Mac Pro Users: Would you need 12 cores?

[Bill Koehler]

Originally Posted by Robert Lane

...
2. A virtual cluster only affects and speeds-up MPEG2/4 encodes because it is multi-thread capable. H.264 and most other codecs are not and are therefore totally unaffected by a virtual cluster's availability, hence no speed increase. That's why all the hardware-based H.264 accelerators have come to market because there is currently no software available that can force multi-threading in H.264.
...

Mr. Lane,

Given that AVCHD is MPEG4 Part 10 according to Apple's own documentation, I find the above statement contradictory. Would you please elaborate?

[Andy Wilkinson]

Hi guys,

Having only used Macs for 2 years I'd probably count myself into the group of FCP users Robert sometimes meets (i.e. I would like to know more about optimising multuple core use via virtual clusters)....or to put it into plain English, I have n't got a clue how to do this!

I'm using 10.5.8 and FCS2 on the 2009 Nehalem 8-core Mac Pro (all the details are in post 2 of this thread).

You guys know a heck of a lot more about all the various codecs and the details of compression than I do right now. Any pointers from all you very helpful Mac gurus here on DVInfo would be most welcome. I video tutorial would be wonderful!

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

I'm using 10.5.8 and FCS2 on the 2009 Nehalem 8-core Mac Pro (all the details are in post 2 of this thread).

Andy, First of all do yourself a big favour & spend 25 quid on a Snow Leopard upgrade.

[Nigel Barker]

BTW I too have never had a problem with setting Compressor & Virtual Clusters. It is just as easy & trivial as others already noted. I've been using FCP 7 since the day of release & Robert mentioned that it's FCP 6 users who have problems but I honestly don't recall any when I was using that version.

If you are doing any amount of rendering out to H.264 for web delivery then I can highly recommend the Elgato Turbo.264 HD USB dongle that creates output files straight off the FCP timeline at approaching real time speed on my 8-core 2.8GHz 2008 Mac Pro. The quality is really excellent & while unlike the Matrox CompressHD you cannot create files with the high bit rates necessary for BluRay when your target is the web it's fine & the price is much lower at around $100 or local equivalent. It is a real time saver.

[Andy Wilkinson]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

Andy, First of all do yourself a big favour & spend 25 quid on a Snow Leopard upgrade.

Yes, I know. But I've been doing some very big, long term corporate projects (work spanning several months) and I don't want to risk doing that until I have a gap. I might give it a go on the 2008 MBP and then move up on the MP when I get a "window of opportunity".

[Trevor Harrison]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

Yes, I know. But I've been doing some very big, long term corporate projects (work spanning several months) and I don't want to risk doing that until I have a gap. I might give it a go on the 2008 MBP and then move up on the MP when I get a "window of opportunity".

Remember the #1 rule of video editing never upgrade during a project.

I have a 2006 Quad 2.66GHZ 3GB RAM, 1900XT FCS3 and am converting 38 Video8 Family home videos (already captured as one file per tape), and exporting the edited track reference to Compressor is 3hrs for a 2hr video. I would love to learn how I can use QMaster to speed up processing and do a whole bunch of tapes over-night. If I could really speed up processing that would be really helpful.

Thanks

[Craig Seeman]

Personally I thing the "never update during a project" is not practical. Maybe it's for people who do small projects with some gaps in between. If I kept to that I'd still be using FCP3 on OS 10.2.x. I'm often doing a couple of projects in overlapping time.

Practical is backup before upgrading so that if your back is against the wall you can back to the previous FCP and/or previous OS. In my case I have multiple computer and I stager the upgrades. Generally if things are OK after a couple of weeks other systems can get upgraded. If something goes wrong I can move to another system with older OS and FCP. I always save the projects version in the older format before upgrading and upgrade a copy of the project to the current version.

[Chris Korrow]

Just for some clarity. I've got a 2.93 MP quad, does compressor use all those natively or would Qmaster help. Seems like I heard that FCS can use multiple cores, just not multiple processors.

[Matt Lawrence]

Here's a basic tutorial for setting up multiple cores in Qmaster:

Accelerating Encoding on Multiple Core Workstations

[William Hohauser]

Originally Posted by Chris Korrow

Just for some clarity. I've got a 2.93 MP quad, does compressor use all those natively or would Qmaster help. Seems like I heard that FCS can use multiple cores, just not multiple processors.

Easy way to see for yourself... launch Activity Monitor and render something in FCP. If all your processors reside in one chip then they should all activate when you render. It's the second CPU, the dual processor, that FCP doesn't recognize although QMaster will as it treats the chip as a second computer in a virtual render farm.

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Chris Korrow

Just for some clarity. I've got a 2.93 MP quad, does compressor use all those natively or would Qmaster help. Seems like I heard that FCS can use multiple cores, just not multiple processors.

QMaster will give you about a 50% boost.

[Ian Withnall]

Set up a quick cluster. Forget all the computer stuff, it's worth it. Google a tutorial, takes about five minutes then away you go! I'm a Mac knuckle head and I managed it.

I have 16 cores and it makes me happy see them all light up in Activity monitor when crunching big files.

You need RAM though. And plenty of it. .

[Dave Partington]

The one big gotcha with a cluster using multiple machines is that you really need machines with Intel network chipsets and enable jumbo packets. Using the iMac in the quickcluster seems to make little sense as they don't support jumbo packets - so the network bandwidth is only about 24MB/s instead of 80MB/s+ on the MacPro, MacMini and my MacBookPro.