Image Buffer Error in Leopard
by Eric Fitzgerald
on
Aug 15, 2008 at 4:58:04 pm
Hello all;
I just upgraded to a Mac Pro and Leopard and now my film sized comps are giving me an "Unable to create image buffer" error dialogue. The machine has 8 gb of RAM - more than my old G5s that used to handle this stuff without a problem. What am I doing wrong?
Re: Image Buffer Error in Leopard by Kevin Camp on Aug 15, 2008 at 5:42:33 pm
what are your current system specs?
if you have an 8-core mac with 8gb of ram and multiprocessing enabled, you may actually have less ram available for each processor than you did with a g5 and ae7... if all 8 cores are being used, 8 gigs or ram will only give 1gb per core. in addition, that 1gb per core cannot be used by ae for the image buffer, it is strictly for ram cache, so you ram that is available of image buffering may be quite small...
there are a few things you might try:
disable multiprocessing -- that will free up a lot of ram for image buffer, but of course that may mean significantly longer render times.
or, reduce the max ram cache size -- the default is 60%, try cutting down to 30-40%. this will allow multiprocessing but create more space for the image buffer. you may get somewhat decreased performance due to starving the cores from ram, but if it actually finishes the render that's better than nothing.
or, use the preference hack to limit the number of cores available to ae, and thus the ram cache required to render. here's the hack:
Quit After Effects.
Open the After Effects text preferences file, Adobe After Effects 8.0 Prefs.txt, located in the following folder:
Mac OS: Users//Library/Preferences/Adobe/After Effects/8.0
Windows XP: C:Documents and SettingsApplication DataAdobeAfter Effects8.0
Windows Vista: C:UsersAppDataRoamingAdobeAfter Effects8.0
Find the ['MP'] section.
Change the "MaxNumberOfProcesses" value to "4". -- you can vary this setting, you just want it to be less than the number of corse that you have.
Re: Image Buffer Error in Leopard by Eric Fitzgerald on Aug 15, 2008 at 6:05:39 pm
Thanks for the response, Kevin. The machine is a 8 core 3ghz Mac Pro. Wow, less available RAM per core?! That sucks. I am also having problems with the Mac detecting my Dell display, everytime I restart the machine it comes up with a wanky aspect ratio - all stretched. If I go into the display control panel and hit detect display it resets the pixel counts to a different setting that is 1:1. Annoying to do *every* time I reboot. I don't think this problem is related but i don't know
Sounds like the real solution is more RAM. I will try what you suggested to get this project done. Thanks again,
Re: Image Buffer Error in Leopard by Kevin Camp on Aug 15, 2008 at 6:37:29 pm
[Eric Fitzgerald]"Sounds like the real solution is more RAM"
yep, adobe has stated that 2gb per core is optimal and has recommended the preference hack to limit the number of cores to that ratio if you are experiencing performance issues on 8-core machines.
as far as the display issue, you might try repairing permissions with disk utilities (applications>utilities). some times permissions get screwy and it can effect preference files. you might also double check that the universal access system pref (apple>systems preferences) has zoom disabled. otherwise keyboard shortcuts can accidentally enable a zoom.... a few weeks ago that had been an issue for one poster with the enhance contrast 'feature.' he had been trying to fix an issue where he had to unplug a display after every boot to get the color to look correct. it turned out that the keyboard short cut had been hit and became the default view setting every time he booted....
