When working on a feature, 3:1p, PAL 24p, about 1TB of picture and sound footage, bin with 6 sequences (6 reels), I notice that after working on some scenes in two reels, memory gets used pretty severely. I just had 63% of memory usage, and that is of my 4GB, I reckon. If I use the Clear Bin Memory option, all bins are closed, yet the memory usage sticks at 63%. Also, the machine noticeably slows down whenever I use more than 50% of the memory.

Any ideas? Will v3 solve this?

Do those scenes have a lot of effects? Imported GFX? Moving Picture?

 

That's when I run into memory issues.

 

63 percent is a lot for just two scenes.

Do those scenes have a lot of effects? Imported GFX? Moving Picture?

Some effects, like reframings in V1, on about 15% of the clips. Most of those are rendered. Then A stack of unrendered Color Corrections on V3, plus a mask on V4, plus an occasional subtitle on V5.

Not just working on two scenes, several scenes. I haven't figured out yet when exactly the mem gets over 50%, but this happens every day, and Clear Bin Mem does not clear the memory, so I'm in the dark as to what keeps claiming the mem, even with the bins closed.

 

Have you enabled the 3gb switch on the PC? I was having the same bin memory problems on a few PC MC Adrenalines recently. After running the 3gb program everything was fine.

 

Derrick

I'm pretty sure it came with the 3GB utility enabled. This is a July 2007 system, turnkey delivered.

How do I double check?

The Avid reseller here forgot to turn the swtich on 4 MC systems when they were installed so I would definitely double check your system. I forget the exact specifics of the program. I would do a search in the forums here. It's a program called something like 3g installer and when you launch the program you have to select the switch to be always on. Hope this helps! Derrick

I'll triple check.

However, I recall that patch was meant to make the Avid see and use more than 3GB of RAM. I'm pretty confident that it sees all RAM, it just uses way too much, and does not clear enough of it when I close bins.

There is a utility included in the Avid install, that should happen automatically with a Symphony install, that ups the memory to 3GB. You can run it yourself, it is in one of the folders in the Avid folder. I believe it's in "Utilities". It is called "3GB".

 

That will get you more memory, but it doesn't answer the question of why you are running out so fast in the first place. Every time you open and close bins and tools, it sets aside some memory. Not all of it gets released. The "clear memory" command is supposed to flush a lot of that out. I've never found it to be as effective as a Symphony program restart.

 

That said, you still shouldn't be hitting 63 percent with a few reels open. I would question some corrupt effect or something in one of your sequences.

Here's a test, start with all bins closed. Watching the memory used indicator, open each sequence until you find out which on is gobbling it up. If the memory doesn't get used up upon opening the sequences, keep an eye on it as you work and see if some action you do causes a spike in memory usage.

 

Good luck, and welcome to the brave new world of CPU based systems.

 

I've been paying attention to the Mem usage counter for the last days.

I always start with all bins closed (ALT-open project). Whenever I open my current cutting copy, mem gets to 3%. I open one of the six reels, tweak some cuts. Other reels, more tweaks. Some involve renders (rendered repositions). Then I matchframe & find-bin from a shot in the timeline to find an alternate take. More mem gets eaten. By this time we're at 28-30%. Machine works fine.

I'm getting to reel 3, and want to revise some music, try out some music. Open between five to eight bins with music. Move it around, cut it back and forth. Mem usage may climb to 40%.

Goes on like this for a few hours, but at a certain point, mem usage gets over 50%, and the machine slows down. If I continue doing what I'm doing all day (editing), mem gets over 60% and the machine gets quite sluggy. Clear Bin Memory does not clear any memory. Relaunch of the app gets me my memory back

There's no way to point to a certain sequence. If I make a fresh launch, with all bins closed, then open the current cutting copy, load all 6 reels in the edit monitor, play each of them for a bit, make a few cuts here and there, mem is fine. It just seems that more and more mem gets eaten bit by bit until there's too little overhead left for the system to run smoothly.

Sequences contain 14 audiotracks and about 6 videotracks each. I admit that my current setup demands a some more performance from this system compared to the projects I used to do on my Meridien 9000XL, but I also have way more horsepower, so it should be capable of doing all this. I'm not saying the Meridien was faster/better (not at all), but it did not mess up RAM useage as fast either.

This sounds typical then Job. I've actually had shows that I have to break up into segments to work on as just opening the timeline would get me over 50 percent memory.

 

It's the nature of CPU driven systems. FCP does the same thing. Not very friendly to folks working on big projects.

 

I am concerned that your clear memory button doesn't do anything. Mine will always clear some amount away. Just never all of it.

Terry

Thanks for your replies, as always.

I've always experienced that larger sequences, especially with multiple tracks of V and A, can be quite demanding. So my film is already broken up in reels, and I also use the Playlength command a lot to reduce stress.

Yet I think the whole longform / big fat sequences thing needs to be carefully reviewed by Avid. They do need to stand out in that area, and it can use improvement, at least in my experience.

Job ter Burg:

Yet I think the whole longform / big fat sequences thing needs to be carefully reviewed by Avid. They do need to stand out in that area, and it can use improvement, at least in my experience.

 

Agreed.

Other than that, it now seems my octo XW8400 runs on 2.5GB rather than the 4GB that I was pretty sure that it should have been shipped with. To be continued...

This is my first post around here...trying to be more active in the community, so be gentle

Some clarifications that might make low memory issues a little more clear:

First, there is a common mistake made due to the usage of the word "memory".  On one hand, "memory" can refer to the physical chips in the machine (which is probably 4gb).   Also, it can refer to the amount of virtual address space that a program can use.    The amount free virtual address space is the most important value to know when you are having memory troubles.   So, in the application when you see 63% of memory usage, that is 63% of your virtual address space that is used.

Secondly, each program on a 32bit OS can only use 2gb of address space, regardless of how much physical memory is in the machine, leaving 2gb of address space for the OS and hardware drivers.  The 3gb switch is a feature of Windows that allows you take some of that address space from the OS and make it available to programs.  Obviously, then the OS has less address space for its needs, because the system is still limited to 4gb address space total (programs + OS).   Now, this isn't to say that having more physical memory in the system isn't useful (or required!)  When you have more physical memory in the system, you can keep more of the address space "at the ready", and the OS has to "swap out to disk" less frequently.

Third, for a 64bit OS, the amount of virtual address space is essentially unlimited.   However, the individual applications need to be 64bit, as well as, the OS.   If you run a 32bit application on a 64bit OS, (and your required drivers are 64bit), then the application can use the full 4gb of virtual address space, because while the program is limited to 32bits (ie 4gb), the OS is not.   This is obviously VERY good (2gb vs 4gb... or 2.5/2.8gb vs 4gb, with the 3gb switch).

So if you are having memory issues with large sequences, you want to get your amount of free virtual address space to be as high as possible.   Some people do this by splitting up your sequence.   But another thing you could look at is the number of 3rd party effects you have on your system.   Each of these are loaded at launch of the application, and each take up a portion of that address space (as does EVERY dll on the system).   If you can identify some of them that you don't need for a given project, you might unload them temporarily, saving address space for the application to use for other things.

Lastly, this virtual address space can easily become fragmented after heavy usage.   This means that while the application might have 40% (total) free, the largest chunk might be considerably smaller.   When the application requests a chunk that is larger than the available chunks it reports "out of memory".  Even though it has that amount of memory available in total, it does not have that amount of memory available contiguously.  Sometimes, this can be fixed by restarting the application, however the "clear bin memory" option essentially does this for you by getting the application back to a state similar to when you launched.

Wow, this turned into quite a first post!  Hope it helped some people out, or at least explained some of the issue.

-pj

 PJ, welcome to the forums, and thanks for the detailed explanation.