no memory issues

[David Roth weiss]

[walter biscardi] “Final Cut Pro requires at least 2GB of RAM to run properly.”

[Rafael Amador] “You have your HD full. 13 GB free may be not enough even for the System Virtual Memory.”

Andy,

Walter and Rafael have identified both sources of the issues you are having. Don’t pass go, don’t collect $200, do not ignore those, they need to fixed.

And, its not just your computer that seems short on memory. Apparently you’ve already forgotten all the times I’ve helped you out here recently.

All the best,
David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Andy Shnikes]

alright first things first,
I have a g4 laptop, i dont have the money to upgrade even if i could, my hardware is at max capacity, and i dont think without changing both my hardrive and ram out which i cant afford to do, i couold even get this old thing to work any harder than im pushing it right now.
However, it has been working solid for over a month on what i got, i hadnt changed anything in fcp4 not 4.1 not 4.5 just 4.0 but i did download msn, also, i started another project. I only had about 3 tabs open, one of which was just the score, the culprit sequence that crashed was a 5 min video loop of layered cockroaches, two mattes and a basement layrer for lack of the professional term. The problem started when i tried to copy and paste the rendered files (because it was a loop) first off paste took forever, then i couldnt even copy without getting the beachball of death. So i let my computer take a century to copy and paste into a new sequence the 4 second loop i exported that loop in the new sequence, and brought it back into fcp to loop that thinking it would help my memory. No it crashed as well. So i closed fcp trashed prefs, deleted cache, deleted msn messanger, restarted my computer, reset my p ram, restared everything, only using fcp, (before i was able to run fcp and creative cow at the same time, maybe i was just lucky, but it was working side by side)
i even tried chaning the audio playback from firewire which is what it was on to built in, at the suggestion of a thread i found using google, not the cow. Nada, Now i cant even open my sequence. My project says out of memory.
Since i figured my project might be to large, i deleted almost everything out of it but said sequence i need to use,
restarted fcp, still the same.
Found this
https://www.lafcpug.org/phorum/read.php?11,153270,166563#msg-166563
the only thing i have yet to do apart from buying a new computer is repair permissions, so im going to go do that. If things get better or worse ill post, for future reference in a search.

perhaps i am a whiney kid,
also so this is an all volenteer force,
which means if you dont get paid why bother writing a response that does not help? Why bother comming on here at all if you are going to just waste everyones time by posting something like, search the forums. I tried searching the forums. If you do not want to answer the question Please do not answer the question, you are only wasting space.

second, david, you have helped me ill give you that, but you did come across as a better than when you did. Now i understand you are a professional, but i was asking a question, and did not need a smart ass reply about you all being professionals making me feel inferior.

Also, i know this is a free forum, i did not know, as other people didnt know apparently that the mods on this forum come here in their free time. Thank you for those people who take time out of their busy day to check and respond helping us little guys who are not out to steal jobs, (even though i said i was) continue to do things we love to do.

I also understand this is an internet forum, and people will use the anonymity of the internet and the text language rather than face to face is a perfect tool to boost egos and protect identities.

What im getting at, is this,
if you want to take your frustrations out on people who are asking repetitive questions, realize neither party will be helped.
Also this being the fix action, will only encourage more of the same question, as searches wont be an option as they will all turn up dead ends.
so do everyone a favor, and if you want to type a response to a question, make it an answer. or just another question.

and david, i respect you as a professional. You know your shit, ill give you that, but im sure you were a new user at some point, try not to forget that.

oh and thanks shane you helped me out of many-a-pickels so far as well.

[Paul Dickin]

[andy shnikes] “fcp4 not 4.1 not 4.5 just 4.0”
Hi
When FCP v4 shipped in June 2003 there was a period of a couple of months when everybody was finding it full of simple bugs, and there were dozens of Cow threads at that time devoted to the problems. .
FCP 4.1.1 was the first really stable version, and FCP 4.5 was better – both were free downloadable updates.

[Andy Shnikes]

thanks for the tip,
i uninstalled fcp4 and am in the process of re-installing it att. Hopefully it will work like it did before, and i can even upgrade. I didnt want to upgrade in the middle of a project, as that can cause issues non? but i have one video loop to go the one that keeps crashing my system, once i get it off if i can, ill be set to upgrade and hopefully things will run smoother in the future.

The only thing was with my computers specs i was worried an upgrade might be worse, plus 4.0 was running fine on my computer till yesterday. I had opened, rendered exported and compressed close to 50 projects in all in my version of fcp4 without to many issues, so i figured why fix something thats not broken, well now it is, so im trying to see what i can do about it.
if this re-install works, (hopefully this time i can get compressor to work as well) ill post my findings.

[Jason Porthouse]

Ahhh. Wise man once say, when you’re in a pit, stop digging. Don’t hire a JCB…

Anyway, back to the issue in hand.

All the solutions offered you are valid. You have an old machine with minimum RAM, you’re using it for editing and also MSN – which would indicate a myriad of other uses too. Personally, based on my 15 or so years’ experience in the industry, I’d never run MSN on any machine I edit on. If your problems started after installing it that is a BIG CLUE. if you choose to ignore that BIG CLUE along with the other BIG CLUES pointed out to you then there isn’t a great deal I can suggest to you…

BTW you don’t say if you’re using an external drive for media storage. You do know that editing off the internal drive is a complete no-no don’t you? If not I strongly suggest getting an external drive to put your media on.

Failing that, I can only say what I’d do in your position. I’d try and take my project and media to someone who has a beefier machine and see if the problem re-occurs. If it does you have a corrupt file somewhere along the line. Can you try opening an earlier project from the autosave vault in order to see if that opens correctly? (Be careful not to overwrite your existing project)

Other that those suggestions already given, I’m afraid I’m out of ideas. Sorry if that’s a waste of space.

J

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Andy Shnikes]

alright, before deinstalling final cut and re-installing it i couldnt open any projects new or old,
so i uninstalled it,
re-installed it, and it opened up an old project like usual. So i tried opening up the problem project and wala,
works like a charm.

I BLAME MSN for my problems, even though it was my dumb ass that installed it.

I do have an external i keep saved projects, final copies and raw im not using on to free up hard drive space, but since someone pointed out in another thread that im running usb1 not 2 capacity on my computer, i cant push raw clips form my external to my timeline seemelessly, in fact at all, so i have no choice but to edit in this fashion, and i cant fork over more money yet for a firewire drive, if i could ide just go out and buy a better computer as you all always suggest.

so,
this is my theory, installing msn messanger while having fcp4 open corrupted something in my project (which is only about 150mbs larger) and even after de-installing msn, fcp was still messed up, and could nto recover, so a fresh install along with repairing disk permissions, and deleting my cahce and prefferences, fixed whatever the issue was, now its back to editing, and after this project is over, im upgrading my version of fcp, we’ll see what happens with that, on my old computer.

[David Roth weiss]

[andy shnikes] “and david, i respect you as a professional. You know your shit, ill give you that, but im sure you were a new user at some point, try not to forget that.”

Andy,

First, I help new users and old users alike all day long. But they listen to what’s being said.

Now last… A fact little known by most computer users (even the old ones) is that RAM and hard drives play together in a little dance called “virtual memory.” When a call for RAM exceeds the amount of RAM in the machine, the computer instead writes the information overload to the hard drives in the form of temporary files, where it is used by the computer as “virtual memory.” Its not nearly as fast as RAM, but it works, and it keeps computers from crashing.

In your case, because you have minimal RAM and only 12Gb space left on your hard drive you are constantly up against the memory wall, to the point that you are now getting the “out of memory” error message. So, you have two choices, either get more RAM or free up additional drive space. End of story.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Rafael Amador]

I can see that you had a hard day. Relax.
You haven’t mention until your second post that you had a “ERROR: OUT OF MEMORY”.
Next time start explaining properly which is your problem.
And even before that, you can do a Google search so you don’t waist your time waiting for answer that you may not like.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Andy Shnikes]

thanks guys for responding,
but i figured out what my problem was,
fixed it, and things are running smoothly now,

david you may be right, i may need a faster computer, more ram, and more harddrive space, but this is all i have at the moment,
and ive made it work with much less in the past. I dont think this was my problem at this time. I think something was corrupted. But thanks for the advice anyway. Im sure in 99.9 % of the cases this is the problem. But in my case it was not a solution, and unfortunately can not be a solution as i am already maxing out my powerbook g4 titianuim ed, with 1gb sdram. There is no more room for ram, and technicalities with the powerbooks other hardware prevent upfrading beyond what i already have. So i had to find a workaround, and besides, it was working just fine, i had added no new effects nothing new on my timeline, i just had fcp open when i was installing msn, and what i think happened was fcp was trying to do an auto render or auto save while i was uploading msn, and things got mixed up, something corrupted my render or save file, and fcp just went downhill from there. A complete reinstall fix the issue. among other steps mentioned above.

rafael,
thanks for responding as well,
i was frustrated, you are right, and i took it out on the forum, as spouses take work frustrations out on each other,
except i came to the people i knew have delt with this issue before, hoping to save a little time and headache, thats what this forum is all about non? Anyway, sometimes i tend to get smart ass responses fomr people who claim to be professional, i get talked down to on here, and I dont appriciate that. But is there really anything i can do about it? No. I am not a respected long time editor who knows his shit, (which is why i ask those that do for help all the time) I am doing my best to learn, but somethings do not come naturally. Anyway I am not sorry for blowing up. I think it needed to be said. however I also know this message will self destuct and the ahses will be blown to the hidden burroughs of this forum far beyond anyones reach. Which is unfortunate because it actually has a fix in it. But c’est la vie.

Anyway< I am not upset at anyone perticular member of this forum, and I am also aware that everyone here is human, I am just trying to get help on things i know little about so that I can deal with them, and maybe in the future i can answer some of those same questions so those of you who answer them all day long dont have to. I think this is an excellent reference, the best out there actually, which is why it is so popular. And i recommend it to everyone i meet. I think everyone does a fantastic job, but i just think it helps to answer with an answer if you are going to answer at all.

[Rafael Amador]

No problem Andy.
Just think that no one in this forum have all the answers.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.