Can linked Comps leverage mult CPUs?

[Bob Gruen]

So NewEgg had a deal on memory so I tossed another 8GB into the Mac bringing my total to 18GB. I then set the AE multiprocessing setting to 5 CPUs at 1.5GB each and was able to get up to 95% CPU utilization. Very fast, very cool...

I then fired up Premiere and was hoping beyond hope that it would pick up the AE settngs and launch multiple aerendercores for the linked comps. Nope, <40% CPU... Still slow, not cool.

Just want to check that I'm not missing something???

Bob

 

[David McGavran]

So NewEgg had a deal on memory so I tossed another 8GB into the Mac bringing my total to 18GB. I then set the AE multiprocessing setting to 5 CPUs at 1.5GB each and was able to get up to 95% CPU utilization. Very fast, very cool...

I then fired up Premiere and was hoping beyond hope that it would pick up the AE settngs and launch multiple aerendercores for the linked comps. Nope, <40% CPU... Still slow, not cool.

Just want to check that I'm not missing something???

Bob

Unfortunately we weren't able to finish the MP feature with dynamiclink. Always looking for more time in my life...

Cheers

Dave

 

[Kim Frank]

Excuse my ignorant question but where do you make those settings n AE.
In General what do I have to do to get PP and AE as fast as they can with my system?
i7-950 3,06GHz, Gtx470, 12Gig Ram with windows7

 

[Bob Gruen]

Dave,

Good to know that it's on your to-do list...

Kim,

Go to ? -> Preferences -> Memory and Multiprocessing. You have to tell AE how many cores to use and how much memory to dedicate to each core. On an 8 core Mac I was able to saturate the CPU with only 5 cores at 1.5GB assigned to each. The rest of the CPU was taken up by the ImporterREDServer process. When I had only 10 GB it wasn't worth it as the multi threading of the default setup ran better. Going up to 18 has made a huge difference. I suspect that additional memory would allow me to set up more memory per process and would lower the VM paging that my system is doing.

Although Windows and Snow Leopard handle memory completely differently I suspect that you would need a bit more memory to get it to max out your CPU and minimize paging. You might try 3 cores at 1.5 GB and see if it gets to more CPU than the default. (Watch the CPU in the task manager.)

The other thing you can do is to set up your Premiere to use hardware acceleration as you have a supported card. Do a google search and you should find directions on how to do this if the installer didn't already do it for you.

The only other issue is disk performance. My MAC has a Apple RAID Card (note to other Mac users: get the CalDigit one, I wish I did) and I have a 4 disk RAID 5 array of 1.5TB Seagate 1.5GB drives and a separate disk for the scratch and output files. This is a pretty fast setup which you need to properly feed the adobe processes. If you go RAID on a Windows system spend the extra money on Adaptec; they have been doing RAID the longest and produce rock solid products.

 

[Tom.Wong]

i believe the general rule of thumb is, at least 2 gb of ram per core you want to use for best performance. Obviously if you can dedicate more for more head room that would be great, and you need some on top for your other processes. I've set my AE identical to Bob's, but I have 16 gb of ram opposed to his 18 gb.

 

[Bob Gruen]

I've seen 2GB per as well, but for my comps I see 1.5GB of real and 1.5GB of virtual, which seems to point to 3GB per to really max it out. Of course these numbers are for my comps, and only my multiple 4K R3D comps max out the CPUs.

In this setup the hit is the reading and writing to the OS's VM file and the CPU cycles required to do that. In terms of the 80/20 rule, I got well over 80% of what the computer can do, so I'm not going to worry about more memory unless another application needs it.

Bob