Does anyone here keep an eye on the windows Task manager processes that indicate memory and virtual memory usage during a render?
If so, are there levels that indicate or lead to prolems? I'm wondering specifically what would tell me I'm using too much memory or running out of VM.
Page faults are misnamed, or at least misleading. They're not a bad thing...they're normal operation. They're just memory reads. (But if you have a zillion of them, it might be an indication you need more memory...real or virtual.)
Now, the bad one you have to watch out for is an "invalid page fault". That's when the OS goes looking for a chunk of memory and attempts to read one that doesn't exist (or similar actual errors).
On the other hand... an invalid page fault will most likely crash the OS, or at least the app, so you'll definitely notice something is wrong. ;-)
Not a zillion, but as the rendeer completet i'm at 46,842,750 and fluctuating wildly.
Mem usage is down to 775,940 and it's beginnig to look like this one's going to finish. I did it in a newly re-installed 6.0b and it is bigger and with as many nested vegs as the attempts that failed in 6.0d.
What I would do is remove everything from the pagefile drive(s), kill the page file(s), then put it back at the static size. Then put the "real" files back.
Whether this will help or not...I don't know. But it's what I would do. (And DO do occasionally, just for S&G)
There are lots of posts in this forum on this and similar topics.. One thing they'll point out is that Windows' 32 bit operating systems generally limit applications to 2 GB of address space (ram + VM). An app that hits this limit will croak, regardless of how much physical RAM or swap file you have available. There are some workarounds (like a /3GB swtich in boot.ini), but apparently (?) only applications that were compiled with particular flags will make use of the additional address space.
Other forum entries have highlighted that plopping lots of still images at huge resolutions will consume a lot of memory. You can't display all the pixels of a whopping 6 megapixel still to present on a TV screen, so many posters will tell you to downres those files before you put them into Vegas.
These are just highlights. I'd recommend searching this forum for more detail...
You are on the money. In the stills-intensive programs I've done lately, I had to downres stills down to DV/NTSC specs. They looked as good as anything you see on TV, IMHO.
My current difficulty is that 6.0d is choking on an edited-down version, using the same stills that worked fine in 6.0c and, as I just found out, works fine in 6.0b.
I've been talking to Sony Tech Support to resolve this, and they're trying.