Out of Memory error

Can anyone point me to a solution to this error.
Working on a project and was provided with a gazillion different codecs and still images. I keep getting General Error and Out of Memory error. It seems that my system is not liking the mp4's provided from stock footage houses for one thing. I am using FCP to transcode them and it seems to be a bit happier. The project file is only 25MB do it's not that issue. I can only guess that it is the multitude of codecs in one timeline that is making FCP not respond time and again. Are there other reasons this could be happening? Anyone have a link I can check out with regard the possible issues?

Codecs include some PAL transcoded to 23.98
dv
.mov
h.264
mp4
jpg
png
tiff

Currently replacing the H.264 and mp4 as mentioned

Thanks!

OSX 10.6.5
FCP 7.0.3
Kona LE card

Also check all still-image files to make sure they are all 72ppi. And that all images are in RGB, not CMYK mode. If any settings are aberrant, you need to make copies of the image files with modified settings.

And yes, never edit with MP4s and H.264 files in FCP.


www.derekmok.com

as a matter of fact just found a pic that was too large - thanks Derek!!

Question Derek, about pix.

There are several images that I am using that are
1944 x 2592 Resolution 72ppi or even a little bigger (I have made sure that they are all 72ppi). Will this size photo give FCP fits? Still having some wonky behavior with my project. The issue is that I am needing to push way in to fill the 1080p frame and don't want to lose resolution in the process. Thoughts? Still getting some Out of Memory errors.

Thanks man!

Yes,large images can be a killer.
If I am doing a slide show at 480i, for example,
I make sure none of the images are greater than 900 horizontal
(allowing for a 25% zoom-in factor).

Of course there are always exceptions, such as when you are panning
over a picture and then settling on a zoomed two shot, for example.

But excessive resolution is an application killer.
And this applies to other apps such as 3ds Max, abobe Premeire, etc, etc,etc.



derekmok Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Also check all still-image files to make sure they
> are all 72ppi. And that all images are in RGB,
> not CMYK mode. If any settings are aberrant, you
> need to make copies of the image files with
> modified settings.
>
> And yes, never edit with MP4s and H.264 files in
> FCP.

> 1944 x 2592 Resolution 72ppi or even a little bigger (I have made sure that they are all 72ppi). Will this size photo give FCP fits?

Depends on the capabilities of your computer. But if an editing system can't handle a file this size at 72ppi, I'd consider it not suitable to be an editing workstation.

FCP is not the greatest software for dealing with large image files. If you need a lot of leeway and are working with an HD frame size, you might consider taking the effects work out of FCP. I cut a promo last month at 1920x1080 and I made most of the still images at least twice as large as that, and I had no problems unless I forgot to change the file to 72ppi. The images were also scanned with a less-than-professional scanner so they came in as TIFFs, but at "IBM PC" byte order. Those were unrecognizable by FCP. A quick trip to Photoshop to resave copies of the files as Macintosh byte order fixed the issue.

Finding an optimal image size for doing your work is a trial-and-error process.


www.derekmok.com

OS 10.6.8
2 x 2.66 Quad Core
12GB RAM

Should be able to handle it, no?
Final Cut prefers png's as opposed to tiff's??

Thanks gents!

I've been using scanned images 2000 pixels horizontal at 150 dpi and it seems to work with FCP7. However, I've always been a bit unclear if FCP prefers .jpg's or .tiff's. I've defaulted to .jpg's as the file size would be smaller but am I doing this wrong? I also had to bump up the memory allocation for still images, too.

FCP 7.0.3, PPro CS5.5, MPro Octo 2.8, 16 gigs RAM, Matrox MXO2, Sony EX1

Switch render to 8 bit YUV. I found that it helps.



www.strypesinpost.com

And don't use 150ppi. Save a copy at 72ppi (remember to preserve the original pixel count of the dimensions). Even though the real number of pixels remains the same, FCP has trouble dealing with image files at high ppi.


www.derekmok.com

Good article to read. Will help you understand all about picts for the future

[www.lafcpug.org]

Michael Horton
-------------------

There is one myth, actually. That's dpi in relation to video. DPI (or PPI), is only applicable in the real world, where there is a physical measurement of inches. In the computing world, all we really care about are pixels. Take a picture that is a square inch. If you scan it at 300 pixels per inch, you get an image that is 300 pixels wide by 300 pixels long. If you scan it at 180 pixels per inch (ppi), you get an image that is 180 pixels wide and 180 pixels long.

The same thing applies if you have a digital image that is 300 pixels wide by 300 pixels long. If you print it at 300 dpi, you get an image that is 1" by 1". If you print it at 150 dpi, you get an image that is half an inch wide and half an inch long.

PPI does nothing to an image with regards to digital video. A same image 3000 pixels by 3000 pixels appear exactly the same in FCP if it was saved at 1200 dpi or at 50 dpi. It is the pixels that matter. Don't use images that are large, because they clog up memory buffers, and being a software written too many years ago, FCP is unable to address more than 4 gigs of RAM, with a part of that 4 gigs reserved for the OS and other background apps. When FCP runs out of RAM that it can use, you get either an out of memory message or FCP will simply crash.

Apple has a short write up on this (they don't talk about the crashing issue or out of memory messages, though):

[documentation.apple.com]



www.strypesinpost.com

Troy,

Stay away from large pics in FCP...period. Use Motion or even better After Effects if you have it and animate 3D position rather than scale. The render is cleaner and a hell of a lot faster.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

You guys rock!
Thanks for the input!!

Troy

[There is one myth, actually. That's dpi in relation to video. DPI (or PPI), is only applicable in the real world, where there is a physical measurement of inches. In the computing world, all we really care about are pixels. Take a picture that is a square inch. If you scan it at 300 pixels per inch, you get an image that is 300 pixels wide by 300 pixels long.]

Sorry, DPI is closely related-- when scanning. The scanner is the bridge. You don't scan at 300 pixels, Gerard, you can at 300 dots per inch. The resulting image dimensions are 300 pixels per inch. Voila, DPI's relation to video.

Rich scans are important to any filmmaker using photos to tell a story with zooms or pans, which require enlargement. You cannot edict a single resolution for this purpose without stepping on creative needs. 72 PPI at 1920 x 1080 allows you to do one thing correctly-- display a full frame at that format.

If you want to push in more than 10% or so, you need more pixel data because practised eyes will detect the softening, abundantly clear on large screens. That means scanning rich, and the easiest way to do that is to pump up the resolution intelligently. That's what the ScanGuide? Pro is all about.

The point about practical import limits is well taken; FCP7 tops out at 4000 pixels square and that's when things go wonky and you can risk corrupting projects with many borderline stills in the timeline.

Usually an Out of Memory is triggered (although several other causes such as non-editing codecs listed in the OP could trigger it-- non-rendered time remapped clips can trigger it-- especially if you've accidentally time-remapped linked audio with them! Huge processor load.) Many HD scans come in at well over those dimensions, and yes, Motion and After Effects are the better tool!

The rest of the story is right over here in the archives.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Invoke the big TimeCode Viewer with Control -T !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

>Sorry, DPI is closely related-- when scanning.

It's actually Pixels per inch. And yes, scanning is preferable at high PPI, because scanning relates to real world measurement. If you plan to not scale an image during the edit, then scan to make sure it fills up 1920x1080 pixels from a 16:9 image and no more.

However, after scanning, you can change the PPI to anything up to 300,000 PPI in Photoshop and just make sure that you uncheck "re-sample image", and your original image is unscaled and still at 1920x1080. Save this image. Bring this image into FCP. Voila! 1920x1080 at 300,000 PPI.

Then do exactly the same thing again, and change the PPI to 1 in Photoshop. Save a copy, and bring that into FCP. Do a comparison. There is no difference in either performance or quality, between an image at 300,000 PPI or 1 PPI, because all video really cares about is that your original image was acquired with enough resolution to fill 1920x1080 without blowing up the image.


>72 PPI at 1920 x 1080 allows you to do one thing correctly-- display a full frame
>at that format.

I'm talking about the common misconception that video is displayed at 1920x1080 @72PPI. This means that everyone's TV, needs to be exactly 26.667 inches wide to watch HD television, and that is not true.



www.strypesinpost.com

> Then do exactly the same thing again, and change the PPI to 1 in Photoshop. Save a copy, and bring that into FCP. Do a comparison. There is no difference in either
> performance or quality, between an image at 300,000 PPI or 1 PPI

Not true, strypes. A 3840x2160 still-image file at 300ppi (which is what I scanned pictures at last month, and then cropped to 2x HD frame size to allow for zooms and movement) performs much more poorly in FCP than a 3840x2160 still-image file at 72dpi. The frame size in FCP is the same, as is the file size, but the file hangs up a lot more when the file has a high ppi.


www.derekmok.com

Meh. I'm working with huge stills (resized down to 4K) on a Mac Pro 1,1 with 6 gigs of RAM on a 45 min multicam show. If you ask me, most of the performance is RAM related. FCP uses a paltry 2.5 gigs of whatever RAM you have, with the rest reserved for OS and background processes. Having more RAM does keep FCP more stable, because those background apps won't eat into the 2.5 gigs that FCP uses so easily. What I do when working with stills is I ramp up the stills cache, and purge the RAM every now and then. I also try to minimize active layers as much as possible. I also switch rendering to 8 bits, because rendering 4K in floating point on 32 bit software architecture on consumer grade hardware will really bog down your system, cause FCP to go into a spinning beach ball fit.

Reducing the ppi... If it works, you'd probably be better off setting it to 1ppi, than to set it at some arbitrary ancient number such as 72ppi. There is no difference in file size or processor usage as long as your image is small. FCP likes small pictures. Period.



www.strypesinpost.com

Jeez, if YOU guys can't agree on the specs, how can meer mortals like the rest of us ever hope to get this sorted out?

FCP 7.0.3, PPro CS5.5, MPro Octo 2.8, 16 gigs RAM, Matrox MXO2, Sony EX1

Stypes wrote-

[It's actually Pixels per inch]

Not here at the Neotron Digi-Hovel. I use Canon ScanGear plugins for all my Photoshops and CanoScan Toolbox with my LiDE 30 scanner- an old one to be sure. But the scanrate is always listed as DPI. I think I'll let it go there. It's not rocket science with hidden truths.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Invoke the big TimeCode Viewer with Control -T !

Your Final Cut Studio KeyGuide? Power Pack
with FCP7 KeyGuide --
now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

DPI is misleading in the digital world, because DPI refers to printing resolution. Whereas, PPI refers to pixels per inch on displays, and the relation of pixels to inch when printed. But yea, it's pointless discussing it, because most people use it interchangeably, except people doing printing.

72 PPI was the original screen resolution of Macs in the 80s, and many graphic designers for many years created graphics for screen at 72 dpi, however this number has no meaning today, because my screen resolution is 1920x1200, but about 15" wide, which gives me somewhere in the region of 128 PPI. And I can set my display at whatever resolution I choose.



www.strypesinpost.com

At the scanning stage, "PPI" is important because at that point, you have an analog image on paper (or on celluloid film, if you're talking about scanning a film). You're telling the computer how many pixels should be spent to represent x amount of light, colour and shapes. The more pixels are devoted to an inch of image, the better the image would be represented.

Once scanned, an image cannot gain any more information. Because the pixels have already been created. PPI now refers to how large you intend to print said number of pixels. You can change a 1920x1080 image to print onto a 12x18" surface rather than a 4x6" surface. The original image file will look the same because it's still 1920x1080, but the printed results will be different because those pixels are now being asked to spread over a larger physical area. Ever notice how images always look sharper, more saturated and nicer on a small camera LCD screen? Same thing -- more tightly packed pixels make the image look better than it is.

The reason PPI is irrelevant in editing is because digital video has fixed dimensions in pixels. You can't get any more information out of a 1920x1080, uncompressed HD video file because that's all the pixels there is.

So in our world, PPI really should be the only relevant unit, not DPI. But our bad habits die hard. I got it wrong for many years as well. But I know it's a fact that while FCP shouldn't care about PPI, it does in terms of the performance of the software. A 3840x2080, 300ppi image almost always drags FCP to a crawl but a 3840x2080, 72ppi image does not -- even though the two images look equally sharp.

Yes, 72ppi is an archaic standard. And as far as I know, there's no harm in setting an image to 1dpi for video purposes...as long as you correct the pixel count. In Photoshop, when you change the PPI on an image file, Photoshop by default will change the pixel dimensions for you because it assumes you want a smaller file and smaller image. You usually need to correct this. That's why I never change the PPI on the original image file; I always make a copy first. Because if you forget and save the file too quickly, you could lose the original image, and now it's a bothersome rescan.


www.derekmok.com

>But I know it's a fact that while FCP shouldn't care about PPI, it does in terms of
>the performance of the software.

That's kinda interesting, although admittedly there are a lot of other variables and I haven't been able to see a difference when I set a picture to 30,000 dpi (which should cause FCP to grind to a halt. But there could be other factors such as graphics card.



www.strypesinpost.com