Fully utilize 4 cores with Handbrake?

[mrgreen4242]

Is there any reason why Handbrake is only using ~200% of system time? It looks like it's spreading out accross 4 cores, but only about 50% each. Sytem is a Mac Pro 2ghz. Getting about 85fps doing DVD to 2000kbps MPEG4 2-pass encoding.

Any suggestions? I've tried ripping the disc first and doign the encoding from the HDD rather than the optical drive, but that didn't change it at all.

 

[NATO]

I'd quite like to know about this also.. I'm getting about 275% usage on my 3GHz Mac Pro, but obviously I'd like to get it as close to 400% as possible. My MBP seems happy enough about maxing out its 2 cores...

 

[mrgreen4242]

I'd quite like to know about this also.. I'm getting about 275% usage on my 3GHz Mac Pro, but obviously I'd like to get it as close to 400% as possible. My MBP seems happy enough about maxing out its 2 cores...

Hey thanks for responding! Glad to see I'm not alone in noticing this (that it's not something I'm doing wrong, I mean). At first I assumed that the video encoding could only be spread across 2 cores, with a 3rd thread maybe doing audio, which would explain the just over 200% activity. But, it looks to me like it's spread over all four cores evenly in the Activity Monitor graphs. A maxed out dual core system would sort of conform my original theory, though.

 

[NATO]

That's exactly what I'm seeing too - 250-275% usages spread evenly across the 4 cores. It's still blindingly fast, but its just annoying to think how much faster it could be with another 100% CPU on board

I've had a hunt around the Handbrake forums, there doesn't seem to be any clues as to how to increase the CPU usage or an explanation as to why its not using more than it currently is ...

 

[robbieduncan]

Can your DVD drive supply the data fast enough to max out all the cores? If you could rip the data to a file then use Handbrake on that file...

 

[killmoms]

I dunno, I'm pretty happy with 68fps H.264 encodes. Leaves a little processor time for doing other things at the same time. C'mon guys, multitasking!

 

[mrgreen4242]

Can your DVD drive supply the data fast enough to max out all the cores? If you could rip the data to a file then use Handbrake on that file...

Already tried that (mentioned it in first post ), so it's not the optical drive.

 

[robbieduncan]

Already tried that (mentioned it in first post ), so it's not the optical drive.

Doh. That'll teach me to actually read the posts. How many threads does Activity Monitor report it to be using?

 

[BornAgainMac]

Is it possible to have 2 or more instances of Handbrake running? If you have a stack of DVDs at least you can do them faster with 2 at a time. (Going directly from two optical drives - it will save time of creating the hard drive image if the hard drive isn't helping)