Pinnacle Studio 11 multithreaded?

[OzzieGT]

Does anyone know if Pinnacle Studio 11 is multithreaded? I see in the stickied thread that Studio 10 is mutithreaded, an Studio 12 is as well. So it only seems logical that Studio 11 would be. But I would like to confirm before I plunk down the $$$ for a quad-core processor.

Thanks

 

[alyarb]

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/594924/pinnacle11.PNG

it would appear so. we see that a dual core needs a 600 MHz clock advantage in order to get the same transcoding time as a quad.

this benchmark was done over 2 years ago so it's all 65nm or 90nm chips in that test. what quad were you going to buy? chances are it'll be faster than anything on that chart.

 

[OzzieGT]

Not sure if I am going to get x4 or something lower. Looking for the best tradeoff of power consumption, processing power, and cost since I only process AVCHD once in a while; 99% of the time, the computer is used for nothing more than browsing the web.

If it weren't for the AVCHD processing, I probably could get by with an Atom machine to be honest.

 

[alyarb]

look into sargas-> regor or callisto-> deneb unlocking.

 

[OzzieGT]

Wow...newegg has a sempron 140 + gigabyte mini itx motherboard for < 100. So if I unlock it that becomes a athlon II x2 system? And I can lock it when I want to save power?

Insane.

e: looks like people have mixed results doing that, so i might just stick with an athlon ii x2.

 

[alyarb]

well, it's mATX, not ITX. but that sargas combo for $96 is really nice and i've been encouraging people to take advantage. they've had that combo going forever, too.

you have to go into the BIOS to enable/disable ACC to do the unlock. if you could switch cores on/off from within windows, then that would be insane.

 

[OzzieGT]

yah, it's cheap. but I don't know how good it will be for processing AVCHD video if I can't unlock the 2nd core successfully.

 

[alyarb]

what kind of conversions do you typically do? 720p or 1080?

 

[OzzieGT]

note sure. it's a canon HD camcorder. I think it's 1080. You know, for $25 more I might as well get a new x4 620 chip.

 

[OzzieGT]

somehow my reply ended up above your question...

 

[alyarb]

yeah, being a tech site, you can imagine there are issues with the forum software that we refuse to solve.

720p isn't that bad, but for longevity purposes i'd definitely encourage you to get the quad. it will not be low power and you will not be able to turn off cores at will. it will always be a quad and it's going to consume about 85 watts at full load, but it will be faster.

are you editing the video or just transcoding?

 

[OzzieGT]

some basic editing, but mostly transcoding. It seems that the quad uses less power at idle than the dual? Which matters more...if it uses more power under load it's not a big deal.

is a corsair 400w power supply enough if I am using the integrated gfx? or should I shoot for 450w

 

[alyarb]

the 400w is fine. you should look into handbrake or automkv if you're only going to transcode. their interface gives you a ton of control over the output quality, you can easily queue up a bunch of jobs to be done overnight. the encode may even be faster on automkv, so consider that if you aren't going to be editing the actual video.

the quad does not have lower idle power than the dual. if you're looking at anand's review, they were testing AC power into the entire system on an unknown power supply, so that chart is basically inconclusive. the efficiency of a power supply is parabolic with increasing DC load, so in terms of net efficiency you may be better off with the quad in the long run power-wise as well. under load, these 10% differences will go away as the quad will definitely be consuming more.

 

[OzzieGT]

Any suggestion on a micro atx motherboard? I'm looking at the MSI 785GM-E65 vs the MSI 785GTM-E45...the e65 offers more features but I don't know if any of them would be really useful to me...

 

[alyarb]

yeah, just saw your thread.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?ItemList=Combo.271179

get a 2x2GB memory kit. it would suck to have gotten only 2x1 GB and not have any free slots open.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: OzzieGT
note sure. it's a canon HD camcorder. I think it's 1080. You know, for $25 more I might as well get a new x4 620 chip.

Originally posted by: OzzieGT
yah, it's cheap. but I don't know how good it will be for processing AVCHD video if I can't unlock the 2nd core successfully.

I don't know if Pinnacle 11 is multithreaded for quads (I'll guess it is) but you should be able to set it up to import AVCHD natively, do what editing you need to do, and then export in AVCHD without substantial transcoding (any titles, effects. transitions, etc., would have to be processed). This would save you significant CPU power.

Are you making some significant conversion we don't know about?

 

[OzzieGT]

Pinnacle processes the AVCHD natively. It doesn't convert it before it uses it. But AVCHD is extremely CPU intensive to process. I don't export to AVCHD though, I export to DIVX or something similar that I can upload to Vimeo.