WOW 8 GIGs!!!
Tell me more about this system, please.
Did you build it your self ??

And are you using SCSI drives or SATA??

I am not aware of any reason why you need more than 256 MB or 512 MB just to run the program. However, if you have tons of memory, like Spot, you can really take advantage of the RAM rendering feature. I think this would be the main reason to get an unusual amount of memory. However, I don't think the program will run any faster or render any faster with huge amounts of RAM.

I've got 512MB and have never run low on memory while using Vegas. I never did with 256MB either. However, since i doubled my RAM i now have well over a minute of RAM prerendering space available and that's a wonderful benefit!

If you regularly use lots of large still images then extra memory can be very useful.

Comps definitely are smoother in playback with more RAM. But again, if you aren't compositing...Then there is little point in having more than 512. But if you are doing any compositing at all....even just a couple masks, it's definitely worth it. Same goes for if you have lots of graphics such as title cards, stills, etc.
I don't ascribe to the concept of temp renders though....I ONLY render to RAM because it's so much faster, is scalable, and doesn't leave little droppings on my hard drives.

Excessive amounts of RAM are foolish, wasteful and can generate more heat... the number one enemy of computers. Nobody should need more than one GB and even that is over kill for most.

I've got 512 and everything runs good. I normaly have Vegas (1-3 instances), photoshop, & a web browser or two open (mabe Acrobat if i'm looking at the manual). I did all this on 256 too, but stuff runs smoother on 512.


I'd like 2-3gb though, but don't have the money. I like to do lots of stuff at once. :)

With the amount of stills and compositing that I do sometimes I wish I had 100 gig. I have 2 gig and during a render I have to end about 6 processes to get it through without choking. If your into panning 10 x 1 in stills (500K and above) and long credit rolls you better get 2 gig.

JJK

My PC has 512MB and I don't have any issues running Vegas 5. While in Vegas, I generally don't open any other apps, especailly if I'm capturing, rendering, or burning a DVD.

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Again, I DON'T ascribe to temp renders/prerenders, because it takes too much time, uses disc space, and my time is worth something. We also use a lot of graphics for comps, masks, and cards. That goes without mentioning that most of our timelines are 30 mins or more. Moreover, to run AE with most of the plugs that we use, particularly those from Trapcode, DigiFX, you are required to have a gig. Boris highly recommends a gig at minimum and more if you can afford it. So does Combustion. Pixelan likes RAM too. I guess the folks at Adobe, Artel, Boris, Discreet, Trapcode, Pixelan, and Pinnacle are all fools. I'll make sure to tell their engineers and doc writers.
After I get up off the floor and finish laughing my butt off.
Questions boil down to "How much do you NEED? 512.
"How much is good?" A gig or more. IF you are doing composites and/or lots of graphics. A 1650x 2550 png at 150 dpi is gonna be about 1.5 meg, give or take. Doesn't take much to figure out that a few of those eats up a lot of space. Start going larger for deep zooms on masks, or using TGA files, and you'll very quickly eat that up too. Swap files or RAM. Pay now or pay later.
[edit] Failed to mention one of the most important things...
Audio. Audio plugs use copious amounts of RAM. We use the WAVES plugs along with others, and these eat a lot of RAM. Well worth the expense for us there. Latency also drops with more RAM, which is critical for monitoring during recording.

Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM! (Bill Gates, 1981)

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As I said while a few with special needs or interests MAY benefit from more RAM, the vast majority of users including 99% of those reading this, 1 GB of RAM is plenty... under most conditions. The way Window is designed regardless how much memory you have, it still with make extensive use of the paging file which is just a special area roped off on one or more of your hard drives. You can confirm that by simply watching under Task Manager if you have XP.

The point is you can try to install a 500 horsepower engine in your 60's Honda that you only use to run down to the supermakert, but why would you?

I'd wager the average user here does a lot with stills. 5-10% of the posts here are related to stills or graphics or flash or other non-video formats.
Swapping files with the hard drive means the drive works harder. Therefore, pay now, pay later. Not to mention the loss of speed in workflow. Then again, hobbyists aren't necessarily interested in speed, I guess.
RAM is cheap.

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Spot
Like Golli, I too am interested in hearing about your setup if you wouldn't mind sharing the details.

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Now, back to the RAM issue, I "only" have 4 gig in my main machine and I have had projects in both Vegas and After Effects that have used every bit of it. Now, I'm starting to do some 1920x1080 HiDef projects and I have already seen the "not enough RAM" message from Vegas on more than one occasion. There are about a dozen still images in one project which are panoramas at 20000 x 2500 and I'm doing a Ken Burn's style pan and zoom on them. 8 gig of RAM sounds pretty good to me, 16 sounds better...

About Windows swapping to the paging file... when a piece of program code or a DLL which has been loaded into memory hasn't been used in a while, it is written to the paging file in order to make room in memory for data. If you've got a bunch of RAM, there is a registry tweak that will prevent Windows from swapping to the paging file and keep the program code in memory. However, the memory management in WinXP is much more sophisticated than previous version of Windows, so the tweak is really unnecessary.

John

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The ORIGINAL question was:

"would like to have an idea of how much memory you guys are using to run Vegas properly? And if you are running faster ram modules, say 333 or 400 DDR, does one get by with less?"

I told him the TRUTH: I said:

"Excessive amounts of RAM are foolish, wasteful and can generate more heat... the number one enemy of computers. Nobody should need more than one GB and even that is over kill for most"

That was ANSWERING the question. You don't need more than 1 GB to run Vegas "properly" which was what he was asking along with the type of memory which nobody responded to. My comments were towards the person asking the question. It is fooish to blow money on memory you don't need.

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Billy,

I'll bet if George Lucas showed up and started talking about how he made Star Wars, you'd accuse him of pointificating while the rest of us would be thrilled that he stopped by.

"Nobody should need more than one GB"

You're WRONG, lots of us NEED, not want, but NEED, more than 1 gig of RAM. It had ALREADY been said by several people that the average user could get along just fine with 512 meg of RAM.

John

I am just a hobbiest but learning a lot of technique from this message board. My system has 768MB and was doing find making fancy home videos. Then I tried a slide show, a la Ken Burns and "The Kid Stays In The Picture." Using PNG format (5 Mpix images) from Photoshop Elements II, Vegas seems to lock up and freeze as soon as I loaded in JPG "X". Maybe it was just slow.

Reading through these forums, I realized I was out oaf memory. So back into Photoshop, convert everything into JPEG (much smaller). Using JPEGs seems to have pushed my design point away from the memory cliff.

So, as many have more eloquently said, more memory helps -- but depending on what you do.

My advice is to start with a 512MB DIMM in one slot and add when more when you need it. It will be painfully obvious when you run out of memory.

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Sorry BB, but I have to agree.
Read the way Spot answered the question, then read the way you answered the question.
Spot's answer is VERY informative. He gives the Basics (512Megs), the Intermediate (1Gig) and the No Holds Barred (8Gig).
You on the other hand tell everyone that if they have over 1Gig, they're a fool.
Myself, I only have 512Megs, but reading Spot's answer (which is backed by other respondents), I'm definitely going to try to come up with the money to double it since I wil be using stills,FXs, etc.

I guess that puts me in the foolish category, since I'll have 1.024Gigs.

Mario

PS: You used to bring excellent, indepth answers to questions on these forums. You have helped countless people and we're all thankful. However, you've changed. You can't see that lately you always seem to want to start something, but everyone else can.