FCPX 10.1 not utilising all my RAM

Hi,

First time poster, full-time idiot.

Bit a conundrum. I'm running an old Mac Pro 3.1 with an ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card with 18 Gig of RAM and FCPX 10.1 doesn't seem to be using as much RAM as I'd like it to (most people seem to have the opposite problem!). I've done a lot of trawling of the net and seen a few people with the same problem, but no-one seems to be able to get to the bottom of it. I've checked my RAM and thats ok. I downloaded an app called free memory pro and even when I'm pushing FCPX, its still leaving a good 9-10 Gig of RAM doing nothing. As sense demands, I don't have any programs running when using FCPX - there doesn't seem to be any background stuff going on either when checked using activity monitor. I'm at something of a loss to explain it. Any help gratefully received!

An app won't use up all of your RAM just to do so. What size are the databases of your Events and Projects? How complex & long, or how simple & short are the timeilnes you're working on? How large or small are your Libraries? It will only use the RAM it needs, and not everyone will see the same amount of RAM being used.

Ahhh thanks, that makes it clearer. I'm not doing massive projects, but I've procured some work for an education provider and they want some fairly lengthy videos - thus far, about 6 one hour pieces followed by another 18, with possibility of more after that and just hope my system can take it! I'll have to break them up into smaller manageable pieces. If they provide masses of work I'll dump the 3.1 and get a new all singing-all dancing Mac Pro. Then I'll ask my wife and she'll say no. Many thanks for clarifying

I had the same rig you did, same GPU, used 4TB internal drives. I did rather large projects just fine. Just think out your media management well before hand.

If each video will share clips, make one Library, an Event for each video. IF they're not sharing clips, make separate Libraries. Put them all in a folder together for this client.

I think you'll get a lot more mileage out of what you have now. Also consider putting in a second 5870, and FCP X 10.1 will take advantage of both GPUs. That will speed you up more than anything else.

Thanks for that - very helpful

I've just completed my first batch of filming and so will soon be heading into the land of swearing at monitors and kicking inanimate objects (all the stuff the client doesn't see!). I'm making my first proper foray into green screen and thank god for the FCPX keyer because its making it an absolute breeze

Just as an addendum and to add to my complete confusion, Just shoved a 20 minute .mov file into fcpx (part of my filming) and the result was a ridiculous wait for it to render (with background rendering turned off, the thing barely runs - chunter chunter etc). So, for a giggle, I put the same .mov into Premiere CS6. Ran like a dream, even without rendering. Annoying, as I like FCPX and I can't for the life of me fathom out why its running so slowly.

What codec is the .mov using? What you're seeing is absolutely not normal behaviour - most media (even compressed media) should play smoothly on your system.

Think I've sorted the problem. I simply reformatted the mac and now it runs like a dream. I think the problem was having about 30,000 plugins installed in FCPX - thats my fault for being greedy! I now just install what I need on a project for project basis, then delete plugins - seems to be working!