garageCube

[rogierbrood]

Hi there, I actually posted this problem a year ago, but I never got it solved.
I just reinstalled OSX 10.6 on my macbook pro, and this time I really want to solve this.

my problem is that whenever modul8 uses more than 1.4 GB of my RAM memory, it starts to release clips from the memory, and shows the red dots insides the thumbnails of the clip.

last time I posted this problem I've learned that Modul8 limits its use of memory to 70%
in my case this is 70% of 4GB = 2.8 GB.
So when you exceed this limit, modul8 starts to release clips.

question remains: why is my system releasing the clips already at a limit of 1.4 GB?
I've got no other programs running, my HD is empty, could it be that Modul8 only sees the half of 4 GB installed memory?
because of this, most of the time, more than half of my clips are 'red dotted', and don't trigger as fast as I would want to.

I used to run modul8 on an older macbook pro, which had 3GB memory, and I can't remember having this problem.

does anybody have experience with this?

thanks in advance,

Rogier

(macbook is a 2.8Ghz intel core 2 duo, 4 gb 1067 Mhz ddr3 )

[ilan]

Thanks to Apple... 10.6 uses more memory then 10.5. As of 10.6 Modul8 has less memory because the system takes up more of it. People with laptops that have 8 gigs have a little more room to work with.

[rogierbrood]

I installed 10.5, and indeed it helps a little bit, but I guess it's just enough.
in 10.5 I can use 1.8 GB of the ram installed, instead of 1.4 GB in 10.6
It's still not the 2.8 GB I would like to use, but ok.
Not really happy with downgrading my OS, but if this is the best way, I'll do it.

thanks!

[tdog]

Thanks to Apple... 10.6 uses more memory then 10.5. As of 10.6 Modul8 has less memory because the system takes up more of it. People with laptops that have 8 gigs have a little more room to work with.

it's true 10.6 uses more memory than previous releases, however it doesn't use 30% !
so, if i have 4Gb memory, os uses less than 30% - so why does M8 not allow the 70%, which would be 2.8GB

tdog

[Jeremy Cooper]

Hey there, I am having the same problem as rogierbrood, and I can say it has nothing to do with the OS taking up too much memory.

I have 16gbs in my Macbook pro, but whenever Modul8 gets to about 1.4gbs in Activity Monitor it starts unloading clips (red dot) leaving nearly ALL of my medias unloaded from RAM.

I have experimented with changing the memory options in the Preferences menu to no avail.

If someone could lend their experience/knowledge on this I would really appreciate it, I've got a big show coming up that I bought this laptop for and I'm really down that I'm not able to utilize all the RAM I got for it.

Much hope for a solution to this problem and thank you so much for reading.

[ilan]

Hello Jeremy,

I received your private message, but the sake of transparency I will respond here instead.

Firstly, I am not a developer. I am responsible for communications (support, news feeds, between other entities etc) and have been so for the past 7 years. But I am in touch with the programmers on a weekly basis and understand much about how the program functions in terms of overall structure in how it manages the resources of a computer.

It is true about how much memory (RAM) Modul8 uses, but this does not mean that it is at cost to performance in terms of what the current crop of computers is capable of. For the moment RAM is simply not the key to running clips that will not fit in memory. Keep in my mind that Modul8 is not just running your clips it has to use the 4 gigabytes of memory to manage the software itself. So the key to high performances hinges on the following:

- How much VRAM you have on your video card(s)
- The speed of your hard drive(s)

Any clip that is large than say 500 megabytes will by default be set to 'Direct to disk.' The media is streamed from the hard disk and data that is no longer displayed will be removed from memory. Therefore it is not advisable to 'scratch' large clips, and generally most people don't as these kinds of things fall into the category of serving media where there is no need to jump around the timeline of the clip. So if you are just playing the clip in a linear fashion there should be no problem, providing that you have very fast hard drives (SSD drives being optimal) and a decent amount of VRAM. In my experience running HD size clips on a laptop with 1 GB of VRAM works fine.

If you plan on running multiple HD streams simultaneously you will definitely need a Mac Pro with video cards that have a lot of VRAM and internal SSD drives. Modul8 will scale to these computers and perform as best as it can. In fact, Mac hardware is always somewhat behind the cutting edge. I know several of our customers who run Modul8 on a Hackintosh where the PC compatible hardware performs better and faster than anything that Apple has on offer at any given time.

Just a note about my own experience with VRAM, my last laptop had 512 megabytes of VRAM. About a year ago I was working on a theater production (I do projects on the side so I am in the field working with the software in real world conditions) and I was trying to run 1024 x 720 long playing sized clips on it. The actual production had a 17" MBP with 1 gigabyte of VRAM. The performance difference between the two was huge with the 17" running the clip very smoothly.

I am not at liberty to discuss our roadmap for future releases. Sorry about that.

[Jeremy Cooper]

Thank you for your reply, it's too bad that I don't have the option to load these clips to RAM if I should choose to, as it would be lovely for them all to trigger quickly. Also it is upsetting that all the extra RAM I have has no use inside of Modul8.

Thank you so much for your reply though.

[ilan]

If you have SSD and VRAM it's the same thing as RAM given the high performance of the SSD drives and current mainboard bus speeds. Loading into RAM would only add an extra stress to process...

Hardisk >> RAM >> VRAM

as opposed to:

SSD >> VRAM

So there is no advantage and Modul8 does a very find job managing the memory.

[Jeremy Cooper]

My desire is to keep my clips preloaded, instead they all have red dots on them and it takes time for them to start playing when I click them, as opposed to when there is no red dot they play instantly after clicking them.

When I open my project I notice Modul8 starting from the beginning and preloading clips, at a certain point (around 1.4gbs memory usage on Activity Monitor), something strange happens and all of the clips get unloaded.

I want my clips to be preloaded so they play instantly when I click them. How do I keep them preloaded? Why does Modul8 unload them after already doing the work of preloading them in a compressed format onto the RAM?

[ilan]

How big are your clips?

[Jeremy Cooper]

They vary in size, between a few megabytes to around 500mbs.

[ilan]

If they are all around 500 mb then some of them have to be unloaded from memory. If the clips were smaller then they could all remain in memory. If running such large clips responsively is important to you then you are best served by getting an SSD drive installed, if you don't already have one. As indicated in my earlier post on this thread, this method is as efficient (if not more so) then having the clips loaded into RAM.

[Jeremy Cooper]

This is not answering my question so far. I have a solid state harddrive, it does NOT load clips faster than when they are loaded onto RAM, I want to utilize the RAM I have to preload clips but there is an apparent upper limit (of 1.4gbs).

Why is there an upper limit?
How can I remove it? What are workarounds?
How do I prevent Modul8 from unloading clips after they have already been preloaded to RAM?

If you cannot answer these questions do you think you could ask one of the developers who could?

Thank you in advance,

Jeremy Cooper, Modul8 user, garagecube customer.

[david]

Hello Jeremy,

Why is there an upper limit?
How can I remove it? What are workarounds?
How do I prevent Modul8 from unloading clips after they have already been preloaded to RAM?

Modul8 is a 32 bit application (due to QuickTime limitations) so it cannot use more than 4GB of RAM.

How do you look at the memory used by Modul8 ?

In Activity Monitor, there is Real Memory and Virtual Memory. The 4GB limit is on virtual memory and virtual memory is always >= to real memory because it also includes things allocated by the process but not currently used.

If Modul8 is releasing media at 1.4GB of virtual memory, you could increase this limit in the Preferences | Medias | Start releasing media ...
However, setting this percentage too high could crash Modul8 as OSX frameworks (OpenGL, CoreFilters, ...) will not have enough memory left to allocate their stuff.

Lastly, if your Mac have lots of RAM you could create a RamDisk and put (a copy of) your media on it.

Regards

[Jeremy Cooper]

Thank you so much for your reply, David.

Yes you are right, I was looking at "Real memory usage" instead of "Virtual memory usage". Thank you for clearing this up for me, this answers my questions and provides me a workaround for faster clip response.

Much appreciated and continue your hard and excellent work!

-Jeremy Cooper