I've started playing around with Apple Prores 422 in the timeline to edit XDCAM EX footage and am seeing some odd things.

The fan started screaming after a couple of minutes and on checking the activity monitor I saw the CompressorTranscoder listed as taking %192 of the CPU and about 350MB of RAM.

Is this normal? It also seems to continue to do so even after I've quit FCP (and compressor for that matter?)

I let the machine run for about 10 minutes and the entry in Activity Monitor didn't go away. It took a restart.

Is this happening because I've got XDCAM footage in the project and the sequence setting is now Prores?

That's buggy behavior to be sure. There's a lot of information you didn't post about what your actual hardware/software environment is but on the surface this smacks of either project or software/OS corruption. Something is grabbing resources when it shouldn't.

My advice would be to do the typical maintenance routine and see if that clears it:
- Run Onyx
- Run DiskWarrior
- Reset PMU/PRAM

If you're not on Snow Leopard then you don't have a way to quickly restore your OS to a healthy status, so an OS restore should be your last-chance operation otherwise.

If none of that helps there might also be a failing on the mainboard which could also cause that problem, but that's something for Genius Bar to sort out.

After you have done a few maintenance items...

1. Repair permissions with Disc Utility a few times (more than once in a row)
2. Restart and hold down Command + Option + P + R when you hear the chime and continue holding... release when third chime is heard

You may have to try Apple for additional info. You can always try a fresh install of the OS and Final Cut Suite. I usually do this a few times a year.

Something is grabbing resources when it shouldn't.



I found the source and you were spot on. It's a bit embarrassing but in the spirit of sharing so others may learn....

I needed to get a video piece out and since something called Compressor was grabbing all the resources anyway I decided to put the video into Compressor. I set it going and then just while there fired up Batch monitor. There were three jobs in there.

Recently I was experimenting with lots of HD to SD DVD footage and tried lots of different compressor setups. It seems I forgot to remove them from the batch processor and basically everytime I used the computer (maybe linked to starting final cut) it was triggering the old jobs. That's why it was even running after I quit FCP. Deleted the jobs and got back my processors.

Just for your own knowledge, David...

"1. Repair permissions with Disc Utility a few times (more than once in a row)"

Onyx does all the software-related maintenance routines in a single application rather than having to execute them manually in Disc Utility or other apps (see screenshot)

"2. Restart and hold down Command + Option + P + R when you hear the chime and continue holding... release when third chime is heard"

That is resetting the PRAM which I had mentioned in my post. Resetting the PMU (power management unit) is done by disconnecting all power from the machine - including the battery in a laptop - and holding down the power button for 10 seconds then reconnecting power. This will clear up DVD drives from not responding and reset the charge indication to it's proper level for during charging.