Frictions fails to render due to low-spec ( Even with resource limits in preferences )

[MTSyntho]

I've been working on a project for a little while on a Linux machine, the amount of RAM present isn't much, sitting at just 4GB RAM + 50% zram.
As I went to go and render the video, it reaches roughly ~57% before being killed by the OS with an OOM killer since it eats all of it during the render.
I figured it was because the software had no limits applied, so using the built-in options in preferences, I tried to turn it down but even with it enabled, it seemingly goes beyond the set limits

So I can't actually render the video, leaving me with a corrupt video incomplete video.
I tried an MKV render since those can be interrupted and still be played back, but it appears to flicker. I did the render on windows just to check.
It appears github won't let me attach it though... but some layers just flicker in and out of existence.
Edit - I rendered it out in 60 frame chunks and stichied it w/ ffmpeg:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/093ed908-c3e3-469b-8b39-1483c49b0eca

I don't even know if it's worth making this issue since it's mostly because of my bad specs to begin with, but I did expect the render to be slow due to the low ram pressure, not a crash...

Right now my best shot is probably render in 60 frame chunks, in PNG sequence just to be safe until I can obtain more sufficient hardware

[rodlie]

Hi,

Setting a RAM cap in settings should work, but how low you can actually go is unknown. I do regulary test Friction on a 4GB machine, but it's a macbook and they handle memory a bit different.

To figure out how much RAM is needed to render you can set the timeline resolution to 100% and try to playback and see how much RAM is used by the app and how far you get on the timeline.

You are probably best of rendering a PNG or TIFF sequence in chunks.

Btw, clearing the cache (ctrl+r) before rendering can also save some RAM.

NOTE! the flickering should be fixed, we also fixed several render bugs/crashes since RC3 so I recommend you download our latest CI (soon to be RC4): https://linux.ci.friction.graphics/

---

Disk Cache is on the roadmap, but there are still some issues left, so no ETA on that.

[MTSyntho]

Hii,

I'll try checking a little later, but if I recall correctly the amount of RAM the project takes at least during editing and playback is about 2GB, I haven't checked during renders.

I'll check out the CI artifact though!

P.S. Is there any CLI argument to render from there? I was thinking of automating the chunk rendering and stitching, it can get a little tedious the longer the render is-

[rodlie]

We do not offer any CLI features yet, sorry about that.

Just duplicate the renderer multiple times in the queue and change the frame in/out for each, then save to keep the queue (in case the app gets killed due to RAM), and try one or more in a row.