FCP 7: Error - Out of Memory occurring too frequently!

Macpro 2x2.8 Quad
10GB memory
OSX 10.8.2
FCP 7

I'm working on a full length documentary and am getting an error message that I'm out of memory about every 2nd or 3rd time I go to render something out.
If I close the program and re-open, it will allow the scene to render, but I obviously can't keep opening and closing the project every time I want to render a scene
out. Nothing else is running that would eat up memory so I'm not sure the problem.

Please help!
Epp

Did you import any stills or graphics? Overlarge graphics files would make FCP go bonkers. So can non-self-contained (reference) movie files, non-optimized media (eg. H.264 .movs or MP4s), or too many video tracks.


www.derekmok.com

I do have a lot of large stills. Is there a quick fix or do I need to go back and resize everything? And if so, do you know of a good "workable/acceptable" size?

Thanks
epp

First thing to do, always, is to resave the images at 72ppi, RGB instead of CMYK. While ppi is irrelevant to video work (since you're not printing anything), images at a high ppi are very taxing to an FCP project, and CMYK images can make a render fail outright. When you change the ppi, remember to readjust the height and width of the image in pixels to what it's supposed to be.

Remember to duplicate all still images and rename them before you mess with the pictures, since these changes are permanent. If you make a mistake, you need to be able to revert to the old, unaltered image file.


www.derekmok.com

Reduce the size of them. FCP hates big images.



www.strypesinpost.com

Another place to look: check how full all of your connected drives are, particularly your boot drive. Your boot drive manages virtual memory (as disk space) and it's valuable territory for complex operations, like rendering. If it gets too crammed full to manage well, memory errors result. Make sure you have at least 10% free space (before a render).

I've suffered from this in the past with FCP7 when placing b/w images that were too large. The best advice I ever got was to keep the image below 2000 pixels measured along its longest side.

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

I got this message a lot when working with a doc with 2 flavours of ProRes. HQ and 4444 at 720 and 1080. Working in a 422 timeline.

One of the things that worked was re-connecting footage. I think Sparks recommended it to me. I ended up Shift command drag copying my timelines into new sequences and that took care of a lot, not all of it. Occasionally toggling off my external video using Matrox-mini, would also help.