transcoding some T2i and XH A1 footage (T2i, 1920x1080 29.97FPS at 50Mbps to 1280x720 30FPS at 10-14Mbps. XH A1, 1440x1080 29.97FPS at 24Mbps to 1280x720 30FPS at 10-14Mbps. For web content; will be edited after transcode.) ZERO EFFECTS.

All i did was threw the raw files into the AME window, selected my preferred 720P/30 web output, and started the queue. AME is using less than 3GB of RAM during transcoding, but between 72 and 90% of my processing power.

System specs... I am editing in my 'safe mode' on this computer for today. My MINIMUM read/write speeds on the RAID0 (which is my project drive) is 200MB/sec. The X25M boot/OS/CS5 drive nails 200MB/sec read and 70MB/sec write.

The files are on the SSD (X25M), and are output on the RAID0 drive, and i have verified that i can indeed transfer the files from the SSD to the RAID0 drive at nearly 200MB/sec for several minutes. Source is the SSD, cache/preview (not needed) is the RAID0, and output is the RAID0. Again, i have no renders, NO EFFECTS, just a simple, AME only transcode. So we have both T2i H.264 MOV and XH A1 footage (via Datavideo DN-60) .M2T AVCHD being transcoded from the above formats into H.264 (MP4) at 720P/30

Asus Rampage III Gene motherboard
Intel i7 950 running at 3.4Ghz
GeForce 9800GTX+ OC 1GB (MPE enabled)
Corsair XMS3, 6x2GB (12GB total) running at 1066 Mhz
Intel X25M 80GB boot/OS/CS5 drive (source files also on this disk) SATA II
4x80GB Fujitsu 7200RPM laptop HDD's in a RAID0 configuration

I had the same issue with my Q6600 setup; 8GB of RAM but any sort of work, effects included, it NEVER maxed out the RAM, but ALWAYS taxed that processor to nearly 100%. Should i split the 4 disk RAID0 into 2 2-disk RAID0's, and dump preview/cache on one, and output on the second? Why the devil isnt it using my RAM?

Now i have 12GB, and 9 GB is going unused... I have prefs set so that it keeps 3GB for background services, and 0 processors for background services, so it SHOULD be able to use ALL the RAM as well as all the processors. What is going on? There is NO WAY it needs THAT much processing power, and so little RAM. It is transcoding fast; 3 minutes of M2T HDV in 4 minutes 45 seconds.

Also happy to report NO temps (CPU, RAM, HDD's, motherboard, Northbridge, Southbridge, exhaust ambient, and PSU) above 49 celcius. in a micro ATX case.

ALSO

Happy Holidays to all, except they guy who hit my car this morning; you go get the stomach flu.

I wasn't aware that AME was a 64bit app...

Yup, PPro/Encore, AME, and AE are all 64 bit and share system memory dynamically. The remainder of the CS applications are still 32 bit.

I dunno Panagiotis, maybe someone with more knowledge of the inner workings of the software can shed some light, but my guess is that with the down-sampling render of a single stream, processing the bits (the CPU) is actually the most intensive activity. Maybe the RAM and disk throughput are more than enough and not used to capacity?

Perhaps if you were using multiple simultaneous streams loaded with effects, the situation would be different? Just for grins, how about putting 5-6 layers of video on the timeline and render out a short bit to see what happens?

As far as splitting the 4 x RAID0 into 2 separate 2 x RAID0, I'd also be interested in which is better for low-demand tasks like your down-sample, and which is better for high demand, complex timeline playback and rendering. Don't know.

The relatively low memory usage is caused by the simplicity of the time line. No sense in using more memory than is required for encoding. If the timeline were more complex with more video tracks and more effects, memory usage would go up.

On a 12 GB system nearly 8 GB is used for the MPEG2-DVD test in the PPBM5 Benchmark (http://ppbm5.com/index.html)

Specifically look at the chart at the bottom of the Test Methodology page to show that.

thanks Harm, but i believe i have a motherboard or RAM related issue too now; prime95 hangs or crashes and CPU-Z is reporting RAM data intermittently in 3 slots out of 6. I also got a few BSOD's any time i tried to use nVidia's Ntune services (all i wanted to do is put the GPU fan on 100%).

By the way I took your advice about the 2.5" SATA II 7200RPM laptop HDD's btw Harm; i found a source that has some 80GB fujitsu's for $35 each; so hard to pass up.

im going to run the PPBM5 benchmark in a few hours. i have commandeered some DDR3 ram to see if the RAM is the problem or maybe is the motherboard.

Did you have a look at: Adobe Forums: Overclocking the i7, a beginners guide (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/529916)

What BSOD error codes did you get and what are your voltage settings?

Memtest is the Go To free software to check your RAM:
Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool (http://www.memtest.org/)

Unless you've already determined that the problem lies with the motherboard, I'd suggest running Memtest right away.