When transcoding, 10% CPU usage
 

Should I be showing more than 10% CPU usage while using HDlink to transcode my AVCHD files to CFHD? Thought it would be using a lot more of my processor?

Is there anything i can do to speed up the transcoding? Not that its slow, just I have a lot of files to go through heh. Thanks!

My Computer:

Vista Ultimate 64bit
I7 920 processor
12gigs ram
ATI Radeon 4850 HD

Weird, my

Win 7 64bit
I7 920 processor
6 gigs ram
ATI Radeon 4850 HD

uses 90% CPU converting AVCHD, and does so very fast, about 2-2.5X real-time.

My system is the same (except 12 GB RAM) & my experience is the same as David's:
90% CPU
2.0-2.5 RT transcode speed

humm it will go up to around 80% for around 5 seconds every now and then (and chew through a conversion much faster), but then settles back down to around 10% where it stays a majority of the time. Is there some setting in Vista I have activated that is reserving the processors power? I seem to remember there being some setting i read about where you can unlock how many cores the processor uses, but that doesnt seem to be the issue as I see all 8 working in task manager. Any ideas?

Here's an image of the type of CPU usage spike I typically get:


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/CPUspeed.jpg

Are you reading or writing to a very slow drive or networked storage? If you storage prevents data from being written quickly, you CPU will slow to match.

Good point.
I always write the CFHD transcode to a RAID 0

The AVCHD files I am transcoding are on this drive, and are also being written to this drive:
(it is not in any sort of raid)

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive


I dont think this is the problem as it will go up to 90% CPU usage and transcode much faster for about 10 seconds, then settle back down to 10%, how would that 90% for 10 seconds be possible if it was a bandwidth issue?

That is why I thought of a bandwidth issue, it seems like a cache is filling up. Although that drive seem fine, do check it with a speed test utility (AJA has a good one.)

Clarify: HDlink or CS3/4's Output
 

I have a similar setup but with slightly faster i7/975 and with SATA root disc but all video and work on RAID0 stripped pair of WD drives.

HDlink is wonderfully multithreaded so making CFHD out of AVCHD takes my system to 95+% utilization. However making a CFHD output from a CS4 timeline or encoding that output to SD or HD MPEG in CS4 Encore only pushes my quad to 25-30% utilization. In otherwords, for that work it might as well be a dual. I sure hope upcomming CS5 + Nvidia Quadro does a lot better than that.

Don

Sounds like a slow drive with write caching turned off....

"Sounds like a slow drive with write caching turned off.... "


That may be it, im not sure, so here are some tests I did. I dont know much about HD setup, my friend built me this machine to edit on, so let me know what i need to tweak to get the HD working right.


----------------------------
HD test #1, Read benchmark.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...DDreadtest.jpg

----------------------------
HD test #2, Write benchmark. (got an error)(i dont think this drive is partitioned, so dont know what the problem is)(i do have two drives that are in Raid 0 and partitioned, but they are totally separate from my two 1TB western digital footage storage drives)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...Dwritetest.jpg

----------------------------
HD test #3, File benchmark.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...Dfilebench.jpg

----------------------------
HD test #4, Random access (read)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...accessread.jpg

----------------------------
HD test #5, Random access (write) (got an error)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ccesswrite.jpg

----------------------------
General Drive Info:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../PCHDDinfo.jpg

----------------------------


Let me know what you guys make of this. I have no idea what any of it means. Thanks


- Shawn

Don't think it's the HD. I don't have my HDs in a RAID and I'm getting a constant 90% CPU usage on my conversions.

Shawn, have you run a Prime95 test against your CPU? I'm curious if there is something wrong with it. Prime95 will peg your CPU cores at 100%. If Prime95 doesn't do that, then there might be something wrong with your CPU.

Also, download RealTemp program. It will tell you the temperature of each core. Not sure if it's a temperature issue.

Just wanted to post some info and a download link for the latest Prime95. I use it regularly for work.

Prime95 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shawn, just because that particular drive has the capability to cache writes doesn't mean it's turned on.

To check, you can go to the "Device Manager", right click on the drive you want to check (under the "Drives" section) and select "Properties", then check the tab "Policies" to see if write caching is enabled for that drive. It should be, if it isn't. The drive cache might have nothing to do with your problem, but a quick check will eliminate it as a possibility.

One more thing. Onboard RAID's chipsets can be really lousy and most are (please nobody flame me on this, I've found out the hard way it's a proven fact). We just got rid of RAID5's on three workstations and returned to single, mirrored drives for boot and data (four 1 TB's). They are actually faster, more secure when working and easier to replace when they fail (which they eventually will). We use MirrorFolder for this, which seems to work pretty well.

At the price of good RAID cards, it's hard to justify the layout for the benefit gained. Fast, large, single drives are so much easier and less hassle for very small workgroups or standalone systems.