intel mac RAM question

[Colin Barton]

that’s all ae8 allows for now, i don’t think it even uses the 3 gigs – others may disagree
-ws

[Darby Edelen]

[leejam99] “Maximum Mem Usage: 120% = 3.0 GB”

As far as I understand it, 3GB is the maximum that any process can use in a 32-bit OS (technically 4GB, but there is overhead for the OS). Don’t ask for details on that because I don’t have them (;

Maximum memory usage in that preference panel is able to go above 100% due to paging files/virtual memory that the OS can give to AE. The more important figure in that panel is the Memory Cache, since you have multiple processors you could turn on ‘Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously’ and adjust your Memory Cache setting so that each of the 2 process is able to access 2GB (or so) of RAM. That way you will be using more of your total RAM.

The annoying part about ‘Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously’ is that AE takes some time to boot up the additional processes needed to accomplish this (for 3 extra processes on my machine it takes about 45 seconds to do this). So for short renders and RAM previews it doesn’t really make sense.

AE is still able to take advantage of your multiple cores/processors by splitting up the rendering between cores within one frame, but when you render multiple frames simultaneously you should have the added benefit of being able to use more of your RAM.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[David Franklin]

However, before you get too excited about the possibility of rendering using multiple instances of AE on your MacPro, several of us have been having issues with the multiprocessing feature in our new CS3 software running on Intel Macs.

See thread here:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=912045&threadid=911927&pview=t

And yes, as far as anyone I have talked to has said, 3GB is the effective maximum that AE can address. At least it’s running as universal binary and we’re not dealing with Rosetta anymore!