[awcopus]

Currently I'm finishing up an FCP project on my Dual processor G5 2.5GHz/6GB RAM. It's a 3 hour video and when I run Compressor (two pass VBR, Best Quality 120min DVD) on the exported quicktime movie to prepare it for DVD, it takes about 4 hours to complete its process. I can see in Activity Monitor that Compressor is using both processors and all of my RAM to the max.

Here's my two-part question.

With the Quad core machine running the same processor, are all 4 cores used to the max, resulting in an accelerated render time? Or, would Compressor still only use 2 cores but leave me with the option of actually getting some work done with the remaining 2 cores?

Right now, when I run this MPEG2 compression process, I don't dare work on the machine. It just results in the MPEG2/Dolby Digital conversion taking longer. It would be a huge producivity boon if I could run this process either approximately twice as fast or at least retain the ability to keep things moving on other fronts without taking a performance hit on the render.

Would love to hear from Quad/FCP users about their experience along these lines. Thanks in advance.

[MovieCutter]

Based on my experience, Compressor only uses 2 and sometimes a very small part of a third processor. The Quad is really for apps like After Effects which are multithreaded to take advantage of 4 cores. The beauty of my Quad though is that I can run compressor and still edit in FCP, Motion, and Photoshop without taking a major hit in speed in either one.

EDIT: As Power Macs go to 4 cores standard though, I wouldn't be surprised to see future versions of Compressor to heavily take advantage of more than 2 cores...whether or not that happens in PowerPC is another story.

[awcopus]

That answers my question, thank you MovieCutter.

As it happens, my current projects are basically wrapped, so I'm not in urgent need of this multitasking capability now. Could have really used it over the course of the last few weeks!

I wonder whether I should buy the Quad before Apple discontinues it or whether future Intel-based machines will offer this. You suggest that Power Macs are going to standardize on 4 cores, which would be terrific. I had thought of the Quad as a freak occurence in light of the G5 being stalled ("Hey, let's just keep packing more in!").

If it's only a sign of things to come, cheers to that!

[MovieCutter]

Seeing as Intel is shipping QUAD CORE chips in January, and Dual Core 64 bit desktop-class chips this summer (WWDC got bumped to August for a reason), add in the performance jumps we've seen on the Intel transition, I'd say FCP will be pretty sexy and damn fast on an Intel Power Mac. I would hold onto your Dual 2.5. That's a solid machine, I had one for a year before I went to the Quad because of the number of projects and amount of multitasking I do. Hold on for at least a few more weeks and lets see how FCP and Motion performs on Intel Macs.

[awcopus]

Originally Posted by MovieCutter

Seeing as Intel is shipping QUAD CORE chips in January...

I've just been working crazy hours straight through for a couple of months and am obviously out of the loop. So we may see a dual processor Mac that would be an OCTO-CORE.... <drool>.

Yeah, I'm really happy with how my machine performs. I know I'm bottlenecking in the HDD area because I'm not using a RAID setup and when I did have a stripe setup, FCP and Motion were really cranked up. Just not a secure enough setup for me until I can afford something like the XRaid that will give me performance and security.

Nice to know some great stuff is coming down the pike. Fortunately, I'm not in a rush. Mostly I was just curious about how a Quad would work. I think I actually prefer that it facilitates multitasking more than performance, since I'm generally working on more than one project at a time.

Thanks for your thoughts.