Last month I purchased my new I7 2.6GHz. It's a Dell XPS Studio running Windows Vista 64 bit OS SP1, 4 Gigs RAM.

When encoding video from the AME (CS4) latest build, the results as far as speed goes seem to be unpredictable. For instance I imported 11 minutes of AVCHD footage from my Sony camcorder to the time line, made some minor levels and saturation adjustments. When encoding that video to QuickTime H.264 from the AME, the speed of the computer was blazing; all 4 (Quad) processors working at 100%. The encode was fast!

Yet when I do a project (using the same footage) using certain plugins, like Red Giant's (Magic Bullet) 'Look Suite' for instance, the video does not encode nearly as fast, basically using less than half, or about 48% of the processor's total power.

And when importing a similar project from After Effects into the AME? Forget it. The computer, sporadically using only about 10-15% of the processor's total power, it would have taken around 40 hours to encode the same or very similar 11 minute project.

Is anyone else running an I7, and if so, have you experienced something like this? I was figuring it was probably the plugins that were screwing up the pipeline and causing it to not multithread properly. Still I am very open to advice/opinions.

Rob

I doubt this is related to the processor at all. When rendering from premiere, often times a plugin will not be threaded very well and will slow you down. Magic BUllet might only utilize 2 cores or something and that will slow your render down. It's like a chain, it's only as storng as it's weakest link. In this case it's the speed that gets hit.

And in my opinion After Effects usually really takes advantage of all cores better than most software....so something seems off there.

Still, I feel confident that the CPU itself is not the culprit. Try removing different filters and render to different codecs because that could be the issue too.

I feel your pain. I recently started using PRospect HD from Cineform and I coul dbuild realtime previews on the timeline prior to this in second. Now, when I use prospect projects, it only utilizes 1 of my 4 cores and as such preview are taking 4 times longer. So when I had to wait for 20 seconds to see how my complex edits and overalys were working before, I now need 60-80 seconds....arghh! Frustrating. Also, I started a thread about the new CS4 Media encoder being slower than the CS3 verions. Mama mia!

Hi Marty, Thanks for the reply. I think you're right. I think we're living in a 64 bit comp hardware world now where the software developers simply haven't caught up yet. Like you, I was once using Cineform also, until CS4 came along which supports AVCHD. I was thrilled. No more intermediate codec, no more conversions! (sorry Cineform). Although it should be said that Cineform is the best choice for an intermediate codec with outstanding results.

So that's why I asked you what type of hardware you were using in your last thread. Our problems seemed similar. It's frustrating to have so much new computing power but only be able to use less than than 50% of it on many projects, and even less than 25% on some. My 6 year only 3Ghz P4 would actually render some of these projects FASTER than my sterling new i7 simply because of the multithreading "problem." And like you said, the problem really only comes into play when using 3rd party plugins. They act as a two-lane bottleneck on an otherwise ten-lane super highway. But if I do a few luma and/or chroma alterations using the CS4 plugins only, usually all 4 cores will be pumping at 100%, which is VERY nice to see (and fast!).

I guess the best we can hope for is that the plugin makers will move their tails and start thinking more in 64 bit. And hopefully the CS5 (or whatever they call it) version of the AME will be much more efficient for you as well. If we all get lucky, perhaps Adobe will release an update that will address the problem even sooner.