6GB of RAM used no session open?

[brianjanthony]

Whilst puttering away on an enormous session in 7.4 tonight, I started getting dreaded Pro Tools is critically low on memory warnings. I have 10 gig of RAM in my MacPro... so I knew something was funky.

Anyways, looked at Activity Monitor and it said
1.71 Free
1.17 Wired
3.18 Active
3.93 Inactive
8.28 used.

The only open App was Pro Tools (other than the little background OS aps that run sight unseen.)

After a hard restart, I reopened the session, and AM showed only like 3 gig used with 4 or 5 (cannot remember) Free.

I kind of understand how the Free vs Wired vs Active etc works out. But can anything inside Pro Tools suck up RAM without me knowing or it registering in Activity Monitor? And is a complete restart the only way to fix it? (Not that it takes too much time... ) I'm just trying to understand the creeping RAM while PT is open. Is it a bad plugin?

Sorry if this isn't clear enough. Any help is appreciated....

[drenkrom]

In Activity Monitor, are you monitoring "All processes"? The default is "My processes", which leaves out quite a bit.

On a few computers here, I run iStat Menus (http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatmenus/) for this kind of info. When you click on the memory indicator, it gives you a list of the 5 processes that are eating up the most RAM system-wide. It's like Activity Monitor, but always one click away in your menu bar. It could help identify the hungry processes as they come up, pointing you towards the problem.

IHTH