512MB Enough?

[ejskater16]

I have 512 MB DDR RAM , and am wondering if this is enough to have MediaStudioPro7 really run smoothly? On the trial version some of the real-time features (previewing in real time...) were pretty choppy and just a bit slow.

is upgrading to more memory really going to make much of a difference?

THANKS!

[htchien]

512MB or higher is better.

However, CPU power is also the issue. What CPU do you use in your system? To preview the video in real-time you will need Intel/AMD 2G or higher.

You can check http://www.ulead.com/msp/sysreq.htm for more details.

Hope this helps.

H.T.

[ejskater16]

i use a "pentium 4, 3Ghz with hyper threading" technology".

[htchien]

Maybe you should check http://www.ulead.com/learning/msp/msp7_06_1.htm and http://www.ulead.com/learning/msp/msp7_07_1.htm .

Hope this helps.

H.T.

[Bandit]

16,

You certainly have the processing power. I upgraded a year ago because of slow and choppy video both pre and post editing. I installed a pentium 4 - 2.8 gb hyper threading processor, and 1 gb of RAM and a ATI Pro 8500 capture card. One or more of these solved my problem. It is possible that your capture card is not sufficent and/or you need more RAM.

Before adding RAM (which is almost always a good thing) check out the specs on your capture card. And by all means check out the URLs that htchien posted for you. good luck

Bandit

[ejskater16]

capture card?? i just use firewire, if that's what you mean. occaisionally i use a usb capture device (ADS DVD XPress) to capture analog video from a VCR or just from a DVD player. is this what you mean?

[Bandit]

EJ,

I did not consider firewire in my reply. I have never used firewire so I plead ignorance. My experience with different capture cards is that the lower end ones cannot keep up with the data transfer and cause a variety of problems eg; choppy video, dropped frames, etc. I'm guessing that even with firewire you would have to have some kind of capture card to convert analog (VCR) signals to digital. Anyway, I personally feel that to do video editing you need a fair amount of RAM and thru my experiences, 1GB is good. Before I upgraded I had 512mg of RAM and I experienced delays in editing and rendering. Sometimes these delays were huge. After adding an aditional 512mg - delays disappeared and rendering times are fast. As for going above 1GB RAM I do not know if you would see a appreciable difference. I do however plan to add another GB of RAM in the near future purely on the chance it will spped up editing.
Sorry I'm so late answering your post.

Bandit

[ejskater16]

...it's no problem. thanks for the reply!

i'm not doing a ton of analog capturing, so for right now the little usb thing i have setup will work.

i can get the video on there fine, without being choppy, but rendering time is proving to be a bit of a hassle for me. it takes so long! i'm considering purchasing another 512 piece of ram... i've talked to a few people about this, they all seem to think it's a good idea, and with your post about how it sped everything up so nicely i think you've got me convinced.

one more thing, though, i'm not sure if i mentioned it before, but prior to using MSpro i used videostudio 8. more than a few times i would get a "ran out of virtual memory" error and the program would close. i tried to find out a way to fix this virtual memory issue, and found a window where i could adjust how much of my C: drive was used for virtual memory. i have 133 GB out of a possible 160 left on the hard drive, so i don't think that space is an issue... and the current virtual memory setting is somewhere around 700 MB.

does virtual memory have anything to do with editing speeds? or is it probably more of a RAM issue? thanks for your advice thus far, bandit and h.t.

[Bandit]

EJ,

Your question went beyond my experiences. Thinking back to the 512mg RAM days, I never got a out of virtual memory message. More RAM may not cure this, then again, I really do not know. I am going to post a question after this reply. Everything has been running great and all of a sudden I have no sound in my edited video. Seems like we run a 10k and get 6 feet from the finish line and trip and fall Good luck

Bandit

[ejskater16]

Haha, yeah, really. Oh well. Computers never seem to work the way they're supposed to, anyway. They can get really frustrating, with so much that can go wrong.