Handbrake taking up more than 100% of my cpu???

[xi mezmerize ix]

Activity monitor shows that handbrake is taking up more than 100% of my CPU for a length of time, sometimes even 300%. Other applications sometimes show this too. How is this possible?

 

[wordoflife]

.

 

[sammich]

Handbrake always uses as much power as there is. I don't know where you got 300%, but it always uses as much power as it can on my computer - in other words, 100%.

At least have some idea of what you're talking about if you're going to reply.

In Mac OS X, each logical core is designated as 100%. So if you have 2 cores, you get a max of 200%.

 

[xi mezmerize ix]

At least have some idea of what you're talking about if you're going to reply.

In Mac OS X, each logical core is designated as 100%. So if you have 2 cores, you get a max of 200%.

I'm pretty sure my i5 2.53 GHz only has 2 cores, so why does it show 300%+ sometimes?

 

[gnasher729]

I'm pretty sure my i5 2.53 GHz only has 2 cores, so why does it show 300%+ sometimes?

Hyperthreading. On the MacPro, iMac with i7, and MacBook Pro with i5 or i7, each core consists of two virtual cores. That means each core can run either at 100% normal speed, or as cores each running at maybe 60% of normal speed for a total gain of 20%. Handbrake thinks you have four slower CPUs running at 60% speed instead of two faster ones running at 100% speed.

 

[wordoflife]

At least have some idea of what you're talking about if you're going to reply.

In Mac OS X, each logical core is designated as 100%. So if you have 2 cores, you get a max of 200%.

Sorry. I didn't know. I just switched over from a PC a few days back, and I remember on my PC it taxed 100% of my CPU.

 

[filfortugno]

hyperthreading

the core i5 and i7 are physically dual core but the os sees 4 cores, so its possible to go up to 400%

 

[adammjenkins]

Hello,
I decided to revive this old thread with a similar question. I understand that my i5 iMac can register up to 400% cpu through Handbrake, but how can I actually encourage this? Here's my dilemma, if I am ripping a dvd, I am generally only web browsing or doing something else light (if I am even on the computer during the rip at all). I can only seem to get Handbrake to use up to slightly above 200%. I obviously would like it to use the cpu to the most of its ability to get the task done faster... that's why I bought the quad core. I want to use the cpu, not allow over half of the power to sit idle.

Any thoughts or settings that I might be able to try to get Handbrake to use all the the iMac will give?

 

[plinden]

You should probably have created a new thread, but anyway ... you can't encourage Handbrake to use more CPU - it uses up as much as it can. So if you're doing something else that uses 4% CPU, Handbrake should use 396%

So the question now is, why doesn't it do that with your iMac? The only thing I can think of is that maybe the DVD drive is acting as a bottleneck, although it shouldn't. However, Macworld in their last iMac review - http://www.macworld.com/reviews/product/586737/overview/27inch_core_i5_imac28ghz_quadcore.html - found that:

During our testing, we had an odd slowdown in the HandBrake portion of our Speedmark 6 test suite. The $1199 iMac took nearly twice as long to rip a DVD chapter using HandBrake than on the other iMacs; we expected a slower time because of the slower processor, but not as much as we experienced. The $1199 iMac we tested came with a SuperDrive from Hitachi-LG DATA Storage (model HL DT ST DVDRW GA32N), and a HandBrake developer thought that perhaps this particular SuperDrive uses riplock, a feature that slows the optical mechanism during DVD playback to reduce the amount of audible noise. This would explain the slowdown during DVD ripping.

Try ripping the DVD to the hard drive and encoding from the rip and see if that improves anything.

 

[mulo]

Hyperthreading. On the MacPro, iMac with i7, and MacBook Pro with i5 or i7, each core consists of two virtual cores. That means each core can run either at 100% normal speed, or as cores each running at maybe 60% of normal speed for a total gain of 20%. Handbrake thinks you have four slower CPUs running at 60% speed instead of two faster ones running at 100% speed.

really, I thought they allowed for 100% on each logical core.