Why does the read function occasionally freeze MATLAB?

I'm reading in frames of a video, and for some reason, occasionally the program will just stop reading in frames and MATLAB will freeze. Is there anyway I can fix this? Thank you!

videoObject = mmreader('5A-5D_OCT_2012.wmv');
videoObject.NumberOfFrames;
sugarVideo = read(videoObject,inf);

numberOfFrames = videoObject.NumberOfFrames;

n = rand(1,numberOfFrames);
sugar = cell(1,numberOfFrames);

for r=1:numberOfFrames
    n(r) = r;
end

for r = 1:numberOfFrames 
    sugar{r}= read(videoObject, n(r));
    if r==400 || r>=460
        r
    end
end

Answer 1

[Jason Ross]

When the "freeze" happens, has your machine exhausted the amount of RAM it has and started using virtual memory (aka swap)? You can check this using Task Manager -- if the RAM amount is maxed out, you are using disk to act as memory, which is considerably slower.

Do other programs also slow to a crawl as well, or just MATLAB?

Does it ever recover?

[Tom]

It hasn't completely exhausted the RAM, but significantly higher than normal. However the program uses more while it is running than when it is frozen. Also, the CPU usage drops dramatically after it freezes.

It's just MATLAB

No, it doesn't. I have to end the process and open it again.