DVD burning eats RAM?

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DVD burning eats RAM?

Hi there,

I have a Powermac G5 Dual 2.0Ghz with 2.5GB of Ram. I am using the current DVD burner that came internally with the Mac (Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-109). I need to burn alot of DVD's with a capacity of 4.22GB. Now the problem is that I can only burn ONE at a time cause it's eating all my memory. Burning a second disc without restarting leads to a burned disc which dosn't stop writing the lead out so I am forced to shut down the system.

I have tried this with the latest Toast Burning software and with Apple's own burn features. Same effect. I also bought a new burner to see if that makes a difference but it dosn't. I just can't burn nothing without the system eating up my ram and restarting the computer. This is VERY frustrating I have to say and I don't know what else to do. Any advise?

Thomas

G5 Dual 2.0 - 2.5GB Ram, Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Posted on Mar 15, 2006 10:30 AM

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Answer 1

Thomas P Author

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Mar 15, 2006 2:42 PM in response to Thomas P

Well nobody here with the same problem? I just checked again with a different software (NTI Dragon Burn) and the same issue accours. Eating up the ram and dosn't give it free anymore. I have the feeling that this is a problem related to OS X and not to any burning software out there.

Thomas

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Answer 2

Thomas P Author

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Mar 15, 2006 3:32 PM in response to Thomas P

Nobody!?

Thomas

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Answer 3

kirbo

Level 1

80 points

Mar 15, 2006 4:07 PM in response to Thomas P

if i understand you can burn one properly. then have to restart in order to beable to finalize the second burn?
seems odd.
If in activity monitor it is completely using all you got then i think its not right and well basically i don't know what to say other than you have a nice setup and i have a Powerbook with 1gb and it doesnt happen with popcorn so...
also i am writing because well.. you didn't get any responses yet .
I am pretty sure that they write into your ram cache and perhaps some settings or saying its full uh i don't know. Good luck.

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Answer 4

Thomas P Author

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Mar 17, 2006 6:45 AM in response to kirbo

Hi Kirbo,

Yes it is indeed weird. I tried different burners and different software but it all dosn't matter. Fact is that I do not have any RAM left after one is burned. I am thinking that this has to do with the OS and nothing with the burn software or the burner. Maybe some more people should actually check the RAM usage during burn sessions.

Thomas

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Answer 5

Cohi

Level 1

139 points

Mar 17, 2006 7:15 AM in response to Thomas P

Never had any problems on any of my boxes, and none of them has 2.5 GB (however I don't burn DVDs very often).

What I could help you with is to find out more precisely what's going on with your RAM/machine; my first suggestion would be to fire up a Terminal and use commands like top, vm_stat, vmmap and dmesg to get more information.

I can give you some more help if you haven't ever used the Terminal before.

Quad G5 / Mini G4 / PB15 G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

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Answer 6

Mar 17, 2006 7:34 AM in response to Thomas P

I don't think ram has anything to do with your problem.

You are not providing much information. First, what kind of files are you saving? Is it a movie project, a group of text files or what? What application are you using to create the files? Do you get any kind of error message? If you do what does it say?

What makes you think that the first burn it is "eating" all your memory? What does that mean? What tests did you run to make that determination? Just because the system is using the available RAM doesn't mean that it is still not available for use. The system takes care of managing ram. What aboout hard drive space. How much free space is on your drive AFTER you make the first burn? Exactly what step by step procedure are you doing to create another DVD after the first burn?

Anyway I think you get the idea that you are simply not supplying anyone with enough information to really help. Help us out and we may be able to help you out!!

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Answer 7

Thomas P Author

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Mar 17, 2006 10:38 AM in response to Al Van Malsen

Hi Al,

Well I didn't know that it matters what I am burning but alright. I am burning PDF's and text files plus movies and demo software on a DVD (4.22GB all together).

I do not get any error messages but I am looking at the RAM usage during the burn sessions (a widget) and you can clearly see that the RAM is beeing reduced from 2GB to 30MB. Now the thing is that after burning and even after closing down the burn software and by checking the ram usage it still stays down at 30MB. Why dosn't it simply go back to 2GB (2.5GB installed and 0.5 are taken by OSX) once I've quite the application? I do use 3D Software on a regular basis which is known for beeing a RAM eater (the more the better) but after closing down the 3d application for instance I do get my memory back (frees up).

The thing is that the mac drastically slows down because of this (not giving the RAM free after quitting the application - no matter what kind of burn software I am using).

I do have a 160GB HD and I have 100GB left at the moment. I do not know how much HD space it's taking to burn a DVD.

Thomas

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Answer 8

Cohi

Level 1

139 points

Mar 17, 2006 10:55 AM in response to Thomas P

On a Unix machine it is nearly impossible for RAM to not be given back when an application quits.

And a widget that shows free RAM most likely does not show the whole truth, what you are probably seeing is that all RAM is used by the buffer cache, and the slow-down might simply be due to other applications/data being temporarily paged out in some form; does the slow-down persist or go away after a few minutes?

We really need more precise information. Could you start a Terminal, type the following commands just after burning a DVD, once before and once after quitting the burning application, and report back the output?

ipcs
top -l 1 -o rsize
vm_stat

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Answer 9

Thomas P Author

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Mar 17, 2006 11:20 AM in response to Cohi

Hi there Cohi,

Here are the stats....

Before opening the burn software or any other software:

Processes: 50 total, 2 running, 48 sleeping... 158 threads 14:09:05
Load Avg: 0.03, 0.04, 0.01 CPU usage: 22.2% user, 55.6% sys, 22.2% idle
SharedLibs: num = 141, resident = 30.7M code, 3.54M data, 7.73M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 4513, resident = 54.6M + 8.00M private, 58.4M shared
PhysMem: 121M wired, 74.3M active, 108M inactive, 303M used, 2.20G free
VM: 5.02G + 93.5M 13396(0) pageins, 0(0) pageouts

During Burn session

Processes: 55 total, 2 running, 2 stuck, 51 sleeping... 177 threads 14:16:25
Load Avg: 0.53, 0.30, 0.14 CPU usage: 35.7% user, 42.9% sys, 21.4% idle
SharedLibs: num = 158, resident = 26.3M code, 2.30M data, 4.70M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 6104, resident = 97.5M + 10.0M private, 45.5M shared
PhysMem: 128M wired, 184M active, 2.17G inactive, 2.48G used, 25.4M free
VM: 6.20G + 102M 16760(0) pageins, 523(0) pageouts

After quitting the burn application

Processes: 54 total, 2 running, 52 sleeping... 169 threads 14:17:11
Load Avg: 0.25, 0.26, 0.13 CPU usage: 30.0% user, 30.0% sys, 40.0% idle
SharedLibs: num = 158, resident = 26.9M code, 2.37M data, 4.73M LinkEdit
MemRegions: num = 5413, resident = 64.2M + 9.59M private, 37.8M shared
PhysMem: 128M wired, 148M active, 2.17G inactive, 2.44G used, 64.1M free
VM: 5.87G + 102M 17037(0) pageins, 523(0) pageouts

G5 Dual 2.0 - 2.5GB Ram Mac OS X (10.4.5)

The Mac is acting very slow after the burn progress as mentioned before.

Thomas

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Answer 10

Cohi

Level 1

139 points

Mar 17, 2006 11:39 AM in response to Thomas P

This part looks fine, note that you have 2.17G "inactive", memory that contains data but can be used any time an application needs it...

Does the "very slow" get better over time?

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