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CS4 and 64-bit Systems, Part 2

Dec 22, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

           

Table 1. DV files.
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DV Results

My assumption entering this analysis was that working with relatively simple DV files would require less memory than the HD formats, so would run equally efficiently on both systems. Boy, was I wrong. The reality was that the 64-bit system proved much speedier than the 32-bit system in both test scenarios.

Most of the results are self-explanatory, but let me explicate just a bit. As mentioned, the first project used native greenscreen controls, and the second used the Keylight filter from After Effects via Dynamic Link. The impact on the amount of required RAM was dramatic, from 1.8GB to 2.41GB on the 32-bit system—though, somewhat surprisingly, it didn’t improve the 64-bit system’s comparative performance. Still, without Dynamic Link, the 64-bit system was 67 percent faster; with Dynamic Link, it was 41 percent faster.

Table 2. HDV files.
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HDV Tests

While DV is a relatively simple intraframe-only only format, HDV is long GOP MPEG-2, which means all those complicated and inter-related I, B, and P frames. HDV is obviously also HD, while DV is SD, which means lots more pixels per frame, so I expected a significant difference in performance between the two systems. However, my results were project-dependent.

Using a four-camera multicamera HDV benchmark that I’ve used in the past, the systems were roughly identical in performance after correcting for processor speed (test 1). This makes sense, because after choosing angles with the multicam tool, you’re left with one HDV stream that required only 1.6GB of RAM to render. Add an overlay from After Effects, however, and RAM requirements jump to 2.5GB, which stresses out the 32-bit system, and it trailed the 64-bit system by 22 percent.

Project 3 was similar to the picture-in-picture tests that I created for the other HD formats. Though RAM requirements on the 32-bit system remained well below that consumed on the previous HDV test, the 64-bit system was still 62 percent faster than the 32-bit system—63 percent when working with an After Effects chroma key effect.