Motion 5 - I have 12gb of ram so why are you so slow?

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Motion 5 - I have 12gb of ram so why are you so slow?

Been using motion 4 a ton at the office and it has been slowing down my computer to a crawl and I am not sure why:

1. I have a pretty new mac with 12gb of RAM

2. Even though I constantly need to jump into Bridge and Photoshop, I bite the bullet and shut them down to appease the computer gods. Still no luck.

Here are my other stats:

OS X: Version 10.8.2

Proc: 3.4 GHz i7

Mem: 12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3

Yeah, so should I be looking into nuclear power supply to get this program running correctly or ***?

OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Jan 28, 2013 4:56 PM

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Answer 1

Studio X

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Jan 28, 2013 5:41 PM in response to DiSantiV

Motion is very GPU intensive. If your video card can't do heavy lifting, things are going to be slow.

x

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Answer 2

DiSantiV Author

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Jan 28, 2013 5:43 PM in response to Studio X

Thanks for the help, I'll look into that asap.

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Answer 3

Jan 28, 2013 5:59 PM in response to DiSantiV

I made a SSD drive as my boot drive. It made a significant improvment. Also make sure you have a good video card.

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Answer 4

DiSantiV Author

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Jan 29, 2013 1:21 AM in response to Dirk_Williams

I am going to look into the video card when I get back to the office tomorrow. When I last checked, you cannot upgrade video cards on an imac because they are apart of the logic board, so I am hoping it is another issue.

The SSD solution sounds interesting. If it comes to it, I'll give it a shot.

A thought occured to me, I have a secondary monitor hooked up to my station. It's an older model Mitsubishi (and I mean old) that I've kept as a spare for a while now. I can tell the Mac does not like it one bit and it's resolution is ****. Could the inferioir monitor be draining the power of my graphic card? I only use it for extra desktop and webbrowsing space while I work on the main monitor. In fact, I slid Photoshop off to the side for a moment and the monitor just about exploded. I'll try unplugging it and see if it anything changes.

Other than that it sounds like I'm getting bumped up to 16gb of ram no matter what so hopefully that helps a little too. Not that 12 shouldn't be more than enough, but I won't complain.

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Answer 5

Jan 29, 2013 5:32 AM in response to DiSantiV

Your 2nd monitor is cutting the memory of the graphics card in half. So I would unplug it and see if there is any improvement.

12 to 16GB of ram is not a real big jump. But it should help a little bit.

Every little bit here and there does add up!

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Answer 6

DiSantiV Author

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Jan 29, 2013 11:10 AM in response to Dirk_Williams

CONFIRMED - It was the second monitor that was dragging everything down. As soon as I unplugged it, Motion ran at full speed and my computer seemed to be back to normal. Oh well, guess I'll donate the spare monitor.

Thanks for you help everyone.

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Answer 7

Jan 29, 2013 1:26 PM in response to DiSantiV

I don't know about older Macs... But on the mid-2001 i7 iMacs having more than one monitors hooked up won't affect the GPU. I have three monitors hooked up with no hit on the GPU.

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Answer 8

DiSantiV Author

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Jan 29, 2013 1:47 PM in response to David M Brewer

My machine is a 27" Mid-2011 iMac

Graphics card info: AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024 MB

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Answer 9

Jan 29, 2013 1:57 PM in response to DiSantiV

I have the 2 gig card.... Your graphic card is ok.

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Answer 10

DiSantiV Author

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Jan 29, 2013 2:06 PM in response to David M Brewer

That's what I had assumed and hence why I was confsued when it was lagging.

My best guess is that because the additional monitor I was using was a bit outdated, it caused issues with the graphics card. I am going to test out a newer monitor later on to see if the updated tech partners better with the card.

My co-worker has a Cintiq attached to his machine and he has no issues with slow speeds. He's also working with about half the memory.

Like I said, with no secondary monitor attached the computer is very quick. I'll post what happens when I try out a more up to day additional monitor.

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Answer 11

Jan 29, 2013 5:07 PM in response to DiSantiV

It could be your second display.

I did a test and added 5 particles playing at the same time. With three displays on and with only the iMac display on. No slow down... I put another 5 particles.... Slow down but not much.

I distributed all 10 particles throughout the timeline, no slow down with one display or three displays.

You have to remember when you add more (for example particles). You will always have a slowdown. Motion is like Flash. Motion has to display objects on the screen at retime, on the fly. For a particles it has to compute the object on the fly. (Flash has to do this inside a browser.)

One last thing... make sure you have fixed resolution turn on for each layer group. This will make sure That each image... video... object and particle doesn't display beyond the bounding video box within Motion. If not set Motion still has to computer for these objects beyond the video bounding box.

Off...

On...

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Answer 12

DiSantiV Author

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Jan 29, 2013 5:11 PM in response to David M Brewer

Lag time was significant for everything from motion boot up (3-4 mins) to basic x & y changes. It would constanly freeze up and be a pain in the ***.

After the disconnection of the second monitor, motion started up so fast I didn't even see the title screen.

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Answer 13

Jan 29, 2013 5:16 PM in response to DiSantiV

DiSantiV wrote:

Lag time was significant for everything from motion boot up (3-4 mins) to basic x & y changes. It would constanly freeze up and be a pain in the ***.

After the disconnection of the second monitor, motion started up so fast I didn't even see the title screen.

Same here with three displays.

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Answer 14

DiSantiV Author

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Jan 29, 2013 5:18 PM in response to David M Brewer

I should note that the computer sped up system wide and not just in motion. I noticed differences in photoshop and basic server folder scrubbing.

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Answer 15

Jan 29, 2013 6:15 PM in response to DiSantiV

Use the Ram Preview in Motion when you have a slow down.

Here is a video I just made... First part is 10 particles... 3 displays... No ram priview. First part is 20 particles... 3 displays... Using ram priview. As you can see both play 30 fps in Motion.

_

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