ram usage

[BigBadBob]

I have been editing recorded tv shows for awhile and just got an extra 512mb ram to put my total up to 576mb. I am getting a new D740X next week. I was editing some video and monitoring my memory and it said in WimRam Turbo that there was about 400mb ram free. The memory load was at about 32%. Which means it was only using about 180mb ram while editing. are there any things i can do to Win2000 that will use more ram while editing shows? Also what services do i need running in Win2000 on a home computer? Thanks for any help.

Bob

[damnim]

I've wondered that myself. I have tried various programs to change that but none of them seemed to work for me.

I now have Win XP pro and I noticed that when I put a high memory load on she increases the page file, yet I still have plenty of Physical memory left. I've learned the hardway to let the OS do its thing with memory. I haven't had much luck with it.

I think this memory usage is in the realm of the real pro's

[kinneera]

If you find and download a tool called XSetup XTweak, you can change all kinds of obscure settings in Windows. If I recall correctly, one of them is the option to have Windows fill all available physical RAM before using the pagefile. I've never used it, though, since having no memory free when a new task wants to start can be very detrimental to performance.

Also something to keep in mind - operating systems typically have a priority system wherein the task scheduler evaluates the last time a memory page was used. If it hasn't been accessed in a long time, it will send it to the swap file. This is desirable behaviour, for the reason stated above. If only 32% of your physical RAM is being used, it may just be because a whole bunch of idle tasks have been swapped, which really won't affect performance until one of those tasks is activated again. If your hard disk isn't thrashing from pagefile accesses, you're probably fine. Your primary task probably just simply doesn't need that much memory.

[damnim]

kinneera

Thanks for the input. I never saw anywhere where the process was so clearly defined.

[kinneera]

No problem. Also thought of one more thing - force the page file to a constant size. In Win2K or WinXP, this will be under Performance on the Advanced tab of Computer properties. Just set the max and min to the same value (I recommend a value larger than the amount of physical RAM). This will keep it from resizing uneccesarily, which improves performance and prevents fragmentation.

[damnim]

kinneera

I certainly will give that a try. I usually do a lot of multitasking with programs and they don't use alot of CPU just memory. Even when I am encoding the memory load is at about 25%.

What you are saying about the page file fragmenting I know that to be the truth. It doesn't take long for my drives to fragment. So I know that the page file has got to be fragging.

[BigBadBob]

i tried some diffent settings in X-Setup and the encoding was only taking half as long to recoed the edited file ( In Womble ). The only problem is when i scheduled a recording today it locked the computer up and said that it had dropped 768000% frames. I had to set the settings back to normal so it would record right. Still trying different combos of settings to see if i can get the best of both. wil let you know.


Bob