Out of Memory with 2 GB

fflowers wrote on 3/8/2004, 1:07 PM
Problem:
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Sony Screenblast Movie Studio runs out of memory while trying to render a 3 1/2 minute AVI movie. I have a work-around (see below), but I'm thinking that I should not be having this problem because I still have plenty of available RAM, not to mention SWAP space.. Does anyone know what I can do to solve this?

Specifics:
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Windows XP Pro (with installed patches)
3.2 Ghz Pentium 4 Processor
2 GBs RAM - DDR 3200, 400 Mhz, Corsair memory, (2) 1 GB modules

I tried closing all other applications (even things in the system tray), but I still got the error. Movie Studio seemed to keep growing in RAM until it got to about 960 MB. That's the last I saw. So, I presume that it crashed when it got near 1 GB. My total memory usage was about 1.13 GB.

The video I'm trying to create is almost completely made up of still photos that last about 5 seconds each. Yes, they are all scanned in at 1,200 dpi resolution at 48 bit color. So, I know that they are big and this can be a lot of data. In addition, it's not just a simple slide show. I pan/scan each picture and transition from from photo to the next. Most, but not all of these, are standard 4 x 6 color pictures that I've scanned. Yet, I have plenty of available RAM (2.0 GB - 1.13 GB) and don't know why it's still crashing.

I know that I could reduce my resolution for each photo and that would help. But, since I scan in on photos, I like for the resolution to be high so that it's still clear even when a zoom in.

Work-Around
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My work-around is to break the project up into segments. Render 1/3 of the vide at a time without the music background song. The, create a new project that brings in these 3, short AVI files, add the music track, and render the 3 1/2 minute final video. Movie Studio doesn't seem to ever run ouf of memory when it's just rendering vieo files in its project. It's the numerous photos that seem to through it for a loop.

Questions
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Let me just throw some questions out at you and see if anyone knows the answer to any of them.

Have anyone else experience this kind of problem where SMS runs out of memory while rendering a video containing lost of photos when there is still plenty available?

Would switching to Vegas solve this problem? Or, does it have the same issue? (I know this is a Movie Studio forum. So, I might have to post that question in a different forum if I don't resolve this issue here.)

Does Windows XP have some kind of maximum memory allocation for an individual application?

Why do I run out of memory when it appears so much is still available? Why doesn't it just use the SWAP disk space?

As you can see, any kind of help or solution would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Comments

Former user wrote on 3/8/2004, 1:27 PM
Your pictures are too big. That is why you are running out of memory. The same problem happens in Vegas video.

Even with panning and scanning, you don't need to scan at 1200 dpi. A normal video image is equivalent to 72dpi. If you want to zoom on a 4 x 6 picture you can scan it at 150 dpi, and get a good quality zoom and scan.

Dave T2
Chienworks wrote on 3/8/2004, 1:39 PM
A lot of it depends on how far you want to zoom in. The image that Movie Studio will create in the frame is 654x480 pixels (well, for NTSC anyway). The pictures you've scanned are 7200x4800. This means that you're allowing zooming in to a section that is about 0.54x0.4 inches, which is very tiny indeed. Do you need to zoom in this far? Let's assume that the farthest you have to zoom in is a section about 2.4x1.8 inches (that's still zooming in 2.5x). In order for this to fill the frame you'd need to scan at 300dpi. That would result in an image only 1/16th the size of what you are using and the memory requirements would be that much less. You may want to reserve the higher resolution scans for the few times that you do need to zoom in farther.
fflowers wrote on 3/8/2004, 2:11 PM
All of that makes perfect sense. Just reduce the dpi for the photos that I'm using for a particular video. I had thought of that, but was hoping there was another alternative that would make use of all that extra RAM that's not being used.

The reason that I did not already do that is because I have been scanning in several hundred photos from years gone by (back in the dark ages before there were consumer digital cameras) so that I could create a digital library of my photos. Although I'm currenlty using them to make some family videos, I scanned them in at a high resolution thinking that they might could be used for any number of purposes, including videos, printing, and maybe even enlarging (and printing, etc). I thought that my digital library should be very high quality because it would be my master library - kind of like a negative is to film. My theory was that over time, I would build up my digital library of most of the good pictures from my photo albums. That way I could archive it for safe keeping and have them available electronically. If I follow this path and need lower resolutions for video, then I'll end up scanning all photos twice. That could take a very, very long time.

Now, I will have to go back and rescan with a lower resolution any photos that I want to include in a video. Since the video almost made it with them at 1200 dpi, I'm sure 600 dpi would make it.

All of that is doable but time consuming. It just seemed to me that with 2 GB of total RAM plus disk SWAP space, I shouldn't be running out of memory. It indicates to me that maybe SMS has some problems with the way that the program is designed to use memory.

Thanks for the posts. I really appreciate it. I think I'll try 600 dpi for all these photos in this video. If I have to zoom really for in for one particular photo, then I'll use the 1,200 dpi just for that one photo.
IanG wrote on 3/8/2004, 2:56 PM
Rather than rescanning, you could try using smaller copies. Mihov Image Resizer is free, small and runs in batch mode.

Ian G.