Hi Martin.

I've been trying to use, with vMix, the new encoder for Windows Media video fron Microsoft: "Microsoft Expression Encoder 4" (SP1 V. 4.0.3210.0).

I've tested the encoder with the vMix 2011 Beta 3, on several HW and SW platforms (Windows XP and Windows 7).

To feed vMix I've prepared two cases: video file only and USB capture only.

In all platforms and cases, the Expression Encoder starts working fine taking as video input the VMix virtual capture (the audio input to the Expression Encoder has been the HW line input).

In all platforms and cases, after a while (approx. something more than hour), the Expression Encoder crashes with a message of the type: The application has been a problem and must terminate; vMix allways stays working.

I repeated the same test running the Expression Encoder alone on the same platforms and conditions, and no crash was found.

Thanks in advance, any help will be appreciated.

Best regards.

Antonio (mas)

In the Expression test I have done, no recording has been taken.

The vMix only renders its output to the vMix Virtual Capture device. The Microsoft Expression 4 has only been streaming to a LAN, no recording activated.

The CPU usage declared in vMix is between 2 and 4%, depending on the HW platform. The Windows CPU meter declares between 13 and 30%.

In the same scenarios, but using vMix with Adobe FMLE instead of Microsoft Expression for the streaming, more than 50 working hours have been succesfully tested.

Below is a capture of the details showed when the error appears in a Windows 7 computer (sorry, is in spanish):

Nombre del evento de problema: APPCRASH
Nombre de la aplicación: Encoder.exe
Versión de la aplicación: 4.0.3210.0
Marca de tiempo de la aplicación: 4d6dacf0
Nombre del módulo con errores: vMixVirtualCapture.ax
Versión del módulo con errores: 0.0.0.0
Marca de tiempo del módulo con errores: 4d63b3f5
Código de excepción: c0000005
Desplazamiento de excepción: 00001dd9
Versión del sistema operativo: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Id. de configuración regional: 3082
Información adicional 1: 0a9e
Información adicional 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Información adicional 3: 0a9e
Información adicional 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Regards,
Antonio (mas)

Some more information about the behavior of the problem.

I've repeated several times some of the tests. The time to crash is different dependig on the platform, but the same platform (HW and SW) has allways the same time to crash. Two values obtained in different platforms have been 2h21m and 5h38m.

Regards,
Antonio

Sorry about the delay.
I am currently busy with a lot of changes at the moment.

If you are a registered customer I can give you an alpha version to test by emailing info@vmix.com.au, otherwise it may be a month or so away.

I have also been experiencing this problem on Vmix 2011 beta5.

As Antonio describes the problem only occurs in Expression and not with Flash. However Expression is fine when you encode straight from another source. So although Microsoft need to pull their finger out, it could also be fixable in Vmix.

I have finally found a solution, use the discontinued Windows Media Encoder instead of Expression. I ran it for over 20 hours and it was rock solid.

Unfortunately you sacrifice the ability to use ISS live smooth streaming, but many people don't have silverlight yet anyway.

Please try the following version:

http://www.vmix.com.au/download/vmix2011v9.exe

As soon as I get confirmation that it solves your issue it will be released to the website .

Thanks,

Martin
vMix

Hi,

I've identified a potential memory leak when using vMix with EE4 that will be fixed in the next release.

Regards,

Martin
vMix