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VFW_E_OUT_OF_VIDEO_MEMORY
Meaning
Windows documents VFW_E_OUT_OF_VIDEO_MEMORY as “There is not enough Video Memory at this display resolution and number of colors. Reducing resolution might help”. Here, a renderer cannot allocate enough video memory for the selected resolution, pixel format, surfaces and display mode.
Relevant contract
Start with the renderer, graphics driver, display connection and negotiated surfaces.
Conditions that can produce it
- Cause 1: the graph requests too many or oversized surfaces.
- Cause 2: display resolution and color depth consume available VRAM.
- Cause 3: another graphics workload holds scarce legacy DirectDraw resources.
Evidence worth preserving
Record lengths and hashes instead of raw content when the incident includes display identifiers, protected-content state, driver details and media paths.
- Evidence 1: renderer type, surface dimensions and pixel format.
- Evidence 2: requested surface count and allocation failure.
- Evidence 3: display mode, adapter identity and concurrent graphics load.
Correction strategy
- Action 1: reduce surface count, resolution or color depth.
- Action 2: release stale renderer and DirectDraw resources before rebuilding.
- Action 3: select a renderer with a compatible memory model on modern systems.
Retry and recovery
Retry rule: Retry after video-memory demand falls or the renderer is recreated; immediate unchanged allocation loops can worsen resource pressure.
Example incident
A legacy overlay graph succeeds at 1024×768 but fails after switching to a high-resolution desktop with multiple buffers; reducing the surface requirement removes it.
How it differs from nearby results
E_OUTOFMEMORY can describe system memory generally; it specifically identifies graphics-surface allocation capacity.
Official Microsoft references
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