Question re: use of memory in ppc

[eofeapr]

System in this case is ;
G5 Quad 2.5 ghz
8 gigs ram non-ecc


Hi

I ran into a canoodle with Motion.(Final Cut Studio 2)

I've been watching the activity monitor and discovered that ;
in motion (FCS 2) sometime into the middle of my project, half my ram is suddenly consumed. Stuff gets sluggish, although I can still work..

It's weirdness cause at the start of the project there is no more than 15 to 20 % ram in use. Typically, at this point I have already introduced all the media and generators I need so you'd think the ram would get used up at this point. But ram is, all of a sudden, used up without any changes or additional media except for minor adjustments and tweaks.

For now the method I have come up with as a work-around, is to
save my work/quit the app/ re-start the app///
This is ok but in time the same thing happens even if I just go away for a while getting coffee or whatever, and return to my work. I sure wish there were some method of recovering ram on the fly....


Anyone ever had an app do this sort of thing happen ??
What can one do to recover ram without having to quit out or reboot ??

 

[eyoungren]

You can open Terminal and type in the word "purge" (without the quotes). But you have to have the developer tools installed to do that.

I made up an Applescript application that does this as a shell script so all I have to do is click on it when I want to do that. I made it even easier by using Fastscripts which allows me to attach a keyboard shortcut to it. Then I hid it with Dock Dodger so it executes completely hidden and without the spinning wheel.

There's also iFreeMem, but it's paid.