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(Rendering) error: insufficient memory

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panmat

Technical User
Sep 26, 2002
9
US
I'v been working on a video and I have a lot of pictures that move. Basicly it is just a slide show with each picture moving or zooming slightly. The problem comes when i try to render it. It will only render about 20 to 30 secs before giving me an (error: insufficient memory). I have tried pausing it and de-fraging the ram, but does little if any good. I have 512 MB Ram and I feel I should get more than 20 secs of render time out of it. Any ideas on whats going or sugestions would be greatly apprieciated. Its a big pain to render a 12 min video in 20 sec chunks.
 
Hi panmat

A couple of possibilities.
If you're using a Mac with OS9 or earlier, could be that you need to allocate more memory to AE (select AE from Finder, then Get Info, then Memory from the pull-down menu. 150Mb is probably a working minimum).
If that ain't it, are the pics v. hi-res? If the error message talks about image buffer, that may be the problem.
I've had this happen myself and it's generally ben one of the above, but come back if that doesn't help.
 
Thanks for the reply, I should have be more specific about my computer. Its an IBM and not a Mac so I don't know if i can dedicate memory the same as with a mac. If I can and you know how that would be great to know. The pictures were scaned at 300 dpi so it might be that they are to hi-res. Thanks again for the help.
 
panmat - you cannot specifically allot more memory to a program in win like you can in mac.

What size movie ar you trying to render out? Are you rendering every or every other frame? Do you have a lot of filter effects?
 
Are you using the handles on your image layers? Depending how you've set up your comps:

Use the handles to tell AE that you're finished with the image.

Make sure you're images/layers aren't overly large (if you're doing a lot of cropping, AE doesn't necessarily know that. At some point it will try to process the entire image and possibly cause you to run out of RAM.

As someone mentioned, if you're using a lot of filters, you can get into trouble too. If you're doing a blur on something, for example, consider blurring the image first, then loading *that* image into your comp.

If you're comps are set up correctly, 512meg should be enough to do what you need unless you're working in high-def or you're doing something *really* complex.
 
Thanks for the help diamond and bongo. The movie is 12min long and im rendering every frame and I am not using any filters.

Bongo im not sure what you mean't by "use the handles to tell AE that I'm finished with the image". How do you let AE know you are finished with an image?

Some of the mages are large (well normal size photgraphs)and all the images move on the screen. Most of the images are seen full screen and then i zoom in to certain parts of the photos. So I may be running out of RAM because AE gets bogged down processing the whole photo like you said bongo.

If it's like you say, and my computer should be able to handle it if it is set up right, then it might be time to reformat.
 
If you are using the final movie for anything other than tv you probably don't need to render every frame. (What is your frame rate by the way?)

Also - the max size that you probably want to output, if it's for the web, is probably under 520 x 480. I forgot to ask you at what size you are rendering and what format you are rendering (Quicktime?)

You may want to experiment with differnet forms of compression when you render. Compression isn't always pretty but sometimes it's just a necessary evil.
 
Does seem like AE is having trouble trying to handle too many large images at the same time. Bongo touched on one possible solution - if you can split the movie vertically, ie render out just a few levels on their own, then mix them together in a new Comp or project, that would help, but I know life ain't always that simple!

 
Diamond, I'm rendering it at 640 x 480 and the frame rate is 29.97. I'm outputing it as video for windows (.avi). I output it as that because i knew it would be good quality and I wanted to make sure i could import it into Premiere. I assume I'm rendering every frame, I don't know how to adjust that. Do you adjust that in the render que? Also what compressioni would you reccomend i experiment with?

Ellipsis, do you mean to put several photos, (lets say 5) togather in their on composition, so I'd have several different compositions? I guess I never stated it but I have 130 pictures total! So if i had 26 compositions with 5 photos each you think that would improve render time?

Thanks once again for all the help!
 
What I was getting at was - say your comp has 3 levels, each with a different image, and say layer 1 fades down to reveal layer 2 while layer 3 pans across the whole lot (Ok, it ain't gonna win any oscars), and these are all hi-res images, perhaps the third image is making too many demands of available RAM and causing the error message. So, you turn off the 3rd layer, render layers 1 & 2 as a movie (preferably as a Photoshop image seq - that will allow you to use transparency) which is then imported back into the project. Replace your original layers 1&2 with the movie, switch layer 3 back on, and render again for the finished movie.

Again, if you're using filters like blurs, if you can render that layer on it's own with it's fx, moves, zooms etc. and use the movie in place of the "raw" layer, AE will have less to think about during the final render.

No, it's not going to improve render time, and with a large movie, you would probably need to make several "mini movies", but it will help AE to cope with the amount of information you're giving it.

Hope this helps (and makes sense).
 
If you plan on spending alot of time & effort editing, animation etc. I would suggest upgrading your system. There is nothing more frustrating (other than someone breaking through your firewall)than running out of system resources & wasting time. Unfortunately, unless you are rich & can afford a sun sparc or sgi indigo/indy, then I would upgrade to a dual processor & a 124meg oxygen video card w/win 2k or nt. I'm new to AE as well...but I have been animating for over 4 years...
 
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