HOW MUCH RAM?

A while ago I read that FCP5 was using up to 4 Gigs of ram and if you put any more RAM it will be a waste.
Having a Quad G5 with 4 1/2 Gig of ram I wonder if I should buy more for faster renders or not...
I can do now about 7 to 8 layers in real time at 9 layers I need to render.
What do you think?

Daniel



Televisionworks

i dont know that ram istelf is going to give you faster render times in FCP. and im almost postive that it doesnt have effect on the layer count/render need relationship...

it will help a LOT in after effects though!

There are only a couple of effects that more Ram will help in FCP. I think Gaussian Blur is one. Basically more Ram wont help in FCP but will help in Motion. I "think" the 4 gig limit still applies in FCP 5. Am I wrong? Anyone?

wayne granzin wrote:


> it will help a LOT in after effects though!
yes for previewing, but not rendering., and after 3 gigs in a.e it's dead space

where it does help, is having both open at once 3 gigs going to aftereffects, and 4 in fcp



Amateur Teacher

One conclusion could be it's not worth buy 16 gigs of ram for the cost of another mac G5 that could open a second editing bay... That seems a better business desition.
How about when you work in HD with FCP5... does it benefit from more RAM or is the same enchilada?
As my old friend said once " Don't put too much cream in your tacos " (you'll loose the beef flavor)
I guess adding more ram in this case is like putting two more stamps in the envelope just in case...

Is there enyone out there who is disagree on NOT putting more than 4 GIGs of ram in a Quad G5 for FCP5????

Daniel



Televisionworks

"Is there enyone out there who is disagree on NOT putting more than 4 GIGs of ram in a Quad G5 for FCP5????"

OK, I'll bite...

If you run your Quad like I ran my Mac Classic then more than 4GB would be (at the moment) pretty pointless. Very little of your activities would benefit.

IF, however, your workflow includes what we old guys refer to as "multi-tasking" and you want to (for example) run Pshop, AE, and/or Motion while FCP is rendering there could be an advantage.

A Quad isn't a 600-hp Corvette, it's a 900-hp Kenworth. It's only going to go 100 mph but if you load it correctly, it'll do a hundred while pulling 50 tons. Additional RAM gives you the space to run several simultaneous apps.

No offense intended in my snide tone (think of it as a Dennis Miller thing) but many Big Mac users treat them like the machines we left behind that had no bandwidth.

I remember a benchmark from a few years back that measured execution time of a Pshop filter suite on a G5 dualie. The times were improved over several previous fast G4s but not unbelieveably so. What was staggering was when they submitted three copies of the b'mark simultaneously and it ran only about 20% slower... that's bandwidth talking.

16GB is probably overkill for all but the hardest of the hard core, but if a lot of people are running 4GB in a dualie, maybe 8GB in a Quad makes sense (depending on how you use the machine.) Remember, you're feeding four hungry processors!

I've been usually running FCP5 and Sountrack Pro simultaneously. I have 4 megs of Ram in my dual processor 2.7 kHz G5. Sometimes the STP can't handle the big load of a feature length movie sequence and begins to make a terrible noise, like a buzzing sound that grows and grows until it deafens me. I have to click on a window that pops up and then the sound dies down. I don't know what's happening. I'm assuming I need more ram.

I've never seen that...

What does the window say?

The only audibles I can think of would be fan noise (caused by the processor starting to heat up) or disk activity (which is usually more like rapid clicking.)

This may be a perfect opportunity to buy more RAM (if you have a RAM fetish like I do) but I'm not sure it will cure the problem. It may if this occurs while FCP is rendering, but the largest usage I've (personally) seen by FCP while rendering was 2.55GB from a norm of around 150MB.

The key may be in the message in the window. If not, launch Activity Monitor and study the RAM usage as things are loading up.