[sweep-devel] memory use and need

[Heimo C. <ha...@re...>]

A question to whoever is knowledgeable:
How does Sweep use memory, and how much does it need ?
And does it use/need (a how large) swap (partition/file) ?

Background: an earlier remark from Conrad that Sweep holds evferything
loaded in mem, and thus is limited to what there is in living (RAM) mem.

History: i stepwise upgraded th machine from 192 --> 320 --> 384 --> 512
MB (step two included a change of MoBo) and finally found the right
chips to get the present Mobo to its full capacity of 768 MB; swap
partitions were rather static, around 360 MB.
The observations were blurred further by (a.) upgrading of the
"systems" (Mandrake 7.2 to 8.2, and Debian "potato" to "Woody"
respectively, on exchageable HDs) and (b.) the constant upgradings of
Sweep's versions themselves.

Empirical: I noticed a remarkable improvement - i.e., capacity of
holding a larger number of clips (usually between 3 to 5 min length)
loaded - only with the change from step 1 (192 MB RAM) to step 2 (320 MB
RAM). Especially the result with the hitherto last step (384 to 512 MB
RAM) was disappointing: definitely no discernable improvement, with
about ten to a dozen of the test-clips loaded, the GUI gets extremely
slow, with 14 to 16 of the clips it stalls almost completely - at
that point, any editing in/between Sweep windows is practically
impossible.

The MoBo has three mem banks which now hold 1 x 256 MB and 2 x 128 MB
mem bars. Further upgrading of the latter to the type of the former
(for which I finally found the good sort) is a bit expensive but would
result in the 768 MB max. capacity of this Mobo.

Only that I got somewhat sceptical by now if this would really result in
a corresponding performance increase for working with Sweep.

I would like to get some more insight into this side of Sweep's
behaviour in order (a) to decide on the further hardware (RAM)
upgrade, and (b) on perhaps necessary system re-arrangements (swap
volume ? by file or by partition ? X window managers ?)

("Work" consists almost exclusively of editing/montage of speech; though
the intention is to work on _long_ pieces of between 15 and 60
minutes each, with much shoveling around and pasting of bits and
piecess - even for a smaller sound feature, this goes up quite
quickly to much more than a dozen of clips to handle.)

// Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2003-01-07