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Final Cut and new nehalem processor
I upgraded to the Mac Pro with dual quad core processors, thinking processing time would be much better. It is but I note the activity monitor shows that when rendering that Final Cut only uses about half the processor streams available and not the full capability of each stream, which means to me it could even be a lot faster. Activity monitor also shows that Final Cut is only using 32 bit processing while, with snow leopard, all the other Mac programs are 64 bit.
Is there something I can do now to get Final cut to use all the processing power of the computer I have? I assume the next upgrade will have a 64 bit capability. Will this solve this problem.
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17 Replies
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FCP will not yet use all processors. Qmaster won’t help. I believe it’s currently limited to using only 2. The expectation is a future version will take advantage of all the cores, but when that will happen is not known. As mentioned some apps like Compressor can use all the cores. I always export QTs and use Compressor for encoding chores rather than using FCP.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.1, Motion 4.0.1, Comp 3.5.1, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.1)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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Enable Q master? Ugh no. I always thought that was for an environment with several computers working on one project. How does one “enable” it for use in a single computer system. When I just opened the application it was looking for me to give batches to submit. Most of what I want to do is in FCP, rendering or smoothcam etc.
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I beg to differ. FC doesn’t make a very good use of all the processors all the times but I often saturate all the cores in my machine. It is not limited to two cores. You can’t make an absolute statement like that. It depends on the type of code running at a given time, doing rendering or compression, what library is in use, what codecs are involved, how many threads running etc. Qmaster was done exactly for that reason and indeed it works, it is highly recommended to enable it, particularly in machines with 4, 8 and pretty soon 12 cores.
Gabriele – California
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How does one “enable it” for this purpose. I opened it and it wasn’t obvious what to do. Thanks for the help everyone.
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I said, “I believe.” I didn’t make a categorical statement. For instance, see this thread. It’s one of many similar if you search. Qmaster works fine with multiple machines, but doesn’t seem to help FCP on a single machine.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.1, Motion 4.0.1, Comp 3.5.1, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.1)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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Read this article and the linked articles:
https://tinyurl.com/ycq85y7
I agree with John, mileage will vary. In my case however I can see the difference. A lot as to do with the tasks that you are accomplishing. Today I was doing some simple rendering after applying some motion blur and all my cores were at 100% I can’t tell how much qmaster helped but in my case it is enabled and on average I get a much better “filling factor” now, particularly when compression involved. Right now my system is “sharing” to 3 different output (BD,DVD,Iphone) and al the cores are taking 100%. It is nice to see all the cylinder going 100%. SW all at 64 bit not necessarily will make a better use of 8 cores.It will mostly happen because generating 64 bit they will also make sure that is better multithreaded but 64bit itself can be equally badly written.Gabriele – California
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You basically create your own little cluster inside your system. It is a trick in order to cheat the SW that wasn’t written for so many cores:
“However, if you have a multiple core system, you can also use Qmaster to treat the multiple cores on your system as a cluster when rendering in Compressor. It’s a two step process; first you have to configure Qmaster, and then you have to choose the new cluster for encoding in Compressor.”
Although here it is explained for compressor, it works also when FC calls compressor.Gabriele – California
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John is actually correct FCP cannot take advantage of Qmaster. Compressor defiantly will use it to it’s advantage, but FCP cannot.
Nowhere in the documentation of Qmaster does it even say that FCP can.
https://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/AppleQmaster_3_User_Manual.pdf
https://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Apple_Qmaster_Distributed_Processing_Setup_Guide.pdfIf FCP could you would have to select what cluster you what to use just like you have to when submitting from compressor. And since there is no option in FCP to choose your cluster it obviously cannot use it.
For info on setting up Qmaster to help with compressor check out this podcast from the cow.
https://podcasts.creativecow.net/final-cut-studio-podcast/final-cut-pro-qmaster-basicThere are no “technical solutions” to your “artistic problems”.
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity! -
I didn’t mean to start a diatribe but you should have read all my post done before your:
“Although here it is explained for compressor, it works also when FC calls compressor. ”Indeed when you “share” from FC for example if you want to make a BD directly from FC, you can choose the “cluster”, try and see it. This happen obviously because Compressor is called as I was saying.
Gabriele – California
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