Randomly sluggish FCP playback

[mrbrycel]

I have a 2007 Mac Pro, 2 2.66ghz dual core intel xeon, 1GB 667 MHz memory. I'm running FCP 7.

I know I should have more RAM to be editing in FCP, but everything was just fine last week, and my playback was just fine smooth. I'm editing 1080p ProRes HQ. I went back to re-edit, and now when I play the sequence, I get the spinning beach ball 5 seconds in. Everything is rendered, but I still can't play it back smoothly.

What can I do to solve this? I'm not looking to put too much more money into it at this point, but I am willing to spend $50 for 2GB more of RAM if that would help me get this edit done. Would that help?

Thanks ahead for your help!

 

[Asgorath]

1GB 667 MHz memory

What OS are you running? These days, 4GB is probably the bare minimum I'd recommend.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#667-memory

Looks like you can get 4GB for about $100, or 8GB for just under $200. Upgrading your memory is usually the cheapest and best way to upgrade your machine overall, especially if you only have 1GB.

 

[mrbrycel]

Still running 10.5.8, do you think the 2gb would do the job?

 

[derbothaus]

1080p prores and 1GB memory? Wow. You'll be swapping to disk every couple seconds. Especially if you have anything else open. Including Safari or even iCal. Any spare memory you can find will help. 2GB might get the job done. You might get the beachball 25 secs in instead of 5 secs in. You could have 24 cores at 48GHz and this would still be a problem. You are starving that perfectly capable Mac. Feed it. It's dying.

 

[Lampmeister]

Your inconsistent ability to run FCP is probably due to the varying amount of memory being claimed by other applications. If you increase your memory this issue will almost certainly go away...as it is you're running on empty!

 

[mrbrycel]

Ok cool, thanks for the help! I'm always only running FCP by itself with no other apps running. I changed my playback to low quality and that helped pretty significantly, but I think I may still add 2GB more of memory.

What kind of difference do you think I'll see between my current machine and a new base 21.5" imac with 8GB of RAM? I'm not really an editor, just a cinematographer who needs to edit my reel every few months.