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[Maeghaus]

I would like to go over my experience with MC 30 Mac with one or more developers since the next full version is due out in a couple months. MC 31 Windows is in development now and eventually the Mac version will follow. My review is something I want to discuss directly and not through the general topic forum. I have a few tech questions as well. Thx.

-- Tom (Maeghaus)

[Maeghaus]

Hello Media Center fans. I have a memory leak issue with MC 30 Mac. Its memory needs overwhelm my computer within a minute of opening the program. My Mac starts to shut down other apps to make rom for more memory but I shut Media Center down before my computer crashes. I've been dragging on getting this issue resolved with a lot going on and lately haven't much time otherwise to sit down and troubleshoot the cause.

I will attempt to recreate the low memory incident when running MC 30.

-- Tom (Maeghaus)

By the way, my handle is an old World of Warcraft avatar I started in January 2007. It is still around. I go on sometimes to play but I haven't had time for that either. What happened to free time lol.

[JimH]

Are you using MC 30.0.93?

[Maeghaus]

Hi Jim. The Mac version is 30.0.93 Silicon but am updating to v.95. Thx for the reply. It's been two weeks since I last posted. Sorry for the delay.

I ran a test tonight and include two snapshots of my M1 Mac Mini internal drive's available space. The first is what's available before running MC 30. The second is after MC 30 is open about five minutes. The problem doesn't seem to be the RAM. I think what's happening is that MC 30 is using up the swap memory until the disk is full and then using up the RAM. My main disk is small, 500GB. I manage to keep about 70-95GB free. MC 30 cut that down to less than 25GB within the first few minutes of opening. Maybe I should check possible allocation settings; I'm familiar with Windows swap settings but I've not been aware of any on a Mac.

-- Tom

[Maeghaus]

I updated to Media Center 30.0.95 today but the memory issue still remains. In the few seconds I opened MC 30 after updating, it acquired 12GB of free disk space. I am getting it back now; it takes a few minutes. I know that version 31 is in development and that is taking up most of the attention. Any clue how to solve this problem? Maybe MC 31 Mac will do it but I am still curious.

-- Tom

[JimH]

Are you running anything else unusual on the machine?

Nobody else is reporting this.

[blgentry]

I have MC31 installed on an M1 Mac mini.  I just did quite a bit of testing while looking at the remaining disk space in Finder.  I don't see any real usage.  At first, as I was scrolling the files list, the available disk space was dropping slowly.  Maybe 2 GB total.  Then I rebuilt all thumbnails.  It consumed a total of about 3GB of disk.  Then I closed MC and the disk space stayed the same.  This change in disk space was (apparently) thumbnails that are in the cache.

While running MC I opened Activity Monitor and clicked the Memory tab then sorted by memory used by application.  MC used between 350 and 450 MB (less than 1 GB).  The part at the bottom shows memory and swap used.  Swap was always 0.  Memory fluctuated and but I always had free RAM available.  MacOS is good at managing that.

Perhaps you should open Activity Monitor before opening MC.  Look at the various values.  Then open MC and sort by memory.  That would give you some additional information.

Best of luck.
Brian.

[Maeghaus]

Hello, getting back to replying. Last night, after reading the last few posts, I opened Activity Monitor and Media Center 30. MC is working fine in idle mode and my swap file is stable. The solution could be that I have too many open programs. Currently I have 14 running. MC 30 uses no more than 1GB. I used Media Center in the background while I worked on projects. Several times my computer started to shut down programs to save memory and from my view it looked as if MC 30 was the culprit. Program interaction, exclusive memory, Mac OS issues, and too many open programs are more likely to be sources.

I'll play music this evening and watch Activity Monitor's progress. I am keeping my browser open (Google Chrome) as a test; it uses a few gigabytes of memory and is one of the biggest memory hogs. Also closing a few programs during the test.

I bought the Master License for Media Center 31. I haven't used it to test in Windows. I will continue with my investigation on the Mac.

-- Tom

[blgentry]

I'm not sure if you see it or not, but you've found your problem:  Steam.  Steam Helper is using more than 13GB of your available 16GB of RAM.

Brian.

[Maeghaus]

Missed the Steam Helper process when I looked at my Activity Monitor. That explains the memory disk writing mystery. It isn't active now but I wonder if I'm looking at the correct tab. I searched under Memory. On Windows I know these Helpers stay active even when the main program closes. Looking for the same elements on the Mac is a different world. The dual Mac/Windows platform is, with a 5 year exception, my setup. It's been 20 years (takes me back, waaay back). I'm putting Activity Monitor on my daily app list. I am educating myself about Mac memory handling; that's one thing I need to know more about.

 Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Going to add MC 31 to Windows after a few more builds. -- Tom