Error: Out Of memory????

Using mac pro 3 ghz quad intel, 4 Gb RAM and 1 tb internal hard drive. Using 10 uncompressed SD with RT set to safe on the latest Tiger/FCP 5.1.4 and the latest Quicktime. Renders have suddenly become slow: a window also popped us saying Error: Out Of Memory. I have tons of memory...I don't get it...still not convinced by this machine.

Out of Memory - errors can be many things. You didn't mention your specific drive configuration other than 1 TB internal hard drive? Is that several SATA drives set up as a software RAID?

And tell us about your project.

Yes it is three drives striped...the project uses uncompressed 10 bit SD, DVD ripped and converted to 10 bit and HDV...there are jpegs and title making up 4 video layers...other than that it's buisiness as usual

OK. Sounds like a lot of renderables on that timeline. So, what has changed or has something changed since going to this Intel Mac?

Nothing has changed..I started running RT unlimited...there is alot of different media but the machine should handle it with relative ease...it is'nt...renders start slow then gradually speed up - that is - when they don't stop and say Error: Out Of memory...this just started happenning today. Cheers John...

"I didn't change anything, I was editing along and it just started doing this."

You Filled Up A Hard Drive.

How full is your System Drive? How many other drives do you have hanging from your FireWire ports? OS X has to manage all drives at all times whether or not they're part of your show. Especially if you fill up your System Drive, that can lead to insanity; first the machine and then you.

What are the actual numbers of your connected drives? We get too many people insisting "they're fine" when they're at 98% capacity which is not fine.


There is also the possibility you're suffering from a damaged clip or you did something silly like put a slash mark (/) in a filename, but you have the classic symptoms of drive capacity--somewhere.

Koz

One internal drive...no firewire...internal drive under one third full. Using unlimited RT, whenever
you play an unrendered title (orange line above) in 2nd video layer all stops with the dropped frame window.

<<<One internal drive>>>

Actually three, from an earlier message, striped into one. RAID Zero? Where the sytem interlaces three drives into one for speed? Or one of the other RAIDs?

One T-Byte. So you have three, say 400G drives smashed together?

I don't think this is what's wrong, but you did violate a rule or two. If the System thinks there is only one drive inside the machine, then you're trying to run Final Cut in full-on uncompressed mode on the same drive that's also running the Operating System and the Final Cut program files and the render caches. Busy drive.

There's another layer to this. If you have a complicated enough effect or transition, then the machine will run out of memory--even with 4G of hardware memory--and resort to the desparation method which is to start using the hard drive in place of the memory. This , of course, is the same hard drive that's trying to host everything else--and in striped mode.

Apple warns you that there can be problems running OS X from a striped drive, but they don't expressly forbid it (that I know of).

The sweet configuration is to have the operating system and Final Cut on one nice single boot drive by itself and then make a separate data/media drive system very, very large and very, very, fast.


How complicated is the effect? We know about two 10-bit uncompressed layers so far plus graphics and overlays. You know about all the graphics in a show needing to have RGB colors, right? One CYMK color graphic in the mix will drive the system nuts.

The full-on engineering troubleshooting thing would be to divide the show in half and see if it still fails.

Are you trying to cut a whole one hour, complicated, special effects laden, uncompressed show on the timeline at once? Uncompressed takes up a powerful lot of room, especially at 10 bit

Have you done the usual system checks like Repair Disk, Repair Permissions, and Apple Hardware Check?

It's possible--however remotely--that you have a stick of bad memory. The hardware check will try and check that, but it's best to run a low footprint command-line tester like Memtest

[www.memtestosx.org]

Koz

Did you actually do any of those tests? What were the results?

At the end of the day, the machine is still not supposed to run out of "memory." It's supposed to know how to share. It may slow down a lot, but I wouldn't expect an error.

Do you ever get the Spinning Beach Ball Of Death? That's an actual timing error. The machine allots a certain amount of time to get a task done and when the machine exceeds that amount, you get the SBBOD.

So now we know you have four drives, one of them we assume a well-behaved Startup/System drive. How full is that? Do you have any of your caches or buffers assigned to that drive instead of the RAID? I think the listing is under Final Cut Pro, User Settings. A lot of the default assignments are to the System Drive, so that may be it right there.

Koz

Thanks Koz, I checked disc activity and system profile and it all seemed fine...I am not savvy enough to check buffers and cache' ... I took off Unlimited RT and now the system is happier and I can render by sections...an RT thing? Would 6gb RAM sort this? Cheers Phil

<<<Would 6gb RAM sort this?>>>

Never turn down the offer of more RAM, but I still think you have something else wrong. I think one of your tools is trying to save stuff on your single startup drive instead of the big, fast media drives. I'm not in front of a machine to tell you where to check (I'm typing this on a PC) and I won't be back until Monday.

Click on Final Cut Pro up in the upper left and there are two places in the drop-down dialogs that could affect this (this is where I get fuzzy). One of them should have a panel that illustrates the drives that Final Cut is going to use and for what. In your case, none of them should be pointing to your startup or system drive.

That's about as clear as I can be without the machine in front of me.

Koz

<<,That's about as clear as I can be without the machine in front of me. >>>

Here it is. Final Cut Pro, System Settings.

They should all point to your data/media drives, not to the system drive.

Koz