8.003 Editor crashes a lot

I've been working on a new filter most of the day and a good bit yesterday and I've had the editor crash around 30-40 times so far. The filter is not especially complicated so I don't think that is the cause. Most of the crashes have resulted in the whole program closing suddenly with no offering for a crash report to upload.

I think it has something to do with me rapidly opening different images one after another to see if I've achieved my goal of image-based random. The images are 600x600 and mostly transparent but they do have different amounts of content as well. I make some changes in the filter then try different images. Usually, I wait a few seconds for it to load the preview images in the Components I'm concerned with then load another image with no regard for how close it is to finishing the render operation on the previous image. I think that may be what keeps crashing it. I'm using the 64bit version set to use all 32 cores and to use up to 90% of my 64GB of RAM so it should be able to handle that kind of quick switching I would think.

This is my problem as well. I've also had 2 other glitches the past few days. The guy that got back to me from FF support sent me the Email below. I thought, that's nuts. I have 4 years of personal filters i've made. So then I copyed and pasted the library,librart.xml and libraryStructre.xml in a separate folder and tryed his suggestion and then pasted the files back in the user app folder. Still got the problem.It looks to me like FF8 was released too soon.

It just crashed. I got the following error.

Same.

I have not used FF8 enough yet to run across any bugs...But what I do when I run across one is try to remember the last steps that led up to the crash.....Was it in the editor or the main FF window when the crash happened....What filter was being used, was it a filter with an image or without a image........
It also helps to describe the steps you took before the crash and post a filter that was being used if it was not a filter in the library......
Here is some that I found during the years of using FF....Its sometimes all about the details to finding a bug and reproducing it....
IMAGE SIZE BUG

EVENT STATE BUG

WINDOWS THEME BUG

Thanks for the hints, CFandM.

As for me, when Filer Forge 8 crashed, I was using the editor. It never crashed when the editor was closed.
It also did not crash when I was doing nothing. Every time it crashed while I was connecting two components, writing the name of a control, moving a component, or anyway when I was actively using the editor.

The error happened with different filters. Some simply used the built-in images. Some other did not use any image but free polygons.

The problem shows up in 3 different ways :

- Filter Forge simply shut down. No error messages.

- Filter Forge freeze (even I click on it, nothing happen). The same time, the message "Filter Forge x64 - Critical exception ...."

There is not a special timing for the errors. While working on the same filter, sometimes they appear after few seconds that I start the editor. Other time they appear after longer time. Also the frequency is not the same. Yesterday I had to save almost at every step, because the editor crashed about 20 times in 1 hour. The day before, it crashed, but much less.
Now I just tested. I started the editor. some component. Renamed a control. Added a component. And it crashed (Filter Forge x64 - Critical exception...). Just 30 seconds after opening the editor.

It doesn't look to be connected with other programs. Saturday I had no other program open. Yesterday I had Windows Media Player. Today Firefox and Line.

Now I'm testing.
All the same programs are open (Firefox and Line).
The filter is the same that I posted here and that crashed few minutes ago.

I added several components. But no crash.
I closed and re-opened the editor.
I changed the name of some control. But no crash.
I closed and re-opened the editor.
I changed the connection of some component. But no crash.

Then I deleted a large part of the filter.
This should in theory make easier for the editor handle the filter.
I did a mix of the previous actions. And, just after connecting two components, Filter Forge crashed with a "Critical exception..." error.

Right off the bat I noticed a lot of highpasses and blurs....This slows down FF to a crawl and will cause all kinds of funny behavior....If you create a new filter with just a image a a bunch of blurs FF will go slow as well......The blur has always been slow......

Threedee posted a method to make the blur faster......Fast Blur

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Ramlyn wrote: As I said, it crashed with several filters. I post here one.

Well I did get FF to crash with this filter..I have isolated a section of your filter and created a new filter...With this new filter I have also crashed FF....But I have not narrowed it completly down enough for other to reproduce it...
I have managed to get FF to crash with and without the bug reporter....

So the question is if you have several filters that crash FF what component tree do they have in common?......This is going to be a tricky one to isolate and not a straight forward bug.....With all the different errors that pop up those are not going to help...

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GMM WROTE: If you open like 10-20 tabs, FF can unexpectedly crash even on smaller images. This is a known issue but I'm afraid i don't have a ETA for that. Please refrain from opening a large number of tabs for now.

When it kept crashing on me I had no extra tabs open and the filters i was working on were several and not that complix. So I just decided to clean FF8 out of my hard drive and go back to FF7 for the time being.

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CFandM wrote: Well I did get FF to crash with this filter..I have isolated a section of your filter and created a new filter...With this new filter I have also crashed FF....But I have not narrowed it completly down enough for other to reproduce it... I have managed to get FF to crash with and without the bug reporter.... So the question is if you have several filters that crash FF what component tree do they have in common?......This is going to be a tricky one to isolate and not a straight forward bug.....With all the different errors that pop up those are not going to help... smile;) smile:D

Thanks CFandM. I will do more tests. Let's see what comes up.

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CFandM wrote: disconnecting and reconnecting the switch to the blends results in odd crashes

I disconnected and reconnected the switch to the blends 5 times and it worked fine.
Would appreciate a more reproducible pattern

I have the ram usage at 85%.....Here is a session from this morning which ended up in FF just closing.....I used Ramlyns posted filter but focused on the area that I talked about.......This vid is the 4th time in opening this filter after repeating all the steps each time I opened the filter that I took in the vid......This resulted in FF just closing without a reporter.....FF CLOSING

Not a method of reproducing but just one of the oddities to have a go with..

Now the hardest part is to find the culprits filter tree that brings up these errors and create a wittled down version for easy crashing with a click...

It seems the issue is not related to memory usage. This is good news, since memory leaks are hard to isolate.
We were able to crash the filter by disconnecting all connections and then slamming Ctrl+Z repeatedly. FF will either freeze or go boom around 30th undo action.

Update: looks like a bug in control initialization. If you connect-disconnect components that do not expose their controls to the Settings pane, FF won't crash.

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GMM wrote: It seems the issue is not related to memory usage. This is good news, since memory leaks are hard to isolate. We were able to crash the filter by disconnecting all connections and then slamming Ctrl+Z repeatedly. FF will either freeze or go boom around 30th undo action. Update: looks like a bug in control initialization. If you connect-disconnect components that do not expose their controls to the Settings pane, FF won't crash.

Great news! Thanks GMM.

I guess there are still no news about this. I hope it will be solved soon.

I tested the new version today. Before, after few minutes using the editor, FF8 crashed. Now it seems ok. The bug seems fixed.

GMM, do you confirm?

He! He! You are right.
Thanks for the confirmation and big thanks for fixing the issue.