Memory advice

[Bob Head]

I seem to be having the same problems with memory warnings and program crashing as others. I constantly receive warnings of low memory. I have defragged, run virus scans, and minimized the start-up program and yet receive same warnings. All drivers are up to date as far as I can tell.
In view of this I took my machine to upgrade the memory to 4 GB. The technician I talked to told me he didn't think I would be gaining much since the system would use a lot of the new memory. His idea was to upgrade to a 64 bit OS so I could take advantage of even more memory (GB)
I'm a little leery of his advice, especially in view of Steve's comments on his memory upgrade.
I would appreciate any advice or comments.

Bob
system: vista 32 bit Internal Hard Drive: 326 GB, Free 195 GB
processor: AMD Quadcore 2.20 GHz External Hard Drive: 465 GB, Free 451 GB
Memory: 3 GB, Free 2.0 GB Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT 256 MB

[Chuck Engels]

Hi Bob, Welcome to Muvipix
You sure shouldn't be having any memory issues with that machine.
Maybe someone else has an idea what might be causing the problem.

[Bobby]

Hi Bob and welcome.

I would start by downloading Secunia PSI, which is a tool to verify that all your programs are up to date. You can Google for it, but I think the correct link is

http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/

For now I would stay with what you have (Vista 32 and 3GB of RAM) until you solve the problems. Upgrading to a 64-bit version or adding RAM isn't going to take you anywhere.

You also need to use the MSCONFIG utility to minimize startups. I know you said you did that, but knowing what to remove and what not to remove (including Services) is not obvious. You may have to start by turning off ALL startups and then working them back on in a controlled process.

Other than that, exactly what fails and when (more description) might help.

[Steve Grisetti]

Welcome, Bob!

Strangely -- at least in my experience -- out of memory notices from Premiere Elements have almost nothing to do with RAM. I've got 4 gig of RAM and I continually monitor its use. The program will show an out of memory notice even when it's only using 2 gig!

Out of memory issues are more often related to a need to render -- which is indicated by a red line above your clips on the timeline. Press Enter to render regularly and most likely the program will run fine again.

Some source formats also eat memory and system power. Photos that are larger than 1000x750 pixels in size, for instance. Or video from non-traditional sources, like still cameras or Flip camcorders. When you use these types of media files you're also more likely to get an out of memory notice.

In short, I do recommend going with the full 4 gig of RAM load. I (personally) don't recommend going to a 64-bit OS at this time. And render often.

[Bob Head]

Thanks for the comments. I do render very often. This message warns me I am low on memory and to save project which I do, then after a couple of short changes I render again. Yesterday I deleted a short title and and then tried to render which caused the the program shut down. It reopened after a while successfully. All my still pictures are within parameters before being brought into the program. All video is from a mini-dv camcorder and SD motion backgrounds from this site and another trusted sources. One thing I want to mention is that some of these stills are their own track which in turn are on top of other video tracks. In some instances there are up to four tracks. This doesn't seem to me to be a problem but somebody else might see it differently. The total time is only about twenty minutes.
I am going over the start-up menu and see what I can do different.

Thanks

Bob

[Maxine370]

Ah, the memory issue. From time to time I still run low on system memory And I'm running i7 64bit, 6gig Ram and two Terabyte internal hard drives. I don't know the technical as much as I know when I'm working for a long time, especially with stills that may be large and rendering often it gets to a point where it's gone and far as it can in that working session.

When I get a running low on memory message I save immediately, shutdown, reboot computer and start again. This usually resets things and I can go again for a while. Now of course, this won't work if it happens often or soon after you start working.

The other I do is render in shorter segments so if I'm on the verge of a low mem message or even a crash, when it opens again more of the timeline is still rendered (green). There is nothing worse than trying to render the whole timeline and crashing and when you reopen find the reds line and the time you spent rendering was for naught.

Good luck.

[SteveG]

What about the "Pairs" aspect of memory? In 32bit the memory "should" it work in pairs? So two 1GB sticks or four 1GB sticks.

And from I have read recently, in Win7 64 bit the recommended memory is to double the size each time. So 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and so on.

[Bob]

What about the "Pairs" aspect of memory? In 32bit the memory "should" it work in pairs? So two 1GB sticks or four 1GB sticks.

That has nothing to do with whether you are using a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system. That's a motherboard requirement. Some motherboards must install RAM in matched pairs, others prefer RAM in pairs but will work with single or odd number sticks (with the loss of dual memory channel operation as a consequence), newer motherboards for the high end i7 cpus prefer RAM in triples.

And from I have read recently, in Win7 64 bit the recommended memory is to double the size each time. So 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and so on.

Could you give us a link to an article discussing that, Steve. I'd like to see what they are basing that on. I've been following the testing by the various computer magazines that cater to this sort of stuff and, so far, what I've seen is that the current sweet spot for 64-bit systems is 6GB of RAM. More than that doesn't yield much in the way of return on investment unless you have a software mix that can take advantage of more RAM. For example, Adobe has recommended in the past that if you use the parallel processing feature of After Effects that you have 2GB per cpu (8GB for a quad system).

Of course, the other aspect where doubling comes into play is how to physically fit the extra RAM on your motherboard. My motherboard has just 4 slots for RAM. I just upgraded from 4GB to 8GB by removing the 4 sticks of 1GB RAM and replacing them with 4 sticks of 2GB ram.

RAM is often confused with Virtual Memory, but they aren't the same thing at all. RAM is physical memory that plugs into the motherboard -- only the motherboard and the operating system can see and use that directly. Applications never see RAM. They see virtual memory which is a mathematical construct managed by the operating system. You can have a small amount of RAM, 256MB for example, and 32-bit applications will still see 4GB of virtual memory. Virtual Memory is backed up in the page file.

Virtual memory has to be loaded into RAM in order to be accessed. The operating system manages this loading into RAM and writing back out to the page file as needed. If you don't have an adequate amount of RAM to hold the needed virtual memory, the system will have to do more reading and writing with the page file. The more it has to do this, the bigger the hit on your system performance. You need enough RAM to reduce this to an acceptable level. Ideally, you want enough RAM above the typical usage to allow for a system cache to further increase performance.

You can get low memory messages in two situations. The first occurs when the operating system needs to create more virtual memory and the page file is full and can't be expanded. The second occurs when the amount of virtual memory available for allocation by the application is running out -- this is the more common situation.

32-bit applications, such as Premiere Elements, can see 4GB of virtual memory. However, the operating system needs to use part of this area. By convention, the 4GB area is divided into two 2GB regions -- one available for the application to use and one for the operating system to use. If you have Windows XP Pro, there is a switch that can be set that will allow the division of the virtual memory to be 3GB for the application and 1GB for the operating system. Windows 7 and Vista have a similar feature. You don't always want to use that though as too little memory for the OS portion can also cause problems.

[SteveG]

I wish I could give you a link but I can't find it now. I know I read it somewhere but can't prove it.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

You can get low memory messages in two situations. The first occurs when the operating system needs to create more virtual memory and the page file is full and can't be expanded. The second occurs when the amount of virtual memory available for allocation by the application is running out -- this is the more common situation.

I am experiencing just this. My PPro CS4 was running very sweetly but I recently partitioned my 150Gb raptor so that I could have a dual boot system (XP and Win 7 64 bit) whilst I migrated my applications into the Win 7 environment.

The upshot is that I am getting frequent 'out of memory' warnings. In my case I know exactly what is causing them and as soon as I have completed the software migration the XP partition will be deleted and I fully expect the messages to disappear.

When I get a running low on memory message I save immediately, shutdown, reboot computer and start again. This usually resets things and I can go again for a while.

Whilst my system migration continues this is precisely the action that I take.

Having to work like this is a bit of a pain but I should be able to remove the (shortly to be unwanted) XP partition in a week or two, once I am happy that my Win 7 system is stable and complete.

[Bob Head]

I have now installed an extra 1 GB of memory. As of right now PRE8 is running a lot more smoothly. Rendering and saving often is good advice! Unfortunately, for some reason, the warning messages and shut downs ,etc; became too frequent as in inserting and rendering a single transition or after deleting a three word title. Hopefull this has been solved.
Thanks for the advice and information.

Bob

[Chuck Engels]

That's great news Bob, please keep us informed in the coming days as you use the program