Hi Jon,
What does Activity Monitor show during the render when you get to Big Pete? If your memory usage is suddenly skyrocketing and the system starts swapping out to hard disk, you might have a strange RAM problem after all.
I recently made this suggestion in a similar thread:
There's a secret menu in the preferences where you can disable the layer cache and set AE to purge frames during make movie —- though this should be a last resort. Hold down the Shift key, and keep it down. Click After Effects > Preferences > General. Continue to hold the Shift key, and click on the list of preferences. You should see a "Secret" item where you can make these changes.
If your renders were working perfectly, you would see a big performance hit for mucking with these settings; however, since they are not, it may help. Don't forget to reset them for your next project.
Walter Soyka, Principal
Keen Live, Inc.
Presentation, Motion Graphics & Widescreen Design
RenderBreak: A Blog on Innovation in Production
