Mac Pro processor activity maxed out at 50% with Snow Leopard

[Denarius]

I've been running some deinterlacing jobs with Compressor on our Mac Pro 3,1 dual processor. We'd added some RAM so I was interested to have a look in Activity Monitor to see how it was faring and noticed that the CPU activity never went above 50%. I find it very hard to believe that Compressor isn't intended to take advantage of both processors. I just ran Apple hardware utility off of the original disc and it hasn't found any trouble. Has anybody got any thoughts on this?

 

[MRU]

I noticed this a couple of weeks back too when using compressor. Very strange. I too am on Snow Leopard.

 

[Denarius]

Ah, not just me then.

Oh well, reassuring that it's probably application specific rather than a hardware issue. Flag this one with Apple I suppose. It would have to be one of the most processor intensive jobs that falls short wouldn't it?

 

[zedsdead]

When you submit the job, are you sending it to "This Computer" or a "Cluster" that you set up. If you are using "This Computer," Compressor will not be maxing out the CPU at all. It is ridiculous, but that is the way it is. YOu need to set up a Cluster.

 

[MRU]

^ really ? Thanks thats interesting. Oh and your right. Ridiculous too. I'll give that a shot next time.

 

[zedsdead]

http://www.macworld.com/article/49047/2006/01/marcchreateside.html

 

[Denarius]

http://www.macworld.com/article/49047/2006/01/marcchreateside.html

Yes, thanks very much for the heads up!

 

[Denarius]

Hello again, I just set up a quick cluster (Quickcluster with services) and submitted a job to it, but it still ran at 50%. Did I miss something. I did look at that document, but it doesn't seem to refer to multiple processors anywhere.

 

[J the Ninja]

Hello again, I just set up a quick cluster (Quickcluster with services) and submitted a job to it, but it still ran at 50%. Did I miss something. I did look at that document, but it doesn't seem to refer to multiple processors anywhere.

The Macworld article glosses over a rather important step:

http://www.devia.be/news/article/setting-up-a-virtual-cluster-to-speed-up-compressor/

 

[Denarius]

The Macworld article glosses over a rather important step:

http://www.devia.be/news/article/setting-up-a-virtual-cluster-to-speed-up-compressor/

Ah, that'll be the one, I'll give it a go with 4 instances and see how it does. Thank you very much for the advice.

 

[Denarius]

From the ridiculous to the sublime.

Just an update, I set it up to have four instances and activity monitor says I have 4 CompressorTranscoderX processes running at 183% of CPU each, giving a total user percentage of a about 90%. Made me chuckle.