Audacity Forum

My iBook has only 1 mB RAM.
Disk will have 48 GB free space.

Test recording thus far has been successful.
I plan on recording with Audacity set to stereo, at highest bit depth and 96k sample rate to obtain highest quality audio for video being recorded simultaneosly (on independent digital video equipment). Only task for iBook then is audio.
Total recording time will be about 50 minutes.

Does RAM limited to 1 mB pose any difficulty for this planned recording? Is this plan workable given these parameters?

Thank you.
Robert

Equuleus wrote:My iBook has only 1 mB RAM.
Disk will have 48 GB free space.

Test recording thus far has been successful.
I plan on recording with Audacity set to stereo, at highest bit depth and 96k sample rate to obtain highest quality audio for video being recorded simultaneosly (on independent digital video equipment). Only task for iBook then is audio.
Total recording time will be about 50 minutes.

Does RAM limited to 1 mB pose any difficulty for this planned recording? Is this plan workable given these parameters?

I assume you mean 1 GB RAM. 1 MB RAM would not boot the computer or run the operating system. 1 GB is probably insufficient RAM for multi-tasking so you may need to close all or most other processes before recording. What version of OS X are you using?

Definitely you must make sure in Audacity's Directories Preferences that "Audio Cache" is not checked (not enabled).

A stereo 32-bit 96000 Hz recording will take just over 44 MB per minute of disk space, so 50 minutes will take about 2.2 GB. If you apply an edit to the whole track, you will be using 4.4 GB of space. See http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Recording_length for more information.

Note that Audacity must receive an audio-only stream. It will not understand combined audio/video.



Gale

Hi Gale:

Thank you for your quick reply.

Yes... 1 GB RAM, Not MB! (senior moment... very senior)

So it appears I will have enough disk space, and only other software (apart from required OSX 10.6.7) will be for Edirol Firewire interface. Video is being recorded independently.
1 GB... workable?

Thanks.
Robert

Equuleus wrote:1 GB... workable?

It's the bare minimum for the system, so don't be surprised if you have to pare down processes in order to record.

You won't be able to move to OS X 10.7 (2 GB RAM required) or probably subsequent Mac OS X versions without more RAM.


Gale

How are you getting the work out of your machine?

Just to cover the bases, I would make a recording of anything at all with all the required equipment connected and working and the expected show length. Leave a microphone laying on the floor listening to the cats. Anything. The object is to make sure the machine survives before you're out there with a crew.

Just to throw unwelcome mud in the game, are you assuming a 50 minute show is going to be shot in 50 minutes? Unless you're going live on a news event, post production takes up ten times the work to produce a show. You will be recording 500 minutes (8 hours) to be pared down later to the final show. Adjust as necessary, but the ten to one rule is amazingly accurate.

I don't trust situations where if anything goes wrong, the show dies.

"We need to take that again to get rid of that fire engine in the background. I want to save the first take."

Koz