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Handbrake is really SLOW on new mini

J

JWalker1995

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 5, 2011
224
3
I currently converting one of the harry potter films and it says it gonna take 2 hours :eek: and I have left it for a while so it's not the starting estimate it's been like that for 10+ mins.
I only have 2gb ram so would that speed it up or is there something wrong?

Thanks :)
 
Yep, you are doing something wrong. As you don't mention what you are doing as far as DVD or BD I can only guess.

2GB is the issue. 4GB really should be minimum for most basic use, 8GB for folks doing HB and more intensive stuff.
 
well yes 2 gigs is not enough. with 8 gigs it is far faster then my 2009 mini and it does not slow the system down.
 
Try the Crucial UK Website - just under £40 quid for the 8GB (2 x 4GB kit)
 
Forgive my ignorance.. but I assumed that Handbrake encoding is a CPU intensive task.. why is the RAM the issue here?
 
Borjan said:
Forgive my ignorance.. but I assumed that Handbrake encoding is a CPU intensive task.. why is the RAM the issue here?
Click to expand...

Op has 2gb ram.

turned on and idle a base 2011 mini uses 1.5gb ram. to be honest Op may get away with 4gb ram but ram is cheap even in the uk 40 pounds is low. may as well get it and not worry about upgrading ram any more. I am on my mac pro but i will fire up the mini and show how much ram it uses on idle. if you look below I am using 1.82gb ram out of 8gb ram with nothing to speak of running. to be fair .5gb ram goes to the Intel graphics . in the case of the op about .264 gb goes to the intel graphics. so if he did this test he would be using 1.56gb out of 2gb to run basically nothing: safari finder activity monitor
 

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Darby67 said:
Yep, you are doing something wrong. As you don't mention what you are doing as far as DVD or BD I can only guess.

2GB is the issue. 4GB really should be minimum for most basic use, 8GB for folks doing HB and more intensive stuff.
Click to expand...

This is total and utter nonsense. Lots of programs benefit from more memory. Handbrake is most definitely not one of them. Handbrake uses about 40 MB or so of memory, not a bit more.


JWalker1995 said:
I currently converting one of the harry potter films and it says it gonna take 2 hours :eek: and I have left it for a while so it's not the starting estimate it's been like that for 10+ mins.
I only have 2gb ram so would that speed it up or is there something wrong?

Thanks :)
Click to expand...

About two hours on a dual core processor for a movie over two hours sounds about right, especially of you convert directly from DVD. Don't look at the time estimate, look at how many percent are done. If that moves at a reasonable rate then everything works fine. Obviously if the estimate is two hours, then you should have about 10% progress every twelve minutes.
 
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Borjan said:
Forgive my ignorance.. but I assumed that Handbrake encoding is a CPU intensive task.. why is the RAM the issue here?
Click to expand...
gnasher729 said:
This is total and utter nonsense. Lots of programs benefit from more memory. Handbrake is most definitely not one of them. Handbrake uses about 40 MB or so of memory, not a bit more.
Click to expand...
Is that the voice of reason I can hear?

Quite honestly, no one can say whether your encoding speeds are slow because you haven't mentioned the source (DVD/BD/TV/HDTV) or the settings you're using.
 
gnasher729 said:
This is total and utter nonsense. Lots of programs benefit from more memory. Handbrake is most definitely not one of them. Handbrake uses about 40 MB or so of memory, not a bit more.
Click to expand...

I agree that RAM is not really an issue here but do agree with everyone else that considering the cost of 8 GB of RAM, OP is really limiting his machine by not upgrading.

gnasher729 said:
About two hours on a dual core processor for a movie over two hours sounds about right, especially of you convert directly from DVD. Don't look at the time estimate, look at how many percent are done. If that moves at a reasonable rate then everything works fine. Obviously if the estimate is two hours, then you should have about 10% progress every twelve minutes.
Click to expand...

This does sound about right, especially considering I believe all of those films are between 2 and 3 hours long, though some more info from the OP would help. I also agree about ignoring the estimated time remaining but found that even better than the percent progress is the avg. FPS. Movies generally are 24 FPS so if your averaging better than that, your encoding time is less than the actual length of the film and vice versa.
 
Darby67 said:
Sorry, but you are incorrect on so many levels and sadly are incredibly misinformed.

Image
Click to expand...
That only proves that the magic number is not ~40, nothing more, which kind of invalidates your 'so many levels' thing, there.

You still don't know how handbrake choses to consume RAM (could be based on overall amount, current availability, the size of the frames in the source etc). It also doesn't show that more memory is beneficial.
 
Currently encoding an avi file, handbrake is at 170% cpu, 23 threads, 135MB, intel 64 bit. This is a 2.4GHz c2d with 8g memory, encoding from/to local hard drive.

Basically the same numbers when encoding from a dvd.

Reducing the quality of the output file will do more to speed things up than adding memory. If handbrake is all that's running will more memory speed things up? Not much if at all would be my guess.

Having at least 4 gig in your machine is probably a good idea anyway. 8 gig is probably overkill unless you're running a lot of memory intensive applications.

You can make the dock icon of Activity Monitor show you how much memory your system is using at all times. If you're consistently seeing very little green then more memory is in order. If not, more memory won't do much.
 
Darby67 said:
Sorry, but you are incorrect on so many levels and sadly are incredibly misinformed.
Click to expand...

He said Handbrake doesn't benefit so much from having more RAM, as it performs CPU intensive tasks -- and the screenshot you uploaded just proves it. It doesn't prove RAM makes HB run faster at all.
 
LostSoul80 said:
He said Handbrake doesn't benefit so much from having more RAM, as it performs CPU intensive tasks -- and the screenshot you uploaded just proves it. It doesn't prove RAM makes HB run faster at all.
Click to expand...

Actually in the op's case having 2gb ram and a stock 5400 rpm, more ram will speed his system up. A stock 2.3 mac mini has about .5gb free ram on idle. so .8gb ram shown to run handbrake means you will go over the 2gb ram .5gb minus .8gb is negative that means page outs.

I wish no one would argue about the 2011 base mini and the stock 2gb ram inside of it.

IT IS NOT ENOUGH RAM!!!!!!! for almost every user of a 2011 mac mini. if you want 4gb cool if you want 8gb better yet. most users don't need 8gb more like 6gb does the trick.

just about every user of a base 2011 mac mini needs more then 2gb ram!!!!

Apple should have manned up and put a 4gb stick inside of it then give the user the option to buy a second 4gb stick at 75 bucks or a 2gb stick at 40 bucks. they would have scored a fortune as most non techinical users would have grabbed the upgrade at that price. If I can buy 8gb of ram at 35 dollars apple can get it for less.

As an aside when the 2009 mac minis came out in oct of 2009 ddr3 1066 laptop ram had started a bull run in price.

aug of 2009 it was 50 a pair of 2gb sticks by dec- jan 2009-2010 ram was up to 85-100 a pair of 2gb sticks. it has dropped a lot since then. My point is ram sticks can go up in price. right now 8gb of ram at 40 pounds is easy in the uk 8gb of ram for 40 usd is easy in the usa. these prices may rise come holiday season just like they did in 09.
 
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If you want to know if you need more RAM, look at the page in counts in Activity monitor. If it is doing a lot of page ins while handbrake is running, then you need more RAM. If it isn't doing any, then you don't. Period.

And yes, expect the fan to run full tilt while it is transcoding. It uses as much CPU as possible when working, so it will heat up your machine. This is normal.
 
JWalker1995 said:
Don't know what that means
Click to expand...

Beyond all this static, I think this would help the most (and it's free as a bird).

Since you're running SL (Lion?) you can boot the mini into the 64 bit kernel... Restart and hold down the "6" key and the "4" together and it'll boot into 64 bit. Download the Handbrake (Intel 64) version, and go on your merry way.

Best of luck, and, yeah get some more RAM on the cheep. :cool:

NK
 
Nick 214 said:
Since you're running SL (Lion?) you can boot the mini into the 64 bit kernel... Restart and hold down the "6" key and the "4" together and it'll boot into 64 bit. Download the Handbrake (Intel 64) version, and go on your merry way.

NK
Click to expand...

To educate me and the OP, why one needs to switch ON the 64 bit kernel. I thought with the new systems it is automatically so ?
 
JWalker1995 said:
What sort of time can I expect with 8gb of ram for a 2 hour film??
Click to expand...
My one-month old Mac Mini 2.3i5 has a 256Gb SSD, 8Gb of RAM, and a 2 hour 6Gb 720p movie on Handbrake takes about 1.5-2 hours to convert if I'm ripping to m4v at a CQ of 20 (near-original quality).

It can do smaller 1.5Gb avi files in about 30 minutes.
 
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