fraud. And they have never had to answer for it. And I can't tell you the number of PC games I've bought that were just plain junk and I got stuck paying for it. So, when I saw a $225, supposedly professional product, with a very serious bug that they apparently haven't addressed..I got mad.

Maybe I'm just getting too old and cranky, but I still believe that when a person puts out hard-earned money for a product, it should do what it claims to do or the product shouldn't be on the market.
If it was a $40 game, I'd still be upset but not nearly as much. This product is $75 and if you want most of the content necessary to get the most out of it, it's $225.

I will say one thing. I am grateful to the Moviestorm people for putting out a fully functional demo with all the upgrades. I got to see what this software is capable of, IF it worked properly . Unfortunately, I can't justify spending that kind of money on a product that is going to be this troublesome.
So, once my trial runs out, that's it.

Now you guys can all go back to feeling superior.

[corthew]

The fact is that I've worked with this program for a few days now, and I can't get more than a 1/2 hour's work out of it before I have to restart it, because of all the jerkiness. And I go to Task Manager and check processes and there are four instances of java32 running. And I find it almost impossible to accept that they didn't see this when they were creating the program, if it is, in fact, a Java issue.

A few days with only 1/2 hour of work?

Check my channel. Several of those were done in a few short hours.

The most recent one spoofing a popular sesame street song was created from start to finish and uploaded in about three hours before I headed to work.

Its crude and had it been more than a spoof I would have spent more time with it and had more props but it was just a short minute long project that depended more on the theme than on fleshed out characters or environment involvement.

Did you mean the project was 1/2 hour long or that due to crashes you were only able to dedicate 1/2 hour to the actual set design and character activity?

1/2 hour projects are likely not going to be done in a few days. There is alot involved with set design, character design, scripting, directing their actions, making sure the lighting and background noise match the mood you want.

I spent weeks working on my Third Day Rising video. I had to do multiple restarts due to the software bogging down. I learned something you'd think I'd know by now after years of computer experience programming, writing songs, etc.

SAVE OFTEN.

You cannot save too much. It may disrupt the creative juices at first but it'll become a habit you do without thinking after awhile.

How much does it disrupt those creative juices when it crashes?

You're complaint about the cost of Moviestorm vs its reliability though reveals an important thing about you...You haven't explored the other options.

And why, since Java has such a poor reputation, was this program built on the Java platform in the first place? Just to make it Mac compatible?

Eventually they will either move away from java or move to 64bit java.
Either would be a welcome move for most Moviestorm users.

I suspect they never expected it to grow this big at the beginning. Now a complete rewrite maintaining the existing functionality would be a massive undertaking.

64bit Java is probably their best direction but not really knowing java, I may be completely wrong on that.

Sure, there are bugs. But this memory leak has apparently been known for quite some time and so far, I've seen no indication that the developers have admitted it or are working to fix it. At least, I saw no such posts when I did a search for "memory leaks" in the forum.

Amos located a few problems with the code from last year's update and the developers initiated fixes as soon as the causes were identified. Part of that solved a memory leak that has now significantly improved performance.

There are several posts back and forth between myself and MS staff in the help forums trying to identify the causes of memory usage mushrooming for no apparent reason. I haven't done a processes watch recently so I'm not certain to what extent that has been resolved with the most recent update but I can tell you it is running much better than it was. It hasn't crashed due to memory issues yet for me. Of course part of that may be that I've become use to the signs when its approaching that point and I restart it but only a small part.

This started with Bill Gates and his buggy OS's. We never had software or hardware issues like this on Amiga.

Hehe, dude...You never had issues like this with Dos either.

You also didn't have multitasking.
Graphics were ANSI graphics.

Simpler system, fewer problems.

You keep saying we accept the problems inherent in Moviestorm and I'm not sure why.

No one here accepts them. We deal with them while we wait for improvements.

You ran a server and you think that qualifies you to condemn a programming staff for wanting to sleep nights?

Seriously?

They give excellent customer service here. The make serious attempts to track down bugs and fix them.
There are thousands of people using this software.
Only a couple of handfuls post messages in these forums.

Now you guys can all go back to feeling superior.

Thank you.

[Nahton]

@Branes

I have to believe you are experiencing problems far more severe and unmanageable then most of us. I'm running Moviestorm and a 3 and 1/2 year old laptop with a shared memory video card on Windows XP and I don't have nearly the level of issues you are describing. The multiple Java instances sound like failed launches of the program. I've seen that and as Prima recommended I kill the process and relaunch.

I have to say at one point I was experiencing something very similar and limped along producing a movie for a contest with persistent reboots and application restarts. I seriously thought I had reached the end of using the program until I got a new computer or even permanently, so I understand what you are going through in that regard. I wish I could tell you what cleared up the problem. I think the memory tweak helped and I did some heavy general pc maintenance. I'm pretty sure one of the Moviestorm updates helped to a large degree as well.

I was glad you threw that point about Microsoft into your last post because truthfully they Beta tested for profit at the expense of the consumer with their glitchy Windows software that was in no way ready for production release until Windows XP. It basically stated in their EULA that if it blew up or failed and you lost important data or the time to produce something it was in no way their responsibility and your own fault for using their crappy operating system so don't complain to them. I agree that they started the tradition of buggy software and crushed the competitors because they were better at marketing. Ironically, I really shouldn't complain about that as it allowed me to migrate to a career in IT by starting out providing support to users of his products.

My current production practices are to limit myself to working with only Moviestorm running if possible. But at times I have Moviestorm, Sony Vegas, Sony Soundforge, and a browser (to search for content) running at the same time and really don't experience persistent problems. If I switch between any of the production tools in Moviestorm I try to first initiate a manual save of the movie. Sure there is the occasional blip here and there and the Java window hangs in an endless loop and I realize I forgot to save the movie and I curse and swear and lament the day I ever laid eyes on the cursed program ....but all that is forgotten when I've finished a movie and actually managed to get the ideas in my head transfered to a media format that can be (hopefully) enjoyed by others.

I think it's a fair point you make that maybe we do rationalize some level of acceptance where we could be more critical from a pure standpoint that we are paying for something and it should work. For me, personally the product performs at an acceptable level. I work on a computer all day and I see programs lock up or fail all the time. Once you start layering application after application on an OS it opens the door for some sort of incompatibility or glitch emerging. So I can accept the occasional blip and be generally thankful that there is a program like Moviestorm out there for me to work with. I couldn't have imagined it existing 6 years ago and prefer it to the alternative.

I find the Moviestorm staff to be responsive and helpful and I recommend you start a new thread specifying your problems in the "Help" forum. This one may not have been seen by the best individuals suited to help you. They have been known to take a look at file logs to resolve issues.

One last thing that occurred to me as a best practice is to not make your movies, or scenes too long. I wouldn't add a lot of new scenes to a movie and a lot of us prefer to create new save versions off the original to create new scenes with the same cast and sets. It cuts down on the load time and java memory issues. I once tried to make a "one shot" movie following one character around a set as he passed by at least 20 other characters with their own animations and the movie became impossible to work with once I hit the 4 minute mark. Is this work-flow concession another rationalization? Sure, but I used to work with "The Movies Game". If you want to talk about a program that was a real PITA to work with that would be my starting point.

I hope you find a way to work through the application problems or find another program that works for you. There are others out there if you decide to choose that path.

[urbanlamb]

I can't run anything else when I run moviestorm it gobbles up all my ram within minutes. It may have something to do with well how they programmed for other systems, but I know my system is up to spec its got 8 gig of ram and a 1 gig video card and I would never run something like moviestorm on a laptop unless I had the laptop in an ice bucket lol.


In any event mine bogs down very fast 1-2 things and i must restart. It only does this when I am animating things. I can leave it running and build sets all day and answer my email etc etc but when I do the animation part of the video it requires me to restart after every single animation is inserted so it takes awhile lol. Animating songs it just its hard work that requires oddles of patience. I have no clue if this is normal or not but when I look at my tastkmaster it just gobbled up all the ram and so I learned to save after every step while animating.

Its actually faster then letting the software catch up. I do find it excessive but I enjoy the software moviestorm. I can run all kinds of software and keep a virtual server running normally, but when I start up moviestorm I have to shut everything down.

I do blame it on the java though because when it freezes and blogs down its the java applet that pops up it simply stops responding if I push it too far. I doubt that moviestorm can do anything about it unless they switch to another platform and move away from java which I would love, but well I can cope with I suppose

I would say that some people experience more issues then others I am assuming I am at the extreme hair pulling end because I am quit literally restarting every single animation insert. If i do more and I get tempted i pay for it in computer lock ups so I just well do it this one move at a time thing. It is slightly improved with the newer 1.5 but not by much.

[corthew]

I can't run anything else when I run moviestorm it gobbles up all my ram within minutes. It may have something to do with well how they programmed for other systems, but I know my system is up to spec its got 8 gig of ram and a 1 gig video card and I would never run something like moviestorm on a laptop unless I had the laptop in an ice bucket lol.

One of the big causes of memory overage that came up repeatedly when staff was helping me troubleshoot was the number of user created props I had installed.

The MovieStorm official props generally have low poly counts and pull some of their data from other Moviestorm props to keep memory usage down.

You don't get that benefit with user mods usually and often the user mods are very high poly even when you cannot tell from the look of it.

Java 32bit will crash as the memory it is using approaches 700 or 800 megs.

When you start it up it loads the mesh data for every mod you've installed so they can be available when called upon.

If you go into your addons folder and do a search meshdata.data files then select them all and look at how much memory they use, that should give you some idea of how much memory MovieStorm has to play around in after it loads.

Although I'm hoping they've changed this, in the previous version, unchecking a mod in the settings menu at startup does not keep its meshdata.data file from loading.

[urbanlamb]

yes i have been removing mods slowly but i dont even have the full moviestorm package I purchased the 75 dollar one to decide if i wanted to spend more money hehe.

Anyhow I am over time removing more and more mods but its kinda hard to make things because if i am looking for something i have to reinstall mods to see what is inside so its a bit fiddly.

Anyhow I am to the point I will be making my own mods soon (when i get time.. )