Jing for Windows memory usage
Hiya,
Abstract:
Jing for Windows (winJing) will at times appear to be occupying a lot of memory. That is normal and shouldn't affect the performance of other applications on your system. If it does, let us know.
The rest:
winJing is made using Microsoft's .NET framework. In traditional applications, the operating system handles memory management. For .NET applications, the .NET framework handles it. That means when the application starts, the .NET framework reserves one big ole block of memory, more than the application actually needs. It then doles out memory to the application on request and reclaims it when it's done being used.
So, a .NET application looks like it's consuming a ton of memory even though it's likely not actually using all of it.
That might sound wasteful. However, most of machines now days have the memory to spare. .NET is trading memory for more speed (in theory) as allocating memory can happen quickly when it's all done from one big block.
Also, the .NET framework is supposed to give that memory up if another application needs it, so you shouldn't notice degraded performance in other applications.
So, all .NET applications look a little hungry. Jing being a multimedia application can make it appear a bit worse. People tend to do large full screen captures which take up a lot of memory. A big capture will expand winJing's memory consumption a bunch. After the capture is saved or canceled, hopefully we've released the memory properly, but .NET doesn't free that memory right away. It'll wait until Jing or some other application needs it…which might be a long time in the future.
So until then, winJing will be consuming what seems like a ridiculous amount of memory.
Then at a some point...'Pop!'
It'll drop 50 MB or more!
Of course, winJing's memory should not grow unbounded. It should plateau after about two or three large captures depending on the amount of RAM you have and how much RAM other applications are using. The more space that is available, the more space .NET will allow winJing to use. If it just keeps growing and growing, then there's probably a problem on our part.
So, to be clear, I am NOT saying winJing's memory usage is Microsoft's fault. .NET is designed to run large for sure. But WE chose to use it. So, if you are still displeased with winJing's memory consumption, we are to blame.
But you shouldn't see any performance degradation in your other applications when running Jing.
If you do, please let us know.
have a good day,
bill 'Please leave technical corrections to my explanation in the comments, I'll amend the post accordingly :) '
scanlon
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Thanks for that explanation. As well as explaining about Jing in particular, it was a really useful explanation of the way .NET applications behave. As a non-developer, I didn't know all that, so thank you. I've learnt something useful today.
hello
Although the explanation makes sense, while checking out my task manager on Vista64, running a system with 4GB ram, right after starting up and launching notepad + firefox, Jing is using 279mb. Granted, thats only about 14% of my available memory, but to arbitrarily consume that quantity of ram on the off chance that I'm going to need it and not be willing to wait a few seconds to let it provision more when it's needed seems a bit over the top. If its 'at rest' state is 280mb, it really needs to reconsider how ram is allocated.
I'm running vista business x64 with a quad-core and 8GB of RAM. I definitely see some heavy usage, far beyond anything else I ever see for any other application, .net runtime or not. I can't conclusively say that it is causing performance problems, but I generally only look at perfmon if things seem to be running slowly. I have at least a perceived performance gain after I kill jing, and think there are actual resource issues that are resolved when I terminate the process. I've resorted to killing it whenever it gets too bloated. it does detract from the appeal of the software's capabilities. I'll continue to use it and hope it either learns to behave or that I happen upon an alternative that is worthy.
Thanks for the good work.