Scott M. Posted January 23, 2003 Share Posted January 23, 2003 I'm consistently getting a message from Windows 2000 during a QuickTime movie render. It says "Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size....blah blah blah" At this point the hard disk light shows continuous activity, but the movie file stops growing and the machine basically hangs. Setup: VW 9.5.2, Latest QuickTime with all updates, Windows 2000 with all updates Any thoughts? Much thanks, Scott. Quote Link to comment
Julien Posted January 23, 2003 Share Posted January 23, 2003 How many MB of Ram have you and how longer is the animation ? Julien Daulte - Switzerland Quote Link to comment
Scott M. Posted January 24, 2003 Author Share Posted January 24, 2003 Hi Julien. I've tried a simple orbit movie with about 200 frames and a flythrough movie with about 1200 frames. Both crash after about 40 frames are written. The computer is a Dell Latitude C810 notebook, Pentium 3 spinning at 1133mhz with 256 meg of RAM. Virtual memory is set to minimum of 382mb (recommended) and maximum of 1028mb. Here are some more details that I watched in the Task Manager: - While the animation is building, physical memory available cycles up and down from around 4000K to 15000K. I suspect that this is the result of frames being rendered, written to the drive, and then memory is reclaimed. - Up until the crash, CPU usage is almost always 100%. - Memory usage starts at around 300,000K (out of 628640K) and steadily climbs upward. - The crash consistently occurs when approximately 3.5 meg of movie has been written to the drive. Thanks for your help. Scott. PS: I'm currently experimenting with setting the minimum virtual memory higher. Will report back ASAP. Quote Link to comment
Scott M. Posted January 24, 2003 Author Share Posted January 24, 2003 Ok... so here are the latest symptoms to report with this nagging problem: I tried forcing the OS to use 1028meg of virtual memory in an effort to solve the memory complaints and crashing. To a certain extent this worked; it no longer crashes. However, it seems to die a slow death: as the frames are written to the drive, the CPU usage declines, the System Idle Process rises (because VW is no longer doing anything), and the hard disk is continuously active (strange?). FWIW, it got to about frame 60 of a 1200 frame movie before CPU usage declined to about 3%. Thanks for any tips. Scott. Quote Link to comment
Julien Posted January 24, 2003 Share Posted January 24, 2003 Dear Scott M. I had in the past same problems (on VW 8.x). Just a little problem, I work on Mac, but... Normally on mac (CLASSIC) I don't work with virtual memory (I know that's little bit dif. on Win). When I started to do some animation with VW I increase my RAM up to 512 (I think it's a good minum for good working) and a free HD (firewire) of 60 GB. More real ram you have better is for CGA. Some of animations that I created in VW the need up to 8 hours to be finished. Be patient! My computer (old G4) worflow was really slow dependig the kind of 3D obj. or 3D definition I used (LOW, MID, ...) on my drawing, and the kind of view that I programmed on the anim. If you want to continue to prepare some animations for your client be sure to organaise your work and star to render your animation by night, so on mornig you got it! Try all the times first a small anim (like 100/200 frames) with different parameters on your VW prefs and doc 3D prefs. And try to calculate the time you will need to complete all your anim. (Like me I'm a landscape arch. I got a lot of trees on my anim). A good (personal) tip: You can prepare your animation in small parts. For ex.: your animation of 1200 frms. -> create 4 anim of 300 frms and make your "montage" in Quick Time (Pro is needed) with a simple copy and past and saving like a self-cont. movies. For me it was a great solution. VW it's great to prepare son basic anim and a super&perfect CAD drawing and 3D modeller. I can't work with other application. Animation and movies render on VW, well it's pretty good, but not the best (personal opinion)... Other ways: I realise that animation was a good method to sell my projects so, after I decided to change applications for preparing movies, flythough and other CGA using low-cost applications like Bryce or Carrara. Using dxf export (and import in other application) + a good organisation with layers in VW you can easely texturizing your architecure after in other app. and preparing great movies with sky and ambient light an add a lot of trees. With Bryce you can use all computer in your office to complete you animation if they are connected, that great. But the job is always time consuming. If you want prepare professional anim you'll need some app. like Cinema 4D, Maya or LightWave.... This is another story... So, be patient, test before on small anim. project and do the final "monatge" with Quick Time of your part of animations. Good luck for the future. And remember computers need your comprehension! I hope that can help you Sincerly Julien Daulte - Switzerland Quote Link to comment
Scott M. Posted January 25, 2003 Author Share Posted January 25, 2003 Thanks. I'll try it in sections. Scott. Quote Link to comment
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