Media Express is CPU hungry :(

why is me so cpu hungry. it constantly hangs around 45 - 50% cpu usage, which lets my mbp scream in pain (loud fan noise). it doesn't matter if i capture or just let the video run through it for use of another device.

can the bmd dev team try to work on to lower the cpu usage?

[Joshua Helling]

Is the input coming from an H.264 ProRecorder?

If so then the incoming video needs to be decoded on CPU and it's not a trivial task.

On the Decklink, Intensity, Ultrastudio lines it should not really be doing that.

video is coming in through intensity shuttle tb or extreme.

system: mac os x 10.7.4
media express: 3.1.1

[Joshua Helling]

Interesting...

What is your codec set to? Is it a compressed codec? ProRes, DVCProHD?

Can you try something for me. Can you set the codec for uncompressed and let it run.

i usually use prores 422 lt for game capture. i don't have any compressed codec like photojpeg to choose from besides dvcprohd, which i don't use.

as for uncompressed, i had the shuttle set to this for past few days as passthrough codec, even though i didn't need to, since you said direct passthrough is not affected by codec choice. cpu is also hovering around 40 - 50 % when uncompressed is used.

[Sarah Jones]

We've tested this out here, and on a quad core MacBook Pro loaded up with Media Express 3.1.1 (Desktop Video 9.6.2) using the Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt we saw the following results in Activity Monitor:

1. Capturing 1080i59.94 to Apple ProRes 422 shows user CPU usage of around 25-30%. In the list of processes, the %CPU shows in the ball park of 240.

2. Capturing 1080i59.94 to Uncompressed shows user CPU usage of around 5-10%. In the list of processes, the %CPU shows in the ball park of 40.

Keep in mind that the %CPU is spread across your total cores, so for a quad core that's a total possibility of 400.

When you're noting the 40-50%, which portion of Activity Monitor is reporting this? Do you have any system specs you might also include, i.e. Mac model, CPU, etc.?

mbp i7 2.2, 4gb ram, 1gb gpu, 10.7.4

here are two screenshots of media express- please note that the recording was only 1min and a full capture of a couple hours.

media express idle (no recording)

me-cpu-idle.jpg (80.57 KiB) Viewed 3724 times

media express recording to 720p60 prores 422 lt

me-cpu-recording.jpg (82.3 KiB) Viewed 3724 times

[Sarah Jones]

This looks about right in terms of CPU usage when capturing ProRes. Looks like your system is very similar to the one I've tested on and the results look similar. 25% overall usage (based onthe totals at the bottom of Activity Monitor) for a ProRes capture is about right, and I'm not sure why that would necessarily kick your fans on. In any case, I don't see anything abnormal in your screenshots.

thanks sarah