| Xinteranimate "Unable to create pixmap" error [message #17638] |
Thu, 04 November 1999 00:00  |
Joe Means
Messages: 44
Registered: November 1996
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Hello IDL newsgroup!
I run IDL 5.21 on a PC under WinNT.
While running Xinteranimate.pro I got the error:
% WINDOW: Unable to create pixmap.
% Execution halted at: CW_ANIMATE_LOAD 652
c:\win32apps\RSI\IDL52\lib\cw_animate.pro
This animation used about 15Mb of memory [according to Performance
monitor] before giving me this error. I understand the error comes from
running out of RAM on my video card, right? My video card is a Viper
v770 with 32Mb ram.
My PC has 1Gb RAM, much more than is needed to run this animation. I
got this much RAM specifically to be able to run large animations in
IDL. How can I get this animation to run? I also need to be able to
get animations to run for which the file containing the stored images is
about 60Mb up to 300Mb. Do modifications need to be made to
Xinteranimate and its subroutines to use regular RAM instead of video
RAM?
Thanks for your help.
Cheers,
--Joe Means
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| Re: Xinteranimate "Unable to create pixmap" error [message #17801 is a reply to message #17638] |
Fri, 05 November 1999 00:00  |
Joe Means
Messages: 44
Registered: November 1996
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Member |
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David, Your XMovie program ran fine. A correction: the animation frames are
800x502 pixels. I have a 36Gb HD and 1Gb swapfile. Performance monitor shows that
lots of space is still available in the swapfile when the error occurs.
Thanks for your ideas. XMovie just uses system RAM, not video RAM since it does not
make a bunch of pixmaps, right? Thus it seems that it should not run into the
"Unable tocreate pixmap problem" since, as I understand, this is caused by a
shortage of video RAM. I won't be able to reprogram anything until I return from a
trip---probably be back on line Monday, Nov 15.
Blessings to all you helpful people,
Joe
David Fanning wrote:
> Joe Means (means@fsl.orst.edu) writes:
>
>> Here is more info on this problem. The last two times I ran it, in response
>> to David's comments, it hung on 106 and 107 frames. Regarding memory, there
>> is 1Gb of system RAM and 1Gb of swapfile [virtual memory] space. Performance
>> monitor showed that there was still 630Mb free RAM and 910Mb free swapfile
>> space when it choked, and it had used up ca. 3000Mb of RAM when running. This
>> works when I try to create smaller animations. Interestingly, when, in the
>> IDL Devel Env., I hit the Reset button [includes Heap_GC, /Verbose] this
>> recovered about half of the memory drawdown from the run, ca. 160Mb. Killing
>> IDE recovered the rest, ca., 140Mb.
>>
>> I'd sure like to find that it is just a programming error.
>>
>> Can I program around this by specifically putting the pixmaps in system RAM
>> and animating from there by loading them into the IDL window just as they are
>> needed?
>
> I'll see if I can get more specific information about this,
> but I have a feeling we are running up against some kind
> of limitation in either the graphics driver or NT itself.
> I tried creating 700 by 400 windows. With my graphics
> driver with 32MB RAM and 1GB swapfile, I was able to
> create 150 pixmap windows before I got the "unable
> to create pixmap window" message.
>
> Since I don't have any fix, here are a couple of
> suggestions. First, I presume you have thought
> about smaller windows and rejected that. You
> appear to have a fairly robust machine there, Joe.
> I presume you have Gigs and Gigs of disk space. :-)
>
> So I think what I would do is write these screen
> dumps out to a file. Then I would do the animation
> from the file using the Associated Variable method
> of reading a single image from the file. Some
> experiments last night on my machine (not as nice
> as yours unfortunately) leads me to believe that
> this can produce an animation with acceptable
> results.
>
> I think I would start with my XMOVIE program and
> modify it to read from an associated variable rather
> from memory if I was tackling this job.
>
> http://www.dfanning.com/programs/xmovie.pro
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
> --
> David Fanning, Ph.D.
> Fanning Software Consulting
> Phone: 970-221-0438 E-Mail: davidf@dfanning.com
> Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
> Toll-Free IDL Book Orders: 1-888-461-0155
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