Today I had to give a presentation at uni, and was using Keynote to do it.

I hooked my MacBook up to a projecter which was running at 104x768, but had no end of trouble.

Firstly, it got all the resolutions wrong and tried to use 600x600 on the project and changed the inbuilt display to 1024x768. Then I turned on mirroring and all seemed well. Internal screen looked a bit shoddy but nevermind - its the projector that counts.

However, when I pressed play for my presentation (which didn't use any animations or transitions at all) it gave me an error that the machine does not have enough VRAM to do it.

Anyone know what the problem is here? When I'm at home and the internal screen is at 1280x800 and an external screen is running at 1920x1080 there is no problem, even with all the fanciest effects in the world.

In the end I just had to resort to not having the presentation in full screen mode, so all the toolbars etc were visible to the audience.

For next time, export to PFD and try showing that full screen.

I've not had similar problems when doing presentations...What's up uptime on your Mac? How much RAM does it have? And lastly, did you have anything else open?

I had MAMP running, and one tab open in Safari.

Didn't think of the export thing, I guess I just got a bit flustered really.

The Mac hasn't been shut down for weeks, possibly even months.

From the way that all the resolutions went tits up as soon as the projector was plugged in, I think it must be something to do with the system rather than the application.

Yeah, my initial thoughts was VRAM == Virtual Memory, so I thought it might have been something weird with not enough RAM/swap...

Having thought on it, could it be a weird projector? I know there is some handshaking as the monitor/projector seems to tell the Mac what resolution it can display at...So I guess it may passed something back your Mac wasn't expecting?

Oh right. I thought it might have meant Video memory.

According to Activity Monitor my system is using just over 60GB of Virtual Memory.

Projector was a pretty basic, Hitachi monitor. None of the PC's had any trouble, but I guess that could have caused a problem. Shouldn't have changed the resolution on the internal screen though???

*Shrug*

It is very weird...I'd suggest a reboot and try and hook it up to the same projector again...

Yeah, I'm afraid that's the best advice I can offer as well - I've never seen/heard of this issue before. Rebooting can sometimes do wonderful things though.

It may be that you don’t have enough VRAM to drive 2 displays and do all the fancy stuff that KeyNote requires. A lot of it is Core Animation and Core Video, which use the video card to achieve the effects.

Some MacBooks use shared VRAM - there is no separate RAM on the graphics card, so it takes from normal RAM. That could be the reason. How much physical RAM does your MacBook have? Can you add more?

A good restart may help, but there

Paul, I really don't think it's that.

The second display was only 1024x768 and there were no transitions etc used in the presentation. The machine can drive my display here *taps external monitor* at 1920x1080 with lots of fancy effects etc

Add to that the fact that the displays were mirrored, and you'd think it would be less load rather than more seeing as the internal screen runs at more than 1024x768.

You say you can do exactly the same thing with your home TV at higher resolution? The exact same program etc?

That's kinda weird. It proves it's not a lack of VRAM (video ram I'd assume). I'd definitely suggest a reboot if you haven't tried yet, because it rather sounds like it just got confused.

My old Tosch worked fine with two screens in mirror, but it refused to do overlays. I had to disable the laptop screen and only show the external one. It was just down to the way it handled video overlays, because everything else worked fine. My new 99p netbook works fine, but I don't have a Mac to try...

Yeah, it's strange. Same application, same file, same settings.



That's why I was so confused when it gave me that error message. My inital thought was that VRAM = Video RAM, but others in this thread seem to think it is Virtual memory. Anyone know which it is referring to?

Google throws up mostly results for Video RAM.

as far as i can remember on a Mac VRam is still 'Video RAM' and virtual memory is referred to as virtual memory... don't hold me to that though.... not used one of the godawful things in over 2 years...

have you tried it on any displays other than your external screen and that projector? maybe your macbook just doesn't like it... at college the [e]mac that was hooked up to the projector didn't like displaying anything above 800x600 [despite it and the projector both being 1024x768]

I've never heard of virtual memory referred to as VRAM; it's always been Video RAM, AFAIC.

*bump*

so did you get it working nick?