Virtual Memory

MiniCooper wrote on 8/5/2003, 8:28 AM
Anybody having problems with DVDA eating up all of your virtual memory when you open up a .dar file of substantial size? I'm working on a DVD (video & audio & still photos) which is now about 1.3 Gig and no matter how I change the paging file (vitual memory) I get a message that windows XP is increasing my vitual memory to accommodate DVDA but now my system crawls to state of "slow motion"!. I'm running Windows XP Pro 512 Ram which I can't increase because thats the mobo limit. Pent III at 933 mhz, two hard drives one 40 one 80 at 7200. Maybe it's time for a new system but I think that may not help the virtual memory problem?????? I have opened 1 gig plus .avi files in Vegas without a problem. Maybe I should ask this question on another forum but I want to know if other DVDA users are experiencing this problem and if it's specific to DVDA.

Comments

kameronj wrote on 8/5/2003, 7:43 PM
The very first car I ever purchased was a MiniCooper!! I loved that little car....until I blew the engine trying to race a BMW!! Silly me!

Anyway - time to focus on your question.

I haven't had an issue with DVDA eating up virtual memory. But then again, I'm running a PIV somewhere in the GHZ range.

You mention you have two HDs (a 40 and an 80). On which of these two drives is your VM sitting? It is always best to let it reside on the faster of drives with the most memory available. So...if you have more space on the 80...try switching it to the 80.

A good defrag and system clean up is always worth it too!!

Ciao
BillyBoy wrote on 8/5/2003, 10:23 PM
Hmm... think you got a couple issues going there. Just being in a playful mood I started a new DVD project and dropped almost 10 GB's worth of stuff in the work space just to see what would happen and still my dar file was much, much smaller than yours. About 300K.

Windows likes to have room to work so it will expand the paging file if you start to make big demands on your RAM.

Since you have XP, let it help you. Bring up Task Manager (Ctrl/Alt/Delete) Click on the performance tab. See how Windows is using memory. Pay particular attention to the numbers (they change in real time) under Commit Charge and Physical Memory as you use various applications. Also check under the Processes tab.

You may try deleting you present paging file, boot back up with none, then create a new one. Could be some bad file structure and you want to flush it out and you can't to you kill the present paging file. In the earlier versions of Windows on shut down it would automatically kill the Swap File at every shut down and make a new one at each boot. XP keeps the paging file and only God knows what scraps of files have been hanging around probably since you first Windows boot after you installed it. If you have Partition Magic or some other on the fly repartition tool you may want to consider setting aside a volume of about 1 to 1.5 GB and give that volume exclusively to your paging file. I've been doing that for a long time. Windows seems to run better that way.
MiniCooper wrote on 8/19/2003, 3:18 PM
I thank kameronj and BillyBoy and I apologize for the delay in responding to their help. I have tried everything suggested and also some other things but I still had the same problem. A buddy of mine, who also has DVDA, loaded the same slideshow of my photos in DVDA on his computer and guess what? He had the same problem, running out of virtual memory(paging file). What I did to temporarily solve the problem was to convert all of the photos from tiff to jpg and now all seems to be fine when opening the .dar file to futher author the project. Although I solved the problem I still wonder why any size and type of files(within limits of DVDA) would cause loss of all virtual memory? I am continuing to author this project and I will bring in a lot more media. I'll keep you posted as to what happens. Thanks again.
pete_h wrote on 8/19/2003, 4:49 PM
For what it's worth, on my Sony CD-300, Tiff files are about 5 or 6 times the size of Jpegs @ 3.3 megapixels.

Just a thought.....