Slower transcoding in FCPX on MacPro than MBP. Does it actually use the GPUs?

What versions of FCP X and Compressor? And what are you transcoding to? H264? I think I heard about this and it may be due to what hardware support is there for different GPUs.

Also, I believe that only Compressor 4.2 makes use of the GPU when transcoding, making it much faster than previous versions.

Steve Martin of Ripple Training has said that he reversed his views about sharing in FCP X through Compressor since the new version came out, since it is much faster.

I think you'll find this article and the related reports to be interesting and instructive,

Russ

WWhat gives the rMBP its speed is that it has hardware encoding. The H.264 codec is written into the computer's Intel chip. This makes a significant difference with a real speed boost that cannot be achieved solely with a software encoder.

So my $8K Mac Pro is half as fast as the $1,800 iMac when exporting my FCP X projects as h.264.

Wow.

Apple 2015 = Microsoft 2006

The Mac Pro is faster in many tasks, including, I assume encoding in most codecs. The iMac is faster in encoding to H264, a task for which the core CPU has special hardware, which the Xeon used in the MP does not.

I think the comparison to msft is misplaced.

Right, if I want to deliver my project to something other than Blu-ray, Vimeo, YouTube, it will be faster on the Mac Pro. Unfortunately, that's all I export to. I guess a DVD would be faster? Handbrake does me no good because I'd have to export out of FCP X as ProRes first, then encode. What's the point of that?

The Microsoft comparison is unfair? I completely disagree. I've been using Apple since 1987. The quality control has gone down the tubes the last 5 years and there have been several HIGHLY PUBLICIZED embarrassments for the company that I have suffered through, including FCP X 10.0. Apple Maps? lol iPhone 4 couldn't make calls. My wife still has one and it's a huge step back from the 3GS we have. Heck, my iPhone 5 has the famous broken lock button. Apple FINALLY admitted there was an issue and they will fix it for free out of warranty, but they will need it for 10 days. And it holds calls well if you aren't holding the metal phone with antennas on the outside with your hand.

Apple's latest Safari won't even allow me to delete my history without delete all the rest of the data and cookies with a simple menu option. I now have to do it manually, selecting the history and pressing the delete key. Step backward.

Apple takes a step forward, then takes a step back. The latest FCP X now requires I take more time to apply the same color grading to multiple clips, because it's an effect now. If you just paste it to multiple clips, you end up with 2 color grading effects. The version before would replace the color you had with what you pasted. So I know have to select the multiple clips, delete the existing color grade, I mean effect, and then paste. Step backwards.

I could go on and on. They are just too big to create products that "just work" anymore, in my opinion. It used to be that an Apple product was the highest quality. No anymore.

The $1,699 iMac with 3.1 GHz quad core i7 Intel and the nVidia graphics is faster than the $8K Mac Pro in After Effects (Mercury uses nVidia not OpenCL in AE) and Final Cut Pro X encoding Blu-ray, YouTube, Vimeo.

Wow.