[gst-embedded] Gstreamer + memory usage

[Stefan Kost]

hi,

Daniel James Laird schrieb:
> All,
> 
> I am new to Gstreamer but have been impressed at the ease with which I got it running on my embedded platform.  I now have A/V decode running on my embedded decoders and using GStreamers input-selectors/queues and demux+filesrc etc to make this happen.
> 
> However, the system I am developing on has < 64 mb RAM.  Once the system starts up and runs I am left with 20MB odd for applications.
> Once I start up Gstreamer it really seems to eat memory with it using nearly all the 18-20MB to run.
> 
> Some of this is due to my A/V queue lengths.  
> But a lot of it seems to be untraceable.

GStreamer uses GLib and with that GSlice. You might not see the usage easily
with normal tools then. You can use env-vars like
 G_SLICE=always-malloc G_DEBUG=gc-friendly
to make things more trackable.

> 
> My questions are:
> 1. Any hints on tracking where memory has gone.
> 2. Does Gstreamer have a memory manager where I could limit what it can use (much like Java allows) so that I could say heres 10MB no more
> 3. Is anyone else running on embedded systems finding similar issues?
> 
> I suspect I am missing some options, my design choices might be floored or many other reasons so I really would appreciate any hints or tips for this. In the mean time calling free and checking calls to malloc (g_malloc) seems the only way forward

We run tests under valrind to ensure we don't leak (too much). Do you run into
issues with specific use cases, or already after gst_init().

Stefan

> 
> Many thanks
> Daniel Laird
> 
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