Best REDrushes 8-Core Settings?

[Jordan Livingston]

To any REDrushes / MacPro 8-Core experts out there:

I currently have a glut of 4K RED footage that needs to be transcoded to 1920x1080 Apple ProRes HQ.

I'm using the latest and greatest 8-Core MacPro with 8GB of RAM and SCSI 320 RAID storage, so I'm fairly confident that my system is about as fast as it can be (without having a RED Rocket installed, that is!).

In any case, I'm using iStat to monitor my CPU usage during the transcode process in REDrushes...

With "Clips at Once" set to "1" and "Cores per Clip" set to "Auto," iStat shows me only about 30% - 40% activity per core.

With "Clips at Once" set to "1" and "Cores per Clip" set to "8," iStat shows me about 60% activity per core.

Finally, with "Clips at Once" set to "2" and "Cores per Clip" set to "8," iStat shows me some cores up around 90% activity, while others hover around 25% - 35% at any given time.

So, my question is, what combination of settings is really the best / fastest for REDrushes to take advantage of all 8 of my processor cores? It seems to me that no matter what, the application is being somewhat conservative in terms of the amount of processing it will utilize.

Thanks in advance for any advise you might have for me to speed up my transcodes!

ALSO - has anybody tried using RED Rocket yet in a system with an AJA Kona LHi installed? It seems doubtful that they will co-exist in the same system but wishful thinking compels me to keep asking...

 

[Dominic Jones]

Try Clips at once = 4, Cores per Clip = Auto. That tends to get the best performance from our machines, but then they're older (i.e. non-Nahalem) systems, so that may or may not make a difference.

Also, bear in mind that your 8GB of RAM is a little low for an 8-core machine and might be holding you back. Also, there could still be a storage bottleneck - are you reading from and writing to the same disk? No matter how fast the disk (within recent SSD-type reason) and regardless of bus speed, reading from and writing to the same disk will probably induce a data bottleneck...

HTH,
Dom.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

Try Clips at once = 4, Cores per Clip = Auto....

Also, bear in mind that your 8GB of RAM is a little low for an 8-core machine and might be holding you back. Also, there could still be a storage bottleneck - are you reading from and writing to the same disk?...

HTH,
Dom.

I will try the settings as you suggest and report back with the results. With respect to RAM, how much RAM do you recommend for my system? I was under the impression that until Snow Leopard comes out, most applications can only address 8GB RAM anyway.

As far as storage, yes, I am reading and writing to / from the same disk, which I realize is indeed a bottleneck. That being said, I've also tested the same system reading from an eSATA drive and writing to the SCSI RAID, and any potential increase in CPU usage was un-detectable.

 

[Jordan Livingston]

Try Clips at once = 4, Cores per Clip = Auto. That tends to get the best performance from our machines, but then they're older (i.e. non-Nahalem) systems, so that may or may not make a difference.

Also, bear in mind that your 8GB of RAM is a little low for an 8-core machine and might be holding you back. Also, there could still be a storage bottleneck - are you reading from and writing to the same disk? No matter how fast the disk (within recent SSD-type reason) and regardless of bus speed, reading from and writing to the same disk will probably induce a data bottleneck...

HTH,
Dom.

4 Clips at once and Auto cores seems to be a magic combination! It boosts my iStat monitor up to 85% - 100% on each core! That's a major performance boost from what I was getting before. Only downside is... if I try to just about anything on the computer (surf the REDuser forums, for example) the computer locks up. :-( Sounds like I need a dedicated transcode machine...