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Optimizing FCP Performance
My goal is to optimize the performance of FCP (including Motion, DVDSP, etc…). Currently, I am running FCP Suite 5.1 on a 2.5 GHz G5 with 2.5GB of RAM. Until I did a little research, I’ve always been under the impression that the more RAM the better. I recently came across the following statement “Adding more RAM beyond 2 GB won’t make a material difference, because FCP is disk-based, not RAM based. However, you will notice a significant performance increase by increasing your RAM from a base level of 512 MB to 1 GB.” Is this true? By the way, which functions in FCP benefit most with an increase in RAM? How much RAM will FCP, Motion, etc. take advantage of before I am just waisting money? Sounds like this would hold true for every Pro App? Thanks for the help.
Eric
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5 Replies
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FCP will address up to abouty 2.5 gigs.. then if you open Motion, it will address the moon if you are doing a lot with it… each app will use what’s available.. i.e. the more RAM you have, the more Apps will run at the same time… Most everyone seems to be happy with about 4 gigs… but that’s just an average… Photoshop is a RAM hog, as is Shake, AE etc… OS X partitions RAM for each app you have open… it gives stability… So What you are reading isn’t wrong… it’s just not the whole story.
Jerry
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What uses up RAM in FCP is open sequences. The more edited sequences, and the more numbers of edits you have in them, the more RAM is used by FCP. so if you’re working in short form, in most cases you’ll not use that much RAM, if you’re working in long form, more RAM will be used. Rendering and real time playback in FCP is mainly a CPU task, Playback in Motion and Shake though is RAM based… Yeah, confusing… but I’d start with 2-3 gigs or so then see… if you see a slowdown, buy more RAM.. if not, you’re good to go.
I’m working with 2.5 gigs, but only do short form most of the time and don’t find I run out much. You’ll know when you are too… the system slows down because it’s using a disk cache instead of RAM…
Jerry
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Very helpful. Thanks. I’m gonna’ load it up with 4GB’s.
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When you say that “open sequences” are the RAM hogs, does “open sequences” refer to all the sequences in a project, or just those open in timeline tabs?
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I just finished editing a long show (2h30min) with a whole bunch of edits (had a switched pgm and 6iso cams) in HDCAM and we have 6Gig ram on the machine and it went very well and smooth!
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