Out of Memory Error… FCP 7… project too large?

[Jerry Hofmann]

There’s more than one reason this could be happening but here’s some thoughts:

That’s a really large project file. I’d brake it down a bit. Having open sequences that contain a lot of edits can bring your computer to it’s knees. The more sequences you keep the worse this gets too. FCP can only address about 2.7 gigs of RAM in any event.

Photoshop files that contain blank layers can cause this error message all by themselves…

Bad Media files might be at fault. Render files are usually the culprits if this hasn’t happened because of a Photoshop file being added to the project file…

But my guts really say your real problem is the size of the project file. One thing you shouldn’t do is keep copy upon copy of your sequences. Backup your project files instead. Having a lot of clips usually isn’t what makes the project file so large, it’s piles of sequences, and text files in them that enlarges them the most. Text generated files are actually stored in the project file itself where media is not…

Jerry

[Jerry Hofmann]

Another thought…

Working with more than about 300-400 edits is really combersome, and takes a lot of RAM up… breaking the sequences down to those sizes or smaller makes things go a lot faster… Then deal with the whole thing in the end.

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer

Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO, CD’s

[Rob Tinworth]

I’ll also get this message when I have a number of large stills in my timeline that I haven’t scaled down.

Rob Tinworth
http://www.1021.tv

[Henry Truong]

Just to add to this discussion. I attempted to export a sequence into a QT file for editorial to view. I got that same error message when trying to export out of the master project, even though the first two reels exported with no problems. After coming across this thread, I created an independent project containing only the third reel that was giving me the error. Upon attempting an export out of this new project, I was greeted by the same error message.

This has happened today within the last 20 mins, so I have not yet had a chance to dig into it and see if I can find any ways around it. If anybody has any other ideas, let us hear it. Hopefully somebody has found a resolution, or at least a way to find out what the problem is, because that generic little error message doesn’t do much to help the trouble shooting process.

-henry

HD Creative Services
http://www.hdcreativeservices.com
323.461.3715

[Andreas Karoliussen]

Hi,
I´v had this same problem with big stills.
My workaround has been to send them to motion, save – and when you switch back it will render without a problem.
then you render a motion project instead.

quick tip is to duplicate your still and hide it on the timeline – just in case of deletion of your new motion projectfile.

Hope this helps you out;-)
best regards Andreas

[Chris Pelser]

I have been having this same error in my project now for the past week!!! I’m running a Mac Pro Vers 10.6.4 with 2 x 3.2 Ghz Quad-Core Intel and 8Gb DDR2 Ram. FCP 7.0.2 (using Snowleopard)
My project was a HDV project captured and converted to Apple ProRess 422 HQ 1920 x 1080 29.97.

All editing went well and the final project ended at around 92 minutes. My first attempt to export via Share option failed with some error message. Second attempt to export via QTime also failed with error.
The total render estimated time would be around 4-hours and when it comes down to about 14 minutes the error “Out of Memory” would appear…. damn??? It was so frustrating. I kept changing values & settings and pushed thru. Eventually got some output via Compressor but the picture quality sucked!

Eventually called the Mac tech support line today and they gave me the run around first and insisted on Support ID numbers etc. Eventually spoke to someone that suggested that I check my pictures that they are RGB and NOT CMYK. Well, all my photo’s were taken on JPeg and only about 10 used on timeline. I called them back again this time I had an error called “Share Failure” QT Error-50. They could not tell me directly what this was but the guy said there are numerous postings on the internet about the Out of Memory errors and suggest I must check those.

In desperation I nested my entire edit sequence and made a new sequence on the timeline. I then went to export to Quicktime and selected H.264 and gave it the size dimensions of 720 x 486 NTSC and pressed OK. At first time render line started at 3-min then slowly crept up to 7-hours !!! I did think that I was wasting more time on this attempt. However about 4- hours later the render was finished and this time without and error.
I opened the file and it played perfect. I dragged the file into toast and successfully burned my first DVD in almost a week of going between these stupid errors. I hope this might help someone as I felt very helpless knowing I have burned and exported countless files before without having these ERRORS come up. Good Luck !

[Stephen Lentini]

Go through compressor… takes a bit longer but works.

I have been getting this error a lot lately in my HD projects! Makes me question FCP.

[Stephen Lentini]

Go through compressor… takes a bit longer but works.

I have been getting this error a lot lately in my HD projects! Makes me question FCP.

[Cinnamon Kennedy]

Hi,
I just finished a large project which for a while had chronic “out of memory” problems. I want to offer that what worked for me was switching from Prores to DVCPro HD60. I had a lot of subtitles on this video and for some reason that did not mesh well with the ProRes. The problem was never that I was actually “out of memory” – just something wasn’t working right. The switch to DVCPro made the rendering shorter and the exporting much longer, but fcp never crashed, so I could leave it overnight. Hope this helps somebody – it’s a frustrating problem!

Cinnamon Kennedy

[Chee-han Wong]

Hi everybody,

Just wanted to let you know that the following might solve your Out of memory problem.

At the moment I’m editing in FCP 7 and also bumped into this annoying message. So what I’ve done is make ALL jpeg files into TIFFs and make them exactly the same width as my sequence (for me this was 1920 hd, apple pro res). Also used only same compressions.

I found out that FCP doesn’t work well at all with photoshop files, h264 footage, jpegs etc. You really have to convert them into the right fcp-huggable format before putting them in your sequence. If you do continu using these different files on 1 sequence, you will most likely have export and glitch problems.

Good luck.

Freelance FCP and Avid Editor
Amsterdam