Strange increase in memory usage within KDENLIVE 25.12.1

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1

The steps to reproduce the bug are rather simple.

  1. Add some clips to your timeline

  2. Keep adding and deleting clips to the timeline as you work

In my example, I had the RAM usage skyrocket from ~1.8 to 3.3 GB of RAM used.

Removing the files completely, both from the project bin and the timeline dropped down the RAM usage to 3.0 GB. The only way to go back to the “real” memory usage is to completely reopen the program.

Is this some kind of caching function? If so, it doesn’t seem to be working correctly. Is there a way to turn it off, or limit it past a specific file size?

Reloading the program, even with a bunch of clips added lowers down the file size, but it seems every time I skim the timeline, it fully loads every single clip into RAM and makes it stay there until I restart the program. Is this intentional, or should there be a size limit at which point some files become unloaded?

2

Why do you think this is a “bug”? Or even Strange? How does it compare to doing exactly the same “tests” with prior versions?

In my example, I had the RAM usage skyrocket

I wouldn’t really call a 1.5GB increase “skyrocketing” … That’s less than 2 minutes of 4k H.265 footage from one of my cameras.

Is this some kind of caching function? If so, it doesn’t seem to be working correctly.

Why not?