How can I get CS3 to use more of a multicore CPU?
 

I'm moving this question to this forum from the Cineform forum since it has become a Premiere Pro problem.

I was having problems with interference from ffdshow and DivX codecs while editing in Premiere Pro CS3 under Cineform Prospect HD. I got rid of those codecs, as suggested in the cineform forum, but now I am having serious render time problems doing straight SD timelines. How bad? A 40 minute sequence rendered for 9 hours and 42 minutes (overnight) and was only at 90 percent in the morning. Another sequence rendered for 3 hours plus and only finished 10 minutes of the clip. Best time was 17 minutes render time for a one minute clip.

I don't know how to tell what codec is being used now, but by using task manager I observed that in a render PPro is only using one core of an available eight. It never got above 14% of CPU utilization. (I have dual quad Xeon CPUs.) How can I get PPro CS3 to use more of the available CPU?

I'm running under Windows XP Pro, 32 bit version, with a 3 Gb memory limit. Memory is being utilized to the limit.

Is there a preferred codec I should be using to boost these render times, or should I strip out CS3 and reinstall it?

Not sure what course to take here. Any help would be a godsend.

Stephen,

Those times are utterly ridiculous. As an example, on my system encoding a 37 minute time line with 300+ clips, some WAV files, numerous BMP files and titles, several transitions but no color corrections, encoding to MPEG2-I CBR @ 120 Mbps with AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps takes less than 12 minutes with maximum render quality on. During the encoding my CPU usage is slightly below 100% with all cores utilized. But I run Win7-64 on an i7-920 @ 3.7 GHz with 12 G of memory and a rather large raid array.

I suggest you run the http://ppbm4.com benchmark and send the results to Bill for further analysis (and mail me a copy by private mail).

Thanks for the reply and the link, Harm. I downloaded the file, but the project file was configured for CS4 and is not backwardly compatable for CS3, so it would not run. Bill indicated that he had considered doing a CS3 version, but decided against it.

I'm sorry he did not make the earlier version available for those of us not up to CS4. At this stage I expect my next upgrade will be CS5 and a jump to Windows 7. So his tool may not work for me at all.

But it would seem I need some kind of benchmark testing tool.

Stephen,

A benchmark software program is a good idea. Also do you have any other applications that are running more than one of the cores? This could isolate it to Premiere or a hardware problem.

For the Windows 7/CS5 upgrade it is going to take more grunt than what you have available, but building a new computer is always fun!

Harm always tries to bait folks over to that site, notice who's on top? I'm waiting until I get my raid array figured out and looking to knock him off. Someone said it was his mom who runs the site, so dethroning him may be a problem.....:)

I could never get CS3 to use all cores, i believe it isn't supported. I have CS4 now and all cores get used, CPU goes to almost 99% and renders are a lot quicker.