Hi all.

Ok I got some footage off a friend to Edit for his wedding. My camera is Sony Z5P which i used in between as I was in the bridal party so for obvious reasons i couldn't shoot the wedding myself.

I just started up a project and imported all the footage into the project and my footage from the Z5P is fine and also the MP4 footage from the EX1 to the cs4 project.

I started editing and got halfway through the highlights and now the project lags at the opening stage and wont open. I opened up the project of the last wedding I did and it works fine so its not the software so it must be my system lagging.

I presume with the limits of my system that the bottleneck is the RAM as i only have 2.5gb Quad core system. I check the performance task manager and my ram looks to be 100% maxed out thus not allowing it to open? Would this be causing the issue?

I find my Sony Z5P MPG footage works really well with my system but the new codecs and MP4 footage really bog the system down

is it time for an upgrade to the I7 and 8gb of RAM?

Also how important is RAM to a video editor?

Also here is a picture of the system running full steam. I presume my RAM is killing me?


The CPU doesn't look to be struggling so it must be the RAM. I am running Windows XP so i don't think i cant go above 3gb of RAM as I only have a 32 bit system.

Any tips on what the best avenue for me to take is?

Try importing the project that won't open into a new project. That should hopefully work. With systems with limited RAM (and even ones with plenty), try to make a habit of closing any sequences that you aren't absolutely needing. I find this helps a lot and limits the problem with the project not opening. I no longer leave 6 or 7 different sequences open on the timeline.

thanks craig I will give that a try. It seeems it wont open no matter how long i leave it open. I might see what an upgrade will cost.

Im think

1. Intel i7 930
2. 6-8gb of RAM
3. Gigabyte motherboard(a few models available)


i already have hard drives etc so this wont be an issue

Are you sure that all that's happening is it's creating disk files as the ram isn't big enough - these can take ages to produce with long takes?

what do you think i should do? Is it a RAM issue?

Computers all the thorn of my existence!!! lol