*sigh* No, Thorsten, I do care what you have to say--but let's not get into
another argument about your manner of online writing.

I may be wrong about what is causing the problem, but POV-Ray for Windows
*does* have some sort of memory allocation problem that, after a few dozen
frames, causes it to stop rendering with a memory allocation error because
it can't allocate any more memory to open one of the TGA bump map files in
my scene. I know it's not the most accurate measurement tool, but the
Windows XP Task Manager clearly shows POV-Ray consuming more and more memory
as each frame is rendered, until all physical memory is consumed and it
starts thrashing the virtual memory. When that also runs out, POV-Ray stops.
So it's either POV-Ray not releasing allocated memory after a frame is
completed, or it's a memory leak, or a problem with the way Windows XP
allocates memory to programs, or a little of all the above. And with a scene
file that takes nearly 600 MB of memory to render for one frame, it doesn't
take long for my workstation to grind to a halt when running a long
animation sequence totally from within POV-Ray.

To get around this problem--WHATEVER the reason for it--I figured out a long
time ago that if I execute POV-Ray from a batch file and render one frame at
a time from the command line, e.g....

pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 +W512 +Q9 +KFI638 +KFF638 +Oscene_.png -D /NR
/EXIT
pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 +W512 +Q9 +KFI639 +KFF639 +Oscene_.png -D /NR
/EXIT
pvengine +Iscene.pov +H384 +W512 +Q9 +KFI640 +KFF640 +Oscene_.png -D /NR
/EXIT

...POV-Ray always behaves perfectly and never is unable to parse a scene
file because it can't allocate the memory. The key is telling POV-Ray to
/EXIT after rendering one frame--that seems to force it to release any
memory it allocated back to Windows.

You will never be able to convince me that there is no problem with
long-running, memory-intensive animation jobs in POV-Ray, Thorsten, because
I've seen it happen.

"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote in message
news:3fa14a7b@news.povray.org...
> In article <3fa141f5$1@news.povray.org> , "Scott Gammans"
> <dee### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
>
> > I learned a long time ago on the Windows version of regular (unpatched)
> > POV-Ray to not run a long animation batch inside POV-Ray because it
doesn't
> > release the memory it allocates before starting another frame.
>
> This simply is incorrect, but I know you don't care that I tell you.
Still,
> incorrect information posted tends to stick in new users' minds longer
than
> correct information, so if nobody says it isn't so they will take it as
> true...
>
>     Thorsten
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
> e-mail: tho### [at] trfde
>
> Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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