Out Of Memory

I've never seen this message before. It says to free up memory and window will redraw.

Where do I free up memory? I have plenty (15-30) gigs available on all 4 drives. I just don't know what to do.

Thanks,
Eric

the warning refers to memory, not to drive space.

generally it means you've got too much going on.
maybe too many apps open at once,
probably just too much going on in FCP
like too many projects open,
too many sequences open,
all with waveforms turned on,
& thumbnails
too many bins open, viewers open.
maybe you've got 99 undos going.
that'll chew up memory.

on the last film i worked on we had one guy who for some reason felt the need to have waveforms on in all sequences,
plus thumbnails,
plus duplicate frames,
plus 99 undos.
his machine was the slowest one in the set up.

most likely it;s too many sequences.
if you close a few, you'll be fine.


nick

> Where do I free up memory? I have plenty (15-30) gigs available on all 4 drives. I just don't
> know what to do.

That particular warning does only refer to memory. However,30GB across four drives sounds low, storage-wise. How large are the drives? Do you mean 15-30GB on each drive? If you have 30GB across all four drives, then chances are at least one of them has passed the 90 per cent mark.


www.derekmok.com

A couple of thoughts.

UNIX and by extension OSX considers hard drive space to be extensions of physical memory. That's why "Out Of Memory" errors can be confusing.

The hard drive rule on video machines is no greater than 90% full **on each drive**. Any drive the machine can see counts whether or not it's being used in the show.

There are slightly fuzzier rules. Avoid daisy-chaining drives and capture DV on a FireWire connection *or* host FireWire drives, not both. Problems here will not always produce an unstable machine, but they will increase the chance of problems.

Koz

koz,

Thanks for the help. It was most likely due to insufficient RAM due to working on a 12 seq. minute HD project and/or use of 55mm Plug-ins. I do have my drives daisy chained but the way I fixed it was I disconnected my external drives opened the project with the captres disconnected. After that I was able to open the sequence w/out the errors and got rid of the 55mm Plug ins and a Motion file. After that I closed the project and reconnected the drives and opened the project and sequence w/out any problems.

Thanks!