Error: Adobe premiere pro is running low on system memory

[Tyson Persall]

Here is my problem. I get this error a lot. Please help me fix it. And here is what Windows Task manager says after the error:

My Computer Specs:
AMD Dual core Opteron 270 (x2)
MB: Tyan Thunder K8WE
Ram: 4gb Corsair ECC
Video card: Nivida Quadro FX 560
Sound card: Audigy 2 zs
Blackmagic Intensity card
RAID: 4x500gb WD AAAKSS SE16 hard drives in RAID 0 = 1.8TB total video storage. ( 200+MBs per second)
System drive: Western digital SE16 250g EIDE hard drive. (dual boot windows XP pro)

[Tyson Persall]

I am wondering if it has to do with my PAGE file being set up wrong? (above image). I have 4GB of Ram installed. However, my computer curently only recongises 2.75gb of Ram according to my system properties: (see image 4 above)

So can anyone can tell me what to do that would keep me from getting this error. I have tried turning off disk indexing but i still get this error. >?

[Mike McCarthy]

Rebooting more frequently, smaller projects, shorter timelines, that is the usual answer. Are you using Matrox? Also, someone claimed they found a background utility that defragmented active memory, and prevented this specific error, but I can't find that post now.

[Joel Davis]

I had the same problem some time ago, I solved it by exporting large chunks of the project and then re-importing them into a new project. This gives you a lot less cuts in the timeline and worked for me.

[Ron Evans]

It's good practice to make sure drives are only doing one thing at a time. You have a few logical drives but how many real drives do you have? The OS and page file are used all the time so you don't want these drives to have video on them at all. So don't put page file with storage or temp files or rendered files. Next its good to keep storage , temp and rendered on separate drives. This separation is as much for seek operation not really for throughput, most modern drives have plenty of throughput if they don't have to keep finding files!!!! Next Win XP is likely a 32bit version so will not recognize 4G RAM it is indicating the max it can recognize and it cannot use anymore. You only need the page file on one of the drives and not the video storage drive. If your logical drives are real drives then put the page file at 2G fixed on the small 40G VOL2 and make sure the other drives say no page file on them. Use your "backup drive" for temp files, set a directory for premiere temp and direct Premiere to use that for audio and video temp operations.
Ron Evans

[Mike McCarthy]

I agree with the comments above to an extent. Definitely get your Pagefile of your Raid, priority one. I personally recommend setting your Adobe temp file directories to your Raid, but if you have drives to spare, set your media cache to a separate spindle. It seems that most of your volumes are on the same 250GB spindle, so I would put the media cache on the raid. If anything goes on a separate disk, it should be the page file, (On the 300G) Preview renders should go to your raid, especially if you are editing uncompressed.

[Giroud Francois]

Tests have shown that XP is running slower with 4gig of ram instead of 2 and that Premiere is not faster with 1, 2 or 4 gig of Ram.
there is a boot option for windows that allows to run with 3 gig of ram, but it does not proof to be usefull and can make your PC unstable, so i do not recommend it.
an XP application can only use 2 gig of ram at once, then it pages the memory on disk, so you better need to take care of having a good, large swap file on a fast disk.
Ideally you can use an i-ram card (a SATA ram drive) to put your swap file on it.
I got 2 gig on my motherboard, 3 gig on my i-ram and never seen any message about memory error in premiere.
if you want to take benefit of lot of ram , try XP 64.

[Roger Averdahl]

Tyson, if you have Premiere Pro CS3:
1. Go to Edit > Preferences > General
2. Change Optimize rendering for from Performance to Memory.

Off topic:
How do you get a total of eight colors on your clips on the Timeline? It looks pretty handy but how do you do it since there are only eight colors aviable and all eight labels cannot be placed in the Timeline, such as Bins?

[Mike McCarthy]

You can label clips any color you want, select a clip on the timeline or in the project panel, and go to Edit->Label->(Select Color) All eight are available.

If you are NOT using extra hardware like Matrox AXIO or AJA Xena, then XP64bit should help you in this regard, provided you have at least 4GB of RAM.

[Roger Averdahl]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarthy

You can label clips any color you want, select a clip on the timeline or in the project panel, and go to Edit->Label->(Select Color) All eight are available.

Yes, but you can only place seven of them on the Timeline, hence my question since Tyson has eight colors on his Timeline. :)

EDIT:
Hum, now i see that he has seven colors...

[Tyson Persall]

To clarify, I only have 2 actual internal drives. The system drive is a 250g that is partitioned 3 times into the 40g System, 40g VOL2, and 160G Backup. This way i have a dual boot of WinXP pro. The 300g is connected by USB.

So I have learned that i should not put my Page file on the RAID. -And you are saying i should (ideally) have storage, temp files, and rendered files ALL on SEPARATE DRIVES? So I would have to have 2 more drives to do that right?

As far as my PAGEFILE... That's the only thing i can fix right now. Ideally if I had another fast drive i would put the page file on it. But my RAID 0 array is 4 disks and they take up all the SATA channels on my MB. The 300g drive is only conected via USB so it would be too slow i would think... Thus, my only option at the moment is to put my Pagefile back on the System drive. ( is this ok? ) My system drive is kind of slow in comparison to the RAID... Its a slower IDE133 drive.

As far as my page file on my Storage drive, I guess I thought this was a good idea since my RAID was hitting around 260mb/s Read rate when it was empty. Of course now that it is 60% full it only hits 150mb/s} Yes, i do some uncompressed work, but this project is very long documentary in DV.

[Tyson Persall]

I think the future solution to this problem is for me to install a RocketRAID SATAII PCI-X card and buy some new drives. It also might help me too if my System drive was a RAPTOR 150g and it was on the SATA channel instead of the IDE133 channel. That way with 4 more SATAII channels i could instal 3 more drives. A system drive for the OS, a Page file drive, render file drive, and then have the 4 Disk RAID array for storage drive. -Whew, I wonder if my Power Supply can even take all that.

[Herman Van Deventer]

Late to the subject :

Please have a look at this tweak list : paragr. 3 memory and paging files.


Link / http://www.videoguys.com/TweaksWINXPVE.html

[Tyson Persall]

After moving my Pagefile to the System drive "160g Backup" i am still getting the same error from Premiere.

[Harm Millaard]

Originally Posted by Tyson Persall

I think the future solution to this problem is for me to install a RocketRAID SATAII PCI-X card and buy some new drives.

I would suggest NOT RocketRaid, since it is a software based Raid controller. Better get a hardware based raid controller from Areca. Much faster and less burden on your system.