Hello,

This is because of your operating system usually. Only when using Windows 64-bit will you have access to ALL your RAM. At least that is how I understand it and how it worked once I upgraded.

What operating system are you using? 32-bit?


David

Quote: Maybe you guys can help....My last laptop had 8 gb and no matter what I did I don't remember ever seeing more then about 4 gb used...even editing video. My new laptop has 16 gb and still see very low usage. What am I missing in needing so much RAM?

Thanks.

Mostly it depends on 32 bit or 64 bit Operation System. It also depends on the version (32bit vs 64bit) of your program.

Powerdirector Deluxe is 32 bit. Powerdirector Ultra and Ultimate are 64 bit, if installed on a 64 Bit OS.

Ultra or Ultimate on a 64 bit OS can use all available RAM. Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Running Windows 8.1 64 bit and PD ultimate....My old setup was Win 7 also 64 bit.

Is there something that I need to setup or switch to utilize all that 16 gigs I just had to have?

To my knowledge, there are no settings to change, and also nothing to worry about

As others have mentioned, with 64-bit versions of both PD and Windows, PD will be able to access as much RAM as is available when needed. That's really the key!

If you're doing relatively simple editing, even a long project may not need more than a couple GB of RAM; but more RAM is critical for more complex projects where PD would need to use it. Since you aren't likely to know how much RAM a particular project will need when you start, it's better to have too much rather than not enough.

Having plenty of RAM benefits your system in many ways, only one of which is video editing. The bottom line here is that having insufficient RAM can cause serious editing headaches, so Cyberlink recommends a higher amount to so there's going to be enough headroom if/when a project needs it.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Back in the days when RAM was expensive and hard disk space was (relatively) cheap computer manufacturers introduced demand-paged virtual memory systems. I believe this was first used in the Digital Equipment Corp VMS operating system but I'm willing to be corrected on that. Microsoft subsequently employed some of the developers of VMS and incorporated the principles into Windows. This became Windows NT.

Demand-paged vitual memory works by swapping pages of RAM in and out of the hard disk so, in a pre-emptive multi-tasking system which VMS and Windows (and also Unix & Linux) are, when a process comes to the foreground and requests a block of RAM if none is available a page from a background, lower-priority, process is swapped out to hard disk to free up the required amount. This is the ubiquitous Windows paging file.

Because hard disks are much slower than RAM this impacts performance so now that RAM is cheap and plentiful it makes sense to install plenty to reduce or eliminate this paging. Using a SSD, which is obviously much faster than a conventional hard disk, as the system drive can also speed things up. Regards,
Mike

Home-build system:
Intel Core i5 Quad Core 3.3GHz, 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz,
Asus Nvidia GT440 1GB, 2 x Western Digital WD10EARS 1TB, 1 x Seagate ST1000DM010 1TB,
Windows 7 Prof 64-bit, PD 9 Ultra 64, PD 13 Ultimate 64

My PC has 12GB and when editing 4K it routinely uses 11GB plus the HD.

Have considered upgrading to 24 but may wait until I get a new PC

Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A