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Which video editor is multi-multi-core?

S

scamateur

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 26, 2007
52
0
Which, if any, of the video editors make use of all eight cores of the Mac Pro?

I haven't tried the pro apps yet, but CPU utilization for iMovieHD was only about 200% on the one project I have done on my new 2.8 Octo.

It seems like this would be widely-known information, but I was unable to find it on Apple's site, and my extensive search of this forum was unavailing.

Thanks to all!
 
scamateur said:
Which, if any, of the video editors make use of all eight cores of the Mac Pro?

I haven't tried the pro apps yet, but CPU utilization for iMovieHD was only about 200% on the one project I have done on my new 2.8 Octo.

It seems like this would be widely-known information, but I was unable to find it on Apple's site, and my extensive search of this forum was unavailing.

Thanks to all!
Click to expand...

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/

I am drawing a blank at the moment, but there is an Apple written utility to let the Pro Apps use all of their cores. It starts with a Q....
 
But can Final Cut Express, or for that matter, iMovie, take advantage of this?
 
scamateur said:
Which, if any, of the video editors make use of all eight cores of the Mac Pro?

I haven't tried the pro apps yet, but CPU utilization for iMovieHD was only about 200% on the one project I have done on my new 2.8 Octo.
Click to expand...

I noticed something similar with iMovie '08. Essentially only 1 core
was being used during exporting. Which is a bit odd really because
I know Quicktime exports from the Quicktime player can use all the
cores.
 
None of the editors do I believe. Only Compressor (with the help of Qmaster) will allow you to use all 8 cores. But, as you can see here, Qmaster/Compressor combo doesn't play well with the new machines.

After Effects can use 8 on export as well.
 
3 years later, iMovie 11 still doesnt' make use of multiple cores :(
Is there any video editor that's more beginner friendly than final cut pro that can make use of all those cores?
 
AFAIK, iMovie is only 32 bit. It won't utilize all cores on a Mac pro much less memory above 4 GB. I used iMovie allot when I had my 08 Mac pro. not bad for small projects but big projects took awhile. Maybe since apple rewrote FCP, they will rewrite iMovie to 64 bit. I wouldn't hold your breath though. As cheap as the new FCP will be, might be worth the investment if your going to stick with video editing.
 
bearcatrp said:
AFAIK, iMovie is only 32 bit. It won't utilize all cores on a Mac pro much less memory above 4 GB. I used iMovie allot when I had my 08 Mac pro. not bad for small projects but big projects took awhile. Maybe since apple rewrote FCP, they will rewrite iMovie to 64 bit. I wouldn't hold your breath though. As cheap as the new FCP will be, might be worth the investment if your going to stick with video editing.
Click to expand...

Erm, no.

1) 64bit vs 32bit has absolutely nothing to do with multi-threaded programming or utilizing more cores - this is application logic here.

2) A 32bit process can't address more than 4GB of ram, the OS can with some magic but it's impossible in the process. I think it's kind of a moot point, I don't think I ever had iMovie use more than 1-2GB of ram anyway.

3) You don't rewrite code to 64bit, you just recompile the application, maybe with a few small changes to make better use of the new instruction sets. This takes Apple or anyone else next to no time to do (it took me 15 minutes to recompile all my apps to 64bit). Obviously Apple feel there is no point as the extra addressable space actually makes applications run slightly slower, not faster while contributing nothing to the problems above.

The challenge is having every effect and filter be able to split the video into chunks and process all the chunks individually, while still sharing data between the processing threads (e.g. for stabilising or rate estimating) - this isn't very easy.

Also, I'm sure Final Cut Pro is great and a lot of thought has been put into parallelism in it (for instance processing chunks of video even on other servers on the network, not just other cores), but it's a lot harder to do the basic things in it for the occasional quick edit.
 
Final Cut Pro X - Coming in June
Will use grand central and open cl so not only will it use all your CPU cores it will use your GPU as well. Should be good stuff.
 
I thought premier has more multi support. It has GPGPU. But wait for FCP X. It should be great for what you speak. Outside of that I don't know of any that have support for all cores in all actions. Certain actions and uses in final cut are multithreaded like the Pro codecs but what good is that if the host can't use the extra cores?
 
Predacon said:
All.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Give it to them. Even WMM will take advantage of all available cores and it runs circles around any of these so-called "professional" video editing applications like Avid MC or FCP or Vegas or Casablance (which can run only on twenty three courses somehow).
 
goMac said:
What? No.
Click to expand...

Yes, actually. Its the material itself that lacks multi-CPU capability. If you are working with multiple media sources then yes, it WILL use every available core.

Do you honestly think companies would have the nuts to charge gobs of money for a product that doesn't use technology that has been commonly around for the last 10 years? Heck, try finding a computer from the last 5 years that doesn't have at least two CPUs. Try finding ANY (non-netbook) new computer on the market today that only has one CPU.

Single threaded applications today are extremely rare. OSX natively tries to balance the CPU load as much as possible, but it can't help much if the media its working with can't be broken up and distributed.
If you want to talk about apps that ignore multiple CPUs and have to be specifically written to use them, you have to go back to the days of OS9.
 
Last edited:
Predacon said:
Yes, actually. Its the material itself that lacks multi-CPU capability. If you are working with multiple media sources then yes, it WILL use every available core.

Do you honestly think companies would have the nuts to charge gobs of money for a product that doesn't use technology that has been commonly around for the last 10 years? Heck, try finding a computer from the last 5 years that doesn't have at least two CPUs. Try finding ANY (non-netbook) new computer on the market today that only has one CPU.

Single threaded applications today are extremely rare. OSX natively tries to balance the CPU load as much as possible, but it can't help much if the media its working with can't be broken up and distributed.
Click to expand...

Funny, I worked with Mac Pros having four and eight cores and calculating something inside Avid MC only took advantage of two cores. FCP was the and is the same.
Btw, you confuse CPU and core, as many computers still come with a single CPU, many just have two or four cores nowadays.

And what has the "media" to do with using more than two cores?
Does that mean if I use VHS footage it will use less cores than using 4K footage?

Or am I misunderstanding something here?
 
Predacon said:
Yes, actually. Its the material itself that lacks multi-CPU capability. If you are working with multiple media sources then yes, it WILL use every available core.

Do you honestly think companies would have the nuts to charge gobs of money for a product that doesn't use technology that has been commonly around for the last 10 years? Heck, try finding a computer from the last 5 years that doesn't have at least two CPUs. Try finding ANY (non-netbook) new computer on the market today that only has one CPU.

Single threaded applications today are extremely rare. OSX natively tries to balance the CPU load as much as possible, but it can't help much if the media its working with can't be broken up and distributed.
If you want to talk about apps that ignore multiple CPUs and have to be specifically written to use them, you have to go back to the days of OS9.
Click to expand...


apple computers with one cpu:

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook?mco=MTM3NjU3MDM

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro?mco=MTM3NjU5MzU

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_air?mco=MTM3NjY1OTU

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_mini?mco=MTQzMDMxODY

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?mco=MTcyMTgwNTQ

http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MC560LL/A?mco=MTg2OTUwMjQ

And this is JUST apple.

How about you try finding one computer 5 years old that has 2 cpus.
 
Predacon said:
Yes, actually. Its the material itself that lacks multi-CPU capability. If you are working with multiple media sources then yes, it WILL use every available core.

Do you honestly think companies would have the nuts to charge gobs of money for a product that doesn't use technology that has been commonly around for the last 10 years? Heck, try finding a computer from the last 5 years that doesn't have at least two CPUs. Try finding ANY (non-netbook) new computer on the market today that only has one CPU.

Single threaded applications today are extremely rare. OSX natively tries to balance the CPU load as much as possible, but it can't help much if the media its working with can't be broken up and distributed.
If you want to talk about apps that ignore multiple CPUs and have to be specifically written to use them, you have to go back to the days of OS9.
Click to expand...
The ULV 763 launched in Q1'11 with 1 core, yeah I just went there
 
Predacon said:
Yes, actually. Its the material itself that lacks multi-CPU capability. If you are working with multiple media sources then yes, it WILL use every available core.
Click to expand...

What? There are so many things wrong with this statement. It's the material itself that lacks multicore? I... can't even form an intelligible response.

Predacon said:
Do you honestly think companies would have the nuts to charge gobs of money for a product that doesn't use technology that has been commonly around for the last 10 years? Heck, try finding a computer from the last 5 years that doesn't have at least two CPUs. Try finding ANY (non-netbook) new computer on the market today that only has one CPU.
Click to expand...

...did you miss all the complaining about how FCP is not multicore, and how many people thought that was crazy? Heck, that's one of the big new features of FCPX.

Compressor has been multicore, but that's been about it.

Predacon said:
Single threaded applications today are extremely rare. OSX natively tries to balance the CPU load as much as possible, but it can't help much if the media its working with can't be broken up and distributed.
Click to expand...

Yes, and I've made this exact argument before, but when we're talking FCP and video editors, we're in an entirely different league.

(I'm still not sure what this media thing is about. There are plenty of multithreaded decompressors. Media has nothing to do with it. Rendering is also dead easy to multithread, no matter what media type.)

Predacon said:
If you want to talk about apps that ignore multiple CPUs and have to be specifically written to use them, you have to go back to the days of OS9.
Click to expand...

Yeah.... If we're talking video editing, generally an app that can't peg at least two cores at %100 is not considered multithreaded. And current FCP can't do that.
 
I thought premier has more multi support. It has GPGPU. But wait for FCP X. It should be great for what you speak. Outside of that I don't know of any that have support for all cores in all actions.
Click to expand...

The Mercury Playback Engine in Premiere CS5 has GPGPU acceleration in the form of CUDA. And currently, it only supports two readily available NVIDIA GPUs (Quadro FX 4800 and Quadro 4000) on the Mac side. Since FCP X will be using OpenCL in a similar fashion, this should in theory allow for GPGPU acceleration on a much wider range of Mac-compatible graphics hardware.

Now Adobe IS adding more supported cards in the CS 5.5 update, but only on the Windows side - but to their credit, this can be attributed to the fact that there hasn't been a single NVIDIA GPU release for the Mac Pro since the Quadro 4000. But in the same sense, I think it's become pretty clear that Adobe is going to stick with CUDA and continue to ignore OpenCL.

Certain actions and uses in final cut are multithreaded like the Pro codecs but what good is that if the host can't use the extra cores?
Click to expand...

About the only thing I've witnessed in the current version of FCP (7.0.3) that's even remotely multithreaded is the timeline rendering engine (i.e. rendering stacked effects. keyframed motion parameters, etc. on clips).

Even Compressor itself isn't multithreaded. Apple gets over this limitation using QMaster, which tricks Compressor into running multiple instances of itself during an encode job.
 
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