ram issue ---what's new ? and what gives?

fultro wrote on 4/2/2006, 8:12 PM
got 2Gigs o RAM and Vegas 6.d
--I play an eight min veg. without Video Preview Monitor open --- ram usage stays close to what the veg. opens with............
- turn on Video Preview Monitor (Alt+F4 ) and the same segment's ram usage continues to climb over the duration of playback to the point where eventually Vegas slows down to the point of uselessness -- closing Vegas and restarting it gives me some relief - I can work for about 20 mins and then i need to restart the Vegas project to get some ram back - looking to go back to 6c don't think I had this prob there

Comments

rmack350 wrote on 4/2/2006, 9:43 PM
I'd look at your ram preview setting. Vegas uses this memory for ram previews but it also uses it to cache frames during normal playback. Vegas will cache more frames if your playback is falling under full framerate.

Unfortunately, If the preview RAM setting is too high Windows will start writing stuff to swap, quite possibly it's writing your preview ram to swap. Whatever it's doing, it causes a performance hit that makes Vegas try to cache more frames, causing more swap activity, causing more caching...

Setting the preview ram a bit lower usually stops this. You'll have to experiment to find a sweet spot.

Rob Mack
fultro wrote on 4/2/2006, 10:46 PM
ok Rob thanks for the feedback - i have tried lowering ram prieview to 600Mgs out of my total 2 gBs o ram
strange thing is - on playback of anything more than a color gradient the ram usage just keeps increasing - no edits involved - new session - nothing other than a veg timeline on playback - it has some crossfades - effects and so on - but I have done way more than this before and have never seen the ram usage just take off into the beyond until i cannot work anymore - I need to try going back to Vegas 6c - to see if my recent upgrade to 6d has something to do with --- do you know how to keep my prefs and toolbar setup the same if I go back to 6c ?

any suggestions - much appreciated David
rmack350 wrote on 4/3/2006, 1:59 PM
I don't really know how to keep the settings intact.

What I'd be watching, along with memory usage, is the size of the page file. If that is also growing then it's fairly telling.

The runaway page file can happen with just plain DV footage on the timeline. All that is required is for Vegas to start your system paging.

600MB doesn't seem too high for Ram Preview when you've got 2GB of ram installed. Perhaps there's something else triggering this like still images or some unusual media type on the timeline.

Just for starters, I'd try setting the RAM preview much lower - in fact, try it out with the default 16MB. If that works then just start working your way back up.

Rob Mack
fultro wrote on 4/3/2006, 6:42 PM
-ok - narrowed this down a bit.....
- as you suggested the ram preview to 16 MB improved things quite a bit....
- problem is greater with better preview quality...
--and I noticed it happens the most where I have uncompressed AVIs - how hard should an uncomp AVI be on a 3GHz P4 HT ?
- with the 16MB cache ram usage goes up to a trim 450 MB with no inc on the PF graph -- but at 600MB cache ram climbs to 1200 and PF climbs to a Gig
---Is there something that can be done system wise perhaps that will improve the perf of that cache ? and how much I can use ?

---something I never quite understood about monitoring swap use - if the system is not paging than shouldn't the PF usage window say " 0 " - for as long as I have ever tried to read it - years - it always reads something 200 or more at least when the system is not paging (no hills or valleys in the graph either)
---also any suggestions on how to set up paging on the system drive after I have allocated 2 to 4 Gigs on a separate drive ? right now I have it set for a fixed 200 MB ? Is it OK to set paging on sys drive to None ? I have heard this can cause probs
fldave wrote on 4/3/2006, 7:28 PM
"Is it OK to set paging on sys drive to None ?"

I read on a MS bulletin that you should at least allocate a small swap drive on your system drive. In case you loose your non-system swap, it's much easier/more reliable for Windows to boot up.

Recommended values for page file is 1.5 times physical ram, so for 2 GB max should be 3GB.

Uncompressed: If vegas is pre-reading (caching) preview frames from the timeline, and it is uncompressed, it may use up more memory in preparing the preview output.

I would not set my RAM setting > 0 or < 128. Search this forum for "render test V6" for info. I either use 0, 128 or if I'm editing and RAM previewing HDV, then 512. There is a problem with 16 and 64.

Dave
fultro wrote on 4/3/2006, 8:37 PM
thanks all for the info - I have spent a lot of time checking in these forums on memory and ram issues - and following a few suggestions I seem to be getting some where - a bit better that is