Crashes & Recovery

The Application Crashed — What Happens Next?

Exaplay 3 includes an Auto-Heal system and a Watchdog Service that work together to recover automatically from crashes.

Automatic Recovery Timeline

If Auto-Heal is properly configured, the black screen should last 10–20 seconds before playback resumes automatically.

---

Checking the Watchdog Service Status

If recovery did not happen, verify the Watchdog Service is running:

# Check status
Get-Service -Name "Exaplay3Watchdog"

# Start it if stopped
Start-Service -Name "Exaplay3Watchdog"

# Restart it
Restart-Service -Name "Exaplay3Watchdog"

Or via Services (services.msc) — look for Exaplay 3 Watchdog.

---

Manual Recovery After a Crash

If automatic recovery fails, or if you want to restart manually:

1. Check the system tray — the Exaplay icon may still be present (zombie process).
2. Right-click the tray icon and choose Exit, or kill the process in Task Manager.
3. Restart Exaplay normally. If Auto-Heal state exists, it will offer to restore playback.
4. To ignore the auto-heal state and start fresh, use the -fresh flag:

   exaplay3.exe -fresh

---

Reading the Crash Log

The engine log is at:

Documents\Exaplay3\logs\exaplay3.log

Useful sections to look for:

Log entry	Meaning
[ERROR] GL_OUT_OF_MEMORY	VRAM exhausted — reduce media load
[ERROR] Failed to open media	A media file is corrupt or inaccessible
[CRASH] Access violation at 0x…	Unexpected internal error — share with support
[WATCHDOG] Restart triggered	Watchdog detected the crash and restarted
[AUTOHEAL] State restored	Auto-Heal successfully resumed playback

---

Auto-Heal State File

The state file at Documents\Exaplay3\logs\autoheal\autoheal_state.json shows what Exaplay was doing when it crashed:

{
  "project.path": "C:\\Shows\\Festival.vpp",
  "project.name": "Festival",
  "playback.active": true,
  "playback.composition": "Main",
  "playback.time": 125.45,
  "playback.cue-index": 3,
  "playback.cue-time": 45.20,
  "timestamp": "2026-02-20T22:14:33Z"
}

• playback.time — the timecode (in seconds) when the crash occurred
• timestamp — when the state was last saved (should be within the last 2–5 seconds of uptime)

---

Repeated Crashes

If Exaplay crashes repeatedly (more than 3 times within 5 minutes), the Watchdog stops auto-restarting to prevent a restart loop. This is the Max Restarts safety limit.

To investigate repeated crashes:

1. Review the engine log for patterns — do crashes always happen at the same timecode, or when a specific clip plays?
2. Try loading the project with exaplay3.exe -fresh (skips auto-heal restore).
3. Try disabling frame blending on clips near the crash timecode.
4. Update the GPU driver — many GL crashes are caused by outdated drivers.
5. If the crash is consistently reproducible, report it with the log and project file.

---

Disabling Auto-Heal Temporarily

To start Exaplay without restoring the last auto-heal state:

exaplay3.exe -fresh

This does not disable Auto-Heal for the session — it will continue saving state. It only skips the restore of the previous state.

To disable Auto-Heal entirely for a session:

1. Open Settings → Auto-Heal.
2. Set Enable Auto-Heal to OFF.

Warning: Disabling Auto-Heal means crashes will not be recovered automatically. Only disable for debugging purposes.

---

Reporting a Crash

When reporting a crash to support, include:

1. The engine log (Documents\Exaplay3\logs\exaplay3.log)
2. The autoheal_state.json file
3. Windows Event Viewer → Application log entries around the crash time
4. Exaplay version (burger menu → About)
5. GPU driver version (Device Manager → Display Adapters)
6. Steps to reproduce the crash (if known)