14 Replies Latest reply: Apr 29, 2013 10:47 AM by CoralVision RSS

    AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS

    CoralVision Community Member

      Hi forum,

       

      I love my AME CS6, when it works, but I've had anguish with some (possibly) related problems:

      1) verry sllow output of .mov file (NTSC SD, h264)

      2) constant hangs resulting from any interaction with the application (spending a lot of time looking at "Adobe Media Encoder (not responding)" at the top of the application window. These hangs usually don't cause a crash, but the waiting (usually 5-25 seconds) is agony, especially when a large batch of work is in queue. (The only time AME ever hangs on startup for me is when the mac is actually exporting into the watch folder, in which case the startup splash text says it is trying to load the file [which is at that moment incomplete] and so it sits there and hangs - this is probably not related to my core problem.)

       

      Some details about my system:

      1) AME (CS6) is hosted on a Win7 system on a Dell with Xeon quad 3.07Ghz, and Nvidia quadro 2000 grafx card, and 6Gb of RAM.

      2) I am using watch folders that reside on a NAS connected by a gigabit switch

      3) some files being contributed to the watch folders are coming from a Mac (usually 1080p prores 422) but most are coming from the local windows machine (some SD NTSC .AVI, some MPEG all-I - I generally queue finished shows to AME using the "same settings as sequence" checkbox from PrPro the file->export->media dialog

       

      So my questions, based on my guesses as to what is going on:

      1) Is the Adobe Quicktime plugin/manager to blame? How can I know, and what could I do to troubleshoot?

      (observation: watch folder A includes 2 h264 outputs - one is .mov and the other is .mp4. When processing a master file from premiere, the .mp4 rips fast and the .mov chuggs [ratio of export time : run time is ~0.3:1 for the .mp4 and  ~4:1 for the .mov - a huuuuge difference]. HOWEVER, when the file in process is a prores from the Mac [presumably need ing quicktime for all  operations] BOTH the .mp4 and the .mov are pathologically slow to encode)

      2) Is it possible that I need to modify some network setting/configuration? I am totally a noob at this skillset, and I work for a City Government where the IT guys dont really know how to give me what I need for the work I do - so can anyone suggest key words and concerns I can be asking about/checking on with regard to how I connect to my NAS and how their network policies might be affecting my traffic to those watch folders?

      3) Is it possible that there is some registry conflict on my Win7 system? I did briefly load a demo of AVID media composer, and someone told me that this can create problems due to registry entries associated with both applications - would I need to completely reimage/rebuild my dell or is there some way to reset these associations? Is there some way to trouble-shoot/eliminate this as a potential cause to my problem?

       

      Thanks in advance!

       

      Eric D

      production coordinator - CoralVision

        • 1. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
          CoralVision Community Member

          Here is another aspect of AME's fail pattern for me: often, even when the application doesn't hang or crash, it fails to move the source file out of the watch folder target, resulting in the same jobs being pulled up again and started each time I come back and open AME. The extra time managing files, not to mention waiting for AME to wake up from  (not responding) mode, are seriously damaging the utility of this application.

          • 2. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
            CoralVision Community Member

            Gee wiz, it is lonely in here.

            • 3. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
              CoralVision Community Member

              Maybe I am alone here for now, but 'm just gonna keep updating in hopes that someone more knowledgeable than myself will happen along and offer a comment.

              I've been convinved that the AdobeQT32server is a major part of my problem, but now I see that I don't have to be working with any .mov media for this to be an active concern. Right now AME is idle, and I see AdobeQT32server sitting there in my processes taking up 10% of my CPU, while AME is way down the list doing nothing. Also, I was just trying to set up a new watch folder to output media for a sister station that uses Leightronix's .mpg-only equipment, and the thing crashed when I saved the preset (but remembered it on restart), and then hung up for about 30 seconds when I created the watch folder. If my workflow ever lets up I am going to reimage this machine and reinstall CS6, but that is wishful thinking. I still wonder if there is something I can change about my connection to my NAS that will ease this problem, even if AdobeQT32server continues to not work very well. Also, can anyone recommend any maintenance I can do (clear out cache/temp files, etc) that might help? I am really a Mac-native and not sure how best to manage this Win7 system for best performance...

              • 4. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                CoralVision Community Member

                So what if I am playing solo, I'm keeping this log current...

                 

                I am watching a 3 hour council meeting being transcoded to two formats - one is .mov, the other .mp4.

                The mp4 will finish in about 35minutes, while the .mov will take 6-7 hours, though it is hard to tell, because until the other encode finishes, the .mov will hang/chug doing 1 frame every 2-5 seconds, while the" time remaining" indicator will just run up to hundreds of hours. As long as I don't try to keep working in premiere or AE it has a 85% chance of finishing successfully. If I do either of those things, it will hang periodically for a minute or so, and may even automatically pause itself. My guess is that if I keep working (I need to) there is about a 35% chance the AME will crash and fail before the .mov finishes.

                 

                But here is another weird thing I notice: AME has trouble (~20%) of the time moving source files from the watch folders into the source media folders. This is a headache because the next time I queue up an export, AME adds a new and unneccessary item to the list. Then getting that item off the queue, then moving the file into the source folder, usually locks/hangs AME for several minutes or fatally.

                 

                I love this application, when it works, but I really need some help figuring out what I am doing wrong. I think I have 2 distinct but related problems A)Adobe QT32 Server (which I can do nothing about), and B) my network settings (which I could do something about, if I could get some info support from adobe, which I can't).

                 

                If anyone can see this - can I get a "hang in there" or a "don't give up"?

                • 5. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                  CoralVision Community Member

                  I am really starting to think the issue with my system is broader than the quicktime problem - it doesn't seem to matter what I am doing, the thing hangs (but rarely crashes). Just now I started AME up after stopping/cancelling the cue a few hours ago (I needed to do some urgent work on PrPro related to a different project). The stopped batch was still there, and I couldn't access the  "reset status" command to queue it to go again, so I selected the batch and did a remove command. It took about 40 seconds to come back from "not responding" state, then I just wanted to shut the app down to see if it would reload the batch after a restart. After about 6 minutes of "not responding" (I didn't want to force it closed) AME finally finished closing. Why this behavior? I have asked and I will try again: is there a standard, a setting, a reference, anything anyone can think of that I can take to my system admin to troubleshoot this problem? He is a subcontractor and charges me $75/hr just to answer my emails, so I can't just go and say "I have this problem, look into it" plus, I am the only person in my organization using his LAN this way, and he has no idea what is what with networked media applications. Please, someone, is anyone reading this?

                  • 6. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                    CoralVision Community Member

                    So I am still getting no response... Maybe if I call out some names  - Jim Simon, Todd_Kopriva, Tim Kurkowski, Mark Mapes, Colin Brougham - can one of you very experienced experts help out? My AME hangs and seems to be having trouble handling its own XML - gets confused by any little change in the batch, often fails to exit cleanly or fails to move source material out of the watch folder. Is it a bad idea to work with watch folders on a NAS volume? Is there some reference/resource/documentation I should look to for help in sorting this out?

                    • 7. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                      Mitch W Employee Hosts

                      Hi CV,

                       

                      There is an issue encoding to H.264 compression with Quicktime files. There is a limitation of the number of CPU cores that can be used before the export throws "an unexpected error has occurred" message. The maximum number of cores that can be used by this process is 23 cores. The issue has been reported to Apple, but they haven't checked-in many fixes to Quicktime lately, so I'm not holding my breath on a timely fix.

                      99.9% of the time, my advice to users is to enable hyperthreading in the BIOS. For this one export action however, my advice is to disable hyperthreading and try your export again. Disabling hyperthreading will improve your performance when exporting Quicktime H.264 MOV files, however it will slow most other exports down. Quicktime exports in general are slower than other exports. Quicktime is still a 32 bit process, whereas most of the other export processes have been optimized for 64 bit.

                      So... to sum up here, the issue is unlikely to have anything to do with your NAS. It's all about using Quicktime and specifically H.264 compressed Quicktime. If you try to export to your local drive with the same export settings, I'd expect your render times to be similar to rendering to the NAS.

                       

                      Hope this helps.

                       

                      Mitch

                      • 8. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                        CoralVision Community Member

                        Hey thanks for the information Mitch! How would one access that "hyperthreading" setting you mention? (F1 on startup screen I assume?) I am willing to give it a try. Is there any chance changing this setting might also affect the hanging behavior, or would this only relate to the slow encoding? Also, (more likely) are there adverse side effects (other than slowing down non-QT encodes) I should watch out for?

                        • 9. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                          Mitch W Employee Hosts

                          Disabling hyperthreading in the BIOS will depend on your system. On my HP, I hit F10 to access setup. Then tab over to the Advanced section and select Processors. From I select and disable hyperthreading. Save the changes and reboot.  Your system may be different. You'll just have to poke around and explore or contact the manufacturer for instructions (I recommend poking around and exploring).

                          Hyperthreading is a clever way for doubling the amount of available CPU cores available on the system. Even though these cores are "virtual", they still give you a performance boost on any process that is multi-threaded. Disabling hyperthreading will slow down multi-threaded processes, but won't otherwise cause any significant issues.

                           

                          As for the hanging issue... If the hanging is happening when exporting as H.264 compressed .MOV files, then yeah, this could definitely be related.

                          • 10. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                            Todd_Kopriva Adobe Employee

                            As Mitch says, QuickTime will often fail on computers with a large number of  processors (CPUs), including computers with a large number of virtual  processors created through hyperthreading. This is especially a problem  with Apple’s H.264 exporter component within QuickTime.

                             

                            To get around this problem, disable hyperthreading or reduce the number of processor cores available to QuickTime.

                             

                            This document on the Adobe website describes how to limit the number of cores to get you under the number that is problematic for QuickTime. This is less severe than disabling hyperthreading entirely.

                            • 11. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                              CoralVision Community Member

                              Well guys, I checked up on the hyperthreading on this system - it was already disabled. Following the instructions on the page Todd links to above I found that the highest number of processors available on that "limit to" list is 4 - far below the 21 it says is the threshhold for trouble with QT server. For today I have enabled hyperthreading and enable the limit of processors to 4. and I will see how she performs.

                               

                              Another Adobe staff (Tariq from chat support) member has suggested that the problem may originate in the way my user profile is configured, and suggested I try running AME as ADMIN from my current profile. When I did, AME could not find/connect to the NAS volumes where my watch folders live, and I ran out of time to test this option using manually loaded (non-watch folder) .mov encodes.

                               

                              Also, another observation: at one moment (before changing anything) I opened AME and opened one of my .mov presets to change a setting (to disable the scripted FTP, which is also malfunctioning) and on OK-ing out of that dialog, AME froze and did not recover. I forced a quit, then reopened AME, and I discovered that just accessing that preset causes a permanent freeze every time - I don't have to change any settings in order to reproduce the fail (NOTE: despite the immediate fail, AME remembered the setting change). This speaks to Mitch's last statement above ("If the hanging is happening when exporting as H.264 compressed .MOV files...") - well, yes and no: The hang/freeze usually happens anytime I am manipulating the queue (adding/removing/reordering) or changing presets, whether I am encoding or not, and seems worse when there are .mov settings involved. My intuition is telling me that something is not working right in the way that AME interacts with those .xmp files it uses in the watch folders to track files in process.

                               

                              At any rate, I appreciate your time and consideration of my problem. I will be grinding along with the current issues unresolved, as I have deadlines looming, and I will update this thread as new information emerges. Let me just say, however, that despite these issues, CS6 still seems to be best in class and best value for me and my operation.

                              • 12. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                                CoralVision Community Member

                                Oy, Vey.

                                Back in AME this morning (sigh). Media (a short 3min PSA) ready sitting in the watch folder ready to go.

                                Click on AME in taskbar... screen up (not responding ~:30sec).

                                Responding again, I can switch b/t frames in the app, but my watch folder batch not loading... then another hang (not responding ~:30sec) after which it loads the batch and hangs again (not responding ~:20sec).

                                Then I press go, (not responding with white-shaded screen ~:30sec) and we're off to the races. 3 outputs running simultaneously from a prores422.mov file. Looking at Resource Monitor it looks like it is using more of my processor since I enabled hyperthreading, but right now with 10 minutes elapsed on this encode the expected job time is reading as 51 minutes remaining, and that is creeping up, not counting down.

                                So yeah, I am having trouble encoding the .movs, but something is not right here even before anything with any extension is loaded.

                                 

                                I did receive a direct communication from an Adobe Staff member offering to include me in a pre-release test of some updates for AME and I am thrilled to be part of the process of improving this product. We'll see how that goes. In the meantime I think my plan is to reconfigure my watch folders so they are all local and test in that configuration - I just wish there were a way I could save my current configuration so I could restore it later after testing the local-only option, without having to rebuild it completely.

                                • 13. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                                  CoralVision Community Member

                                  Final output time for this batch (3 downsampled versions of a 3 minute HD video): 1:01:25

                                  And AME went into (not responding) state for about 3 minutes, after sounding the "all done" sound effect.

                                  • 14. Re: AME hangs, slow - watch folders on NAS
                                    CoralVision Community Member

                                    FYI AME did successfully move the source file to the expected location.