Best settings to get the most from my new iMac in Compressor?

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Best settings to get the most from my new iMac in Compressor?

Hi (Bonjour)!

I own the new iMac 5K 2020 10 cores 32 Go RAM, Radeon 5700xt 16 go. I edit XACV S HD 50 Mbps in FCP X timeline.

I want to export from compressor to h.264, ProRes master file and HEVC with “send to compressor...” command.

Considering that the source material is XAVC HD in a long gop format already transcoded in FCP timeline, is there any advantage to use multi-occurrence (like 2 or 4) of compressor on my iMac and segmenting the job?

Does the answer is the same if the output file is encoded to ProRes or mpeg4?

What about “multi-pass” settings in compressor video tab?

When I monitor processor cores with iStat Menu, I see only 4 cores at work on 20...

How to push all cores to process the job?

Thank you.

iMac 27″, 10.15

Posted on Sep 23, 2020 12:03 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

68,464 points

Sep 24, 2020 5:47 AM in response to Michel Boissonneault

You get the most improvement from multiple instances if you are doing multiple conversions in one batch - for example if you create multiple delivery formats from the same project, like creating a ProRes, H264 and HEVC version of your project all at once.

I haven’t checked but I think you are right that there is not much of a gain, if at all, when exporting a single version in a GOP format.

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Answer 2

Sep 23, 2020 2:53 PM in response to Michel Boissonneault

You can assign more computing power to Compressor.

In Compressor->Preferences->Advanced, increase the number "additional Compressor instances".

In my 16" MBP, I can go up to 3.

When I do that, Compressor and the associated processes can use some 1000% or more of CPU, and it can do several versions of your video export in parallel.

Since your iMac has more cores (10 vs 8) than my 16" MBP, you may be able to turn it up another notch and select 4 "additional Compressor instances".

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Answer 3

Sep 24, 2020 4:19 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Hi (Bonjour),

Yes I’ve already tested 2 to 4 instances and it’s faster with 2. A 6 minutes of complex composite motion project exports in 13.5 minutes without multi instance, but in 3 minutes with 2 instances and 4 min with 4 instance. A nice performance. The output file format is ProRes 422.

But processors access gauge in activity monitor doesn’t show many bars for all last cores. And the fans speed isn’t not high.

What do you think about the long gop impact on multi process? I read that the long gop format cannot be multi processed.

Thank you.

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Best settings to get the most from my new iMac in Compressor?

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