Virtual Memory Running Low??

[Ken Bennett]

It is currently set to 500MB

Ken Bennett
Video Adventures
Capturing Your Life’s Adventures!

[John Rofrano]

System: Dual Xeon E5440@2833MHz, 8 core, 2GB memory.

You have 8 cores and only 2GB of memory? Optimally you should have 2GB per core (16GB). Minimally, for an 8 core machine you should have 8GB of memory (1GB per core). I have 8GB in my 4 core workstation.

You can change you virtual memory in Windows:

1. Right-click on My Computer and select Properties.
2. Then in the System Properties, go to the Advanced tab under Performance, press the Settings button.
3. In Performance Options, under Virtual Memory press the Change button.

At this point you should set both the Initial and Maximum amount of page file to be the number listed under Recommended at the bottom. Usually it recommends 1 – 1.5 times your physical memory (2048 to 3072).

I’m guessing that this still isn’t going to be enough to get you out of trouble. You really need to consider buying more memory.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ken Bennett]

Well, it says Recommended: 4605MB. It’s currently set at 4092MB for both Initial and Maximum. So do I boost that up to 4605MB or something higher?

This machine was custome built for my Video Toaster/SeppeEDIT NLE (which I am moving away from and to Vegas). I’ll open her up and see how many memory slots I have open.

Thanks.

Ken Bennett
Video Adventures
Capturing Your Life’s Adventures!

[Stephen Mann]

Try liiting the render/encode to only one or two cores.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[John Rofrano]

The difference between 4092MB and 4605M is not going to solve your problem. You need more physical memory.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Try liiting the render/encode to only one or two cores.

Ken, Have you tried what Steve has suggested? Let me explain what’s going on here:

Vegas is seeing 8 cores and so it’s using all of them. 8 core are competing for only 2GB of memory. If they are all running at the same time, the most each of them can get is 2GB / 8 = 256MB!!! So effectively, Vegas is trying to render with only 256MB of memory which is woefully inadequate. This is why I was trying to explain that your PC is misconfigured.

What Steve is suggesting is that you go into Options | Preferences | Video and set the Maximum number of rendering threads to 2. Also make sure that Dynamic RAM Preview max (MB) is set to 64. You don’t have a lot of RAM to give to preview while rendering.

This effectively makes your PC act as a Dual Core until you can buy more memory to use the full power of all 8 cores. Then you can change it back.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ken Bennett]

John,

I will be trying what Steve suggested today, but now I’m even more confused. I opened up the computer and there are 8 memory slots. Every other one is populated with a 1GB memory stick!!?? This seems to tell me I actually have 4GB and not 2GB as the system is telling me. I’ve heard stories that Windows can only “see” 2GB. Is the system not telling me the truth?

This is a Supermicro X7DWA motherboard. And I’m running XP Pro.

Ken Bennett
Video Adventures
Capturing Your Life’s Adventures!

[Ken Bennett]

OK, I do have 4GB in the computer computer running Vegas Pro 9.0c. Windows only reports 2GB. So that’s 4GB and 8 cores.

Ken Bennett
Video Adventures
Capturing Your Life’s Adventures!

[John Rofrano]

OK, I do have 4GB in the computer computer running Vegas Pro 9.0c. Windows only reports 2GB. So that’s 4GB and 8 cores.

No, that’s 2GB on 8 cores. XP Pro is your problem. It only gives 2GB to each application regardless of how much memory you have (even if you had 16GB). So my example holds true. Each of the 8 cores has 256MB of memory to work with in Vegas Pro.

So in addition to buying more memory, you need to upgrade to Windows 7 64-bit. Unless you use a 64-bit OS you can’t really make use the power you have there.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ken Bennett]

OK, Win 7 and more memory are on the list of things to get. Except upgrading to Win 7 is a major overhaul since everything has to be reinstalled fresh. And I just noticed that I am running Vegas Pro 9.0b, not c! Could that be part of it?

Render data says it will take about 9 hrs to render this 90 min project.

I did make the chnages in prefs as suggested and this time it got to 33 mins (6.3GB) and gave me the following error:

“Error occured while creating media file xxxx.mt2
Reason for error could not be determind”

Any clue as to what that means?

I am rendering to the same RAID drive as the project clips are located on and there is plent of disk space (over 500GB). I really don’t want to piece together my projects in 30 minutes chuncks. I’m tired of work-a-rounds as in other programs.

Thanks again for the input.

Ken Bennett
Video Adventures
Capturing Your Life’s Adventures!