Can anyone confirm 64 bit?

Ok! Cool

How do I then make use of this?

When I click Submit, in the drop down box, all I see is This Computer, not my shared cluster.....?

I'll try again - I think it was Compressor 4 / Compressor 3 clash causing problems. I've just started from scratch!

I thought compressor 4 was 64 bit too..till I just ran a time test between Compressor 3 and 4 which made me say "What the What?!" and then i did research to find...its not really much different.

Heres what I did.

1.07GB 720P file. Transcoded to "DVD" settings (.m2v and dolby digital). Manually set the same settings for both, same computer, same everything. ran the tests back to back.

Compressor 4: 3:31.2

Compressor 3: 3:07.3

So, between that and FCP X being nothing but a heartache (so much promise, such poor execution) it looks like I cant do anything but sit here and wait for them both to catch up to where they need to be. It feels like they got lost in the ether between the iMovie crowd and the Professional crowd...aka the FCP Express territory..which is exactly what these apps are.

changethursday wrote:

I thought compressor 4 was 64 bit too..till I just ran a time test between Compressor 3 and 4 which made me say "What the What?!" and then i did research to find...its not really much different.

Heres what I did.

1.07GB 720P file. Transcoded to "DVD" settings (.m2v and dolby digital). Manually set the same settings for both, same computer, same everything. ran the tests back to back.

Compressor 4: 3:31.2

Compressor 3: 3:07.3

So, between that and FCP X being nothing but a heartache (so much promise, such poor execution) it looks like I cant do anything but sit here and wait for them both to catch up to where they need to be. It feels like they got lost in the ether between the iMovie crowd and the Professional crowd...aka the FCP Express territory..which is exactly what these apps are.

I got very similar results, but with different settings:

File: 1.03 gb in ProRes 422 codec 720p

Settings: H.264, quality between medium and high, size 640x360 (50% of original), multi-pass

Compressor 4: 1:25

Compressor 3.5: 0:54

Compressor 3.5 w/ Qmaster: 0:42

I haven't been able to get Qmaster to work properly on compressor 4 yet... but if Compressor 4 is supposed to be better than compressor 3.5, then it should be able to beat compressor 3.5. It doesn't even come close. Also, I ran these tests several times, and all my numbers were within a range of 5 seconds

I am using an 8 core mac. Hope Apple fixes the new compressor.

Compressor is still 32bit but the renderer is 64bit and that is what counts. Just have a look at the following screenshot from my Mac Pro:

petvas wrote:

Compressor is still 32bit but the renderer is 64bit and that is what counts. Just have a look at the following screenshot from my Mac Pro:

Except that the compressord task (shown as 32-bit) is the one that is being run by Compressor 4 to encode the video. I'm not sure what processing is running the ProMSRendererTool (shown as 64-bit) but it may be something to do with Final Cut Pro X or Motion (which are both 64-bit).

If Compressor 4 is actually using 64-bit codecs to encode the video that would represent a MAJOR change from previous versions of Final Cut. In fact, it would mean that Compressor is no longer using QuickTime 7 for the compression and that Apple has re-written their codecs to be 64-bit aware which I think is highly unlikely to happen under Snow Leopard (maybe for Lion, but we'll have to see what happens with QuickTime X under Lion).

It would be interesting to find out what that ProMSRendererTool is doing on petvas' system. If you search with Google you can find some references to a ProM Shape Renderer and while that could have something to do Motion it's unclear whether the two are related. It's interesting to note, however, that Apple's documentation on Compressor seems to identify the term "rendering" with Shake, Maya and other frame-based rendering tools. Then, they go on to separate "rendering" from "Compressor services" when setting up QMaster clusters.

In any case, I am seeing some odd things on my two systems which are running Compressor v4 under Mac OS X 10.6.8 (I'm using Compressor in a standalone mode, without FCP). On a unibody MacBook when I run Compressor v4 I see a 32-bit process called CompressorTranscoder doing most of the work for the background compression jobs. However, on a Mac Pro I see a 32-bit process called compressord (actually, multiple instances of that task depending upon how I've configured the job for background processing using Apple's QMaster). This may have something to do with using QMaster and virtual clusters, but in any case I never see a process called ProMSRendererTool.

I don't have Motion installed. Only Final Cut and compressor 4. When I convert Final Cut projects to mp4 using compressor then I see the 64bit process. The compressor process is of course also being used. Maybe it has to do with the codec being used.

I suspect that the ProMSRendererTool process is being run as a result of some output from Final Cut X. You can try this, don't run FCPX (and make certain that all of your previous jobs are done), launch Compressor directly, select a standalone video file (not a project or FCP job) to compress, select a MP4 preset and submit the job.

If you do the above I'm guessing that you will only see the compressord process which as previously discussed (and shown in your screen shot) is only a 32-bit process.

I just ran a little experiment.

I exported a 25 minute project from Final Cut Pro X into a stand alone file(22gb), opened Compressor 4 and brought in the file and compressed it using "SD Video Sharing" preset. Only the compressord process was being used. No ProMSRendererTool

It took it 30 minutes to compress. But it about 45 minutes to export it from Final Cut Pro X as a stand alone file.

Total Time: 1hr 15 minutes

Then I sent the same project straight to Compressor 4 from Final Cut Pro X. Again used "SD Video Sharing" preset. This time both ProMSRendererTool and compressord processes were used. ProMSRendererTool took up most of the CPU.

Total Time: 1hr 10 minutes