Error: Out of Memory…. HELP!

[Maria Brenner]

Thanks, Vince. I was having the same problem and your suggestion helped me!

[Brad Montesi]

I think I may love you. You ended an eight hour stress session with one small comment.

…all I had to do was rename the folders being nested and all was right in the world. My FCP project saw the light of day for the first time in over eight hours and all I had to do was relink the stupid %$&*#@$ folders.

Your post did help someone. Me. You reek of awesomeness.

[Philip Courter]

We also run FCP-7 and the issue with huge stills is typically the cause of the error message. We also saw fewer problems after adding more memory — up to 14 GB now — and a re-boot often solves the problem without re-sizing the stills. Another solution, especially when doing zooms or moves with the stills, is to do the action in Motion and import the result.

[Garrett Evans]

Andy, you saved my sanity yet again. Thanks.

[Tom Jose]

Hi all… Pls help me guys…. I’m new to fcp…

Currently i’m working on HD project… Details of raw files are given below
Res : 1920×1080
codecs : H264
bit rate : 45886

Final movie is of 1 hr… How do i export it ??
currently i’m exporting through quick time conversion with h264 codec… but it takes quite a long time… 7 -8 hrs
Why is it taking so much time to export ?? or else i’m doing something wrong??

In between i also got an error saying “Out of memory”

Also can any one suggest how to use ProRes for faster exporting , less size, quality movie ??

i’m really struggling to export the work …please help !!

[Jesus Ali]

Hello Tom Jose,

This Thread seems to have found that problems arise when working with very large Still Images (bitmap files from Photoshop, jpegs) or with 10-Bit footage in 8-Bit timelines.

Your post doesn’t mention either of these being a problem. If you do have either of them in your project, see the solutions discussed in these posts.

* * *

Otherwise, my first question, based on the info you provided, is you are EXPORTING to H.264.
But what Format is the Footage in when you Import (Log & Capture, Log and Transfer, or just drag from the finder) it INTO Final Cut?

What type of camera created the footage? Are you Capturing from Tape or working with Files made on the Camera? What Extension do the files have? Are you Transcoding them into a different format to work with?

What format is your Final Cut Timeline? Did you start with a Final Cut Pro Easy Setup? Which one?
So far as I know, your Timeline CANNOT be H.264. If you drag H.264 footage onto a Timeline, you will need to constantly Render ALL of it.

Which version of FCP are you using? Final Cut Pro 7 in Final Cut Studio 2009 (3.0) has an easy Export Preset for Blu-Ray. You should try that.
What kind of computer are you on? How much RAM does it have? Where are your video files stored? How much free space is on your Boot Drive and on your Export Drive? Exporting 40Mb/s HD video eats up GBs of storage.

* * *

Other solutions:
“Export with QuickTime Conversion” looks at EVERY FRAME of video and converts it to the Export format. One frame at a time. In the case of H.264, it does this TWICE, the first pass analyzing the movement and motion of each batch of frames.

So, it can be a boon to simply Export in the Format of your Timeline.
With Standard Definition DV this was easy; you shot in DV, Captured in DV, edited in DV, and then exported into DV. Since the format never changed, FCP could just stitch together the source video clips. It only had to process and create video where you applied filters or otherwise altered the pixels.

But to Export to H.264, all footage must be reformatted, so it takes a long time, with A LOT of Processing.

Unfortunately, HD footage isn’t captured in the DV format. So exporting is not so quick and easy.

Apple’s solution is the ProRes422 format.
If you shot on HDV tape, you can Capture your tape into the ProRes422 format. ProRes is like DV, where the Frames are not mixed together with MPEG compression, so it is very responsive in your Timeline. It also Processes faster than H.264 on Export.

But here’s the thing, you may ALL READY be working in ProRes. Press COMMAND + 0 and check which Format your Timeline is in. If it’s HD, it may be ProRes.

This means, that if you have a “Needs Render” Bar for the footage to play back in real time, that Rendering is actually FCP CONVERTING your footage from it’s original format into the Timeline Format (whatever that is set to be).

So, if you are Rendering your entire Timeline for Realtime Playback before you do your Final Export, you may already have converted your footage to ProRes.

I suggest you do your final Export to the Format and dimensions listed in the COMMAND + 0 Sequence Settings panel. That will let FCP simply use the Rendered Footage (it made for Real Time Playback) without needing to make new render files and should require little additional processing. Less than 1 hour, probably. 😉

ProRes will require about 90GB/hour of footage, so you’ll need that much space available. 180/GBs actually, because it make 1 copy for the Render files and then another of all the footage stitched together in 1 video file.

The point of Exporting into ProRes, is that it requires less memory intensive Processing and should be less prone to crashing.

After you have a successful Export of your entire project you can then Convert the ProRes HD video file into H.264 for Blu-Ray. You can do this with the program Compressor, included in Final Cut Studio. Again, you’ll want Final Cut Studio 2009 (3.0) for the Direct Preset, but I think a Blu-Ray Preset may have been included in a Pro Apps Update for Final Cut Studio 2.0.

Another great alternative is Roxio Toast Titanium 9, 10 or higher.
You can use Toast to burn a Blu-Ray to a BD-R disc or even to a standard 4.5GB DVD-R disc (this format is called BD-5 and will play in most players)! Toast will convert you ProRes422 file directly into the best format for a Blu-Ray disc. It does this conversion VERY quickly on a 2008 Octocore Mac.

Another benefit of the lastest Final Cut Studio, is that it is MUCH more Multi-Processor aware. As is MacOS 10.6, Snow Leopard. If you can use both of these, you should get pretty smooth results. However, the tips I presented here worked with Final Cut Studio 2 on 10.5 with short 5-10 minute Blu-Ray projects.

Good Luck, let us know if any of this helped!

[Tom Jose]

Hi Jesus Ali,

These are my time line settings:
Frame Size : 1920×1080
Pixel aspect Ratio: Square
Compressor : H264

My Raw videos are captured in H264 codec….

I exported to .MOV with h264 codec using “Quick time conversion“… Yesterday it took more than 10 hrs to export… i’m using“fcp 7”

My system configuration:
Core 2 duo
4gb ddr2 RAM
320gb HD

I need to write the final exported file on DVD..i’m using iDVD to burn on DVD… also convert to .mp4 format….

Which is the best option?? should i use mpegstreamclip? or QT ?

[Jesus Ali]

Hello Tom.

Well. If you’re outputting to Stand Definition DVD, you could be saving yourself a lot of processing time by simply EDITING in Standard Definition! 🙂

Make a new FCP project and under the FCP menu choose EASY SETUP and then Choose “DV NTSC Anamporphic 29.97”

When you pull your clips onto the Timeline, FCP will ask you if you want to change your Sequence settings to match the Clip. SAY NO.

This is the format of video on a standard definition television DVD. A high-definition Blu-Ray DVD uses a different format, but iDVD can’t burn a Blu-Ray DVD. It can ONLY make standard definition DVD’s.

* * *

I think the reason your Sequence codec is set to H.264 is because you probably said “Yes” when FCP asked you if it should change the Sequence Settings to match the clip.

If you want to keep working on your HD size file, you could try changing the Sequence Codec to Apple ProRes422. I think this might work better for you. It should definitely be more stable and crash less. See if you can output a ProRes master.

You can then use Compressor to convert the ProRes master to a DV NTSC Anamorphic for iDVD, or into MPEG2+AC3 for DVD Studio Pro (a better alternative to iDVD), and the MPG4 version you may want for the internet.

* * *

In summation, I think your OUT OF MEMORY Problems may be caused by working with the H.264 codec as your Sequence Codec.

Please let us know what happens! 🙂

[Tom Jose]

Thanks bro…. Thanks 4 spending your valuable time for me…..

I tried 2nd option… converting sequence codec to ProRes since i want HD version of the project…but rendering takes lot of time… i ‘ll try rendering some part of the video bcz i’m running out of time… n try to export in ProRes… so lemme try…i ‘ll be back…. I should have asked this before starting the project… No problem… helpful for my future projects…

Once again thanks !! thanks a lot !!

[Rob White]

Hi there, I know this was already covered, but redundant solutions are always welcome in my book. I was having this problem with Nested sequences, and the advice to go into each sequence and render each one then go to your Master timeline and render all the nests worked like a charm. Thanks for having this problem before me, everybody!

-r