Hi folks,

Ok. So I'm using a quad 2.66 2009 MP.

I have the main HD (same one came with the system). I have 2 other 1 TB drives in a Raid and another by itself (drive B)

I usually capture footage in FCP to the Raided drives then after brief editing, I output an non-self contained file to drive B then using Bitvice (b/c compressor sucks terribly), I create an m2v and ac3 file to Drive B.

The bottleneck is still Bitvice outputting as it takes around 1 hour for a 2 hour SD file to compress.

If I captured to 1 SSD then output to another SSD drive, would I see increased processing times??? If so, I guess I'd have to know what the increased times would be to justify the cost of adding SSDs. I could always use the current HDs in a JBOD drive - I always need space it seems! :)

Bitvice utilizes all cores without jumping through hoops so that part is as maxed out as I could get (without getting a MP with more cores).

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Keebler

I believe that the conversion process is CPU bound and would not be helped by faster drives. The drive writing probably only uses 3 minutes out of the 1 hour. So bringing that down to 1 minute won't make a huge difference.

You are copying to drive B and then processing, saving the results to drive B? Do you get a time difference if you save the results back to drive A (RAID) rather than to drive B?

The easiest way to see if the process is limited by your CPU is to open uP Activity Monitor. When compressing; what is constantly mixed out - the CPU graph or the disk activity graph (compare it to a graph when copying files between drives roughly). What you want to pay attention to are rough numbers:

Eg. 5 MB/sec read all the time says it's CPU bound. If it's above 50 and the CPU isn't 100% then look at disk throughput. Do you know if BitVice is actually using all your cores to compress?

I believe that the conversion process is CPU bound and would not be helped by faster drives. The drive writing probably only uses 3 minutes out of the 1 hour. So bringing that down to 1 minute won't make a huge difference.

You are copying to drive B and then processing, saving the results to drive B? Do you get a time difference if you save the results back to drive A (RAID) rather than to drive B?

Thanks CRam.

I don't remember the savings, but I did test it when I first got the MP and it was minimal. :(

Either I build a hackintosh or see what the new (hopefully coming soon), MPs are like.

Then there's the caveat of will ppl want DVDs much longer? Most clients are older and are just switching to DVDs so I think they'll be around for a longer period of time. I'm also outputting to h.264 for appletv and the like, but using a Matrox CompressHd card which is super fast (under real time!). I'll use that for Blu Ray if ppl want as well.

I'm just irked b/c a colleague is using a PC (6 core) and hitting near 15 mins for a 2 hour file - I'll admit that I'm not sure if the quality settings are the same, but still...yikes.

I would strongly suspect the CPU is you're bottleneck as it usually is for compressing video, you don't mention ram at all but it might also be a worthwhile upgrade depending how much you already have... As mention SSDs won't help much with the compression time though, I can't recommend any specific software packages but there might be something out there that could also utilize the GPU to speed up the compression...

One thing to keep in mind with the comparison to you hex core colleague is that if it is a relatively recent machine it probably has hyperthreading as well so would preform more like a 12 core machine... So far from a fair comparison to make...

You need crunch but the software may not address additional processing threads.

Open Activity Monitor and watch the processors. If they are pegged that's your issue.

Very very unlikely to be affected by drive speed.

If yours is a 2.66 Nehalem then you should see 8 processing threads active.

Big jump to get more and your software may not support it.

I would strongly suspect the CPU is you're bottleneck as it usually is for compressing video, you don't mention ram at all but it might also be a worthwhile upgrade depending how much you already have... As mention SSDs won't help much with the compression time though, I can't recommend any specific software packages but there might be something out there that could also utilize the GPU to speed up the compression...

One thing to keep in mind with the comparison to you hex core colleague is that if it is a relatively recent machine it probably has hyperthreading as well so would preform more like a 12 core machine... So far from a fair comparison to make...

Thanks Paul. His machine is definitely new so no question it's faster. It was the quality settings of the m2v file I wanted to compare.

Hands down though, my machine is 2 years older so no one near the same processing firepower.

Cores are definitely maxed out in activity monitor so that's the bottleneck. RAM is maxed at at 8 GB for this machine (at least I think that's the max for this model).

Thanks!
Keebler

Thanks Paul. His machine is definitely new so no question it's faster. It was the quality settings of the m2v file I wanted to compare.

Hands down though, my machine is 2 years older so no one near the same processing firepower.

Cores are definitely maxed out in activity monitor so that's the bottleneck. RAM is maxed at at 8 GB for this machine (at least I think that's the max for this model).

Thanks!
Keebler

I think the offical Apple maximum RAM for that model is 32G, though apparently it can go to 64G (according to EveryMac.com)
Mac Pro "Eight Core" 2.66 (2009/Nehalem) Specs (Mac Pro Early 2009, MB535LL/A, MacPro4,1, A1289, 2314) @ EveryMac.com (http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/stats/mac-pro-eight-core-2.26-early-2009-nehalem-specs.html)

Even the first Mac Pro model went "officially" to 16G (and apparently will handle 32G with 4G FB-DIMMs).

I think the offical Apple maximum RAM for that model is 32G, though apparently it can go to 64G (according to EveryMac.com)
Mac Pro "Eight Core" 2.66 (2009/Nehalem) Specs (Mac Pro Early 2009, MB535LL/A, MacPro4,1, A1289, 2314) @ EveryMac.com (http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/stats/mac-pro-eight-core-2.26-early-2009-nehalem-specs.html)

Even the first Mac Pro model went "officially" to 16G (and apparently will handle 32G with 4G FB-DIMMs).

cool! thanks eggman.