Error allocating and Failure to create dng errors

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GracieAllen
Posts: 67
Joined: 08.04.2015 00:19

Error allocating and Failure to create dng errors

Post by GracieAllen »

Windows 10 Pro (current), Helicon Focus 7.6.5, 32GB memory, 970 GTX graphics...

CURRENTLY, the hardware acceleration is turned OFF - I presume the "hardware acceleration is using the graphics card? I ran the benchmark the other day and found (my numbers aren't exact as I'm going from memory) it took about 47 seconds WITHOUT hardware acceleration and 130+ with it. So, I took at small stack of 23 images and ran it 3 ways: Method B, 23 images, then reran method B for a subset of 14 images, then for a subset of 13.
Acceleration ON Acceleration OFF
23 108 51
14 36 11
13 34 9

so I just left the hardware acceleration off...

BUT, in my "normal" environment with Lightroom and Photoshop open I frequently get errors like:

Failed to create dng file from raw using adobe dng converter
Compilation time 29.994

What on the system is causing Helicon Focus to throw this error?

And, I periodically get errors of this type, sometimes just when doing a second render on a small subset of the original image set:

Error allocating 180.556 megabytes
Compilation time 2.804

Error allocating 45.1416 megabytes
Compilation time 0.705

Recently, it created the output - the render succeeded, but it failed attempting to save a JPEG.
Error allocating 14.8547 megabytes

With the 19 image test stack, it reliably throws the 180.556 megabyte error when I attempt the second render, this time with only 4 images.

I found an older topic on this and the "solution" was to turn off hardware acceleration and reduce memory cache limit. As I said above, the hardware acceleration is OFF, and I've tried memory cache limits as high as 90% and as low as 30% (reducing it in 10% increments) with no apparent change - do I reduce the memory cache limit even further? Will there be an adverse impact on performance if I do so?

Watching the resource monitor on the system shows NO issues with the graphics card - it's about 3-10% busy and total memory usage is less than 2GB. CPU runs 80-90%, and total memory usage (including Lightroom, Photoshop and the other things running in the background, never exceeds 27GB of the 32 available (not including the 24GB paging file also available)...
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Catherine
Posts: 1156
Joined: 29.04.2019 22:38

Re: Error allocating and Failure to create dng errors

Post by Catherine »

As you have correctly assumed, these are memory allocation errors and by memory I mean RAM. And yes, the OpenCL acceleration uses the graphics card but that has nothing to do with the current problem since you've left it off.
You can further reduce the memory consumption by Helicon Focus, and thus increase your chances at error-free usage of the software, by turning the memory cache off completely - set the memory cache limit to 0%. That will not have a drastic negative effect on performance; depending on your particular way of using the software you may not even notice it.

However, since you said you did watch the total amount of RAM used and it never got too close to the limit, I suspect the primary cause of the problems is that your page file is either turned off or is too small. Set it to at least 8 gigabytes, preferably - 16 (half the total physical RAM your system has is the good rule of thumb for the page file size). Or let Windows manage the page file size automatically, which is the default setting.

Here's an article on viewing and changing your page file settings: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/how-t ... 36929.html
GracieAllen
Posts: 67
Joined: 08.04.2015 00:19

Re: Error allocating and Failure to create dng errors

Post by GracieAllen »

Thanks for the reply Catherine,

Actually, my page file is 24 GB, and it's on a different SSD in case it ever needs to be used. So far, unless I've got something HUGE in Photoshop, and Lightroom is using 10-15GB, nothing ever touches the pagefile.

I'll turn memory caching down some more, but what's causing the "Failed to create dng file from raw using adobe dng converter" error? Is that a memory issue too?
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Catherine
Posts: 1156
Joined: 29.04.2019 22:38

Re: Error allocating and Failure to create dng errors

Post by Catherine »

With what you've described in the original post it was an easy guess that yes, the DNG fails for the same reason (runs out of RAM).
Send a bug report (menu - Help - Report a bug) the next time you get this error.
GracieAllen
Posts: 67
Joined: 08.04.2015 00:19

Re: Error allocating and Failure to create dng errors

Post by GracieAllen »

The good news - or maybe the bad news - is that it's very repeatable. Usually I can create the error, though sometimes Helicon Focus just hangs for a while then crashes.
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Catherine
Posts: 1156
Joined: 29.04.2019 22:38

Re: Error allocating and Failure to create dng errors

Post by Catherine »

Send a bug report when the error occurs and there's no crash, and we'll get the previous crash data as well (and will look into it).
ggruber
Posts: 2
Joined: 19.06.2018 23:46

Re: Error allocating and Failure to create dng errors

Post by ggruber »

If you have any software that automatically backs up your images to the cloud, you may be getting a file locking conflict. If I don't turn off file synchronization prior to running Helicon Soft, I can generate this specific error every time. The moment I temporarily disable my GoogleDrive, the problem disappears.
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Catherine
Posts: 1156
Joined: 29.04.2019 22:38

Re: Error allocating and Failure to create dng errors

Post by Catherine »

That's interesting, I see why this would happen, but the error should be with transferring EXIF metadata and not with saving the image itself. What error message are you getting?
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