• Blogs
• Forums
• Tradeshows
• Partners
• White Papers
• Podcast Show Notes
• Events

 

Apple Snow Leopard for Video Producers, Part 2

Oct 6, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

In the last edition of Final Cut Pro Insider, I detailed the new performance-related advances in Apple's new Snow Leopard. In this issue, I share some benchmark tests with a Mac Pro and Mac Book Pro comparing Leopard (OS X 10.5) to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) in 32-bit and 64-bit modes. I ran three sets of tests: one for Apple Final Cut Pro, one for Adobe Premiere Pro, and one involving streaming encoders Sorenson Media Squeeze and On2 Technologies Flix Pro.

The main question that I tried to answer was, Should you expect significant performance boosts if you install Snow Leopard? The overall answer is yes in some configurations, but overall, the results were mixed and depend upon whether you're running Snow Leopard in 32-bit or 64-bit. As a reminder, Apple shipped Snow Leopard with two kernels—one 32-bit and one 64-bit—and it runs the 32-bit kernel by default on all computers except certain Xserve workstations to maintain compatibility with devices with 32-bit drivers.

Related Links

Apple Snow Leopard for Video Producers, Part 1 Apple's new Snow Leopard (or OS X 10.6) is the type of release that delivers incremental advancements on the surface, but exponential enhancements below the waterline--though many will take months, if not years, to truly start bearing fruit... Apple Mac Pro vs. MacBook Pro Test Drive, Part 1 Month after month, one of the most widely researched topics on the millimeter site is the performance difference between an Apple Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro. Given that I have brand-new models of both computers in my office, it felt like it was time to revisit the issue...

To run the OS in 64-bit mode, hold down the 6 and 4 keys when booting your Snow Leopard-upgraded Mac. It will remain in 64-bit mode for subsequent startups until you hold down the 3 and 2 keys while booting. To determine which kernel is running, check System Profiler (click About this Mac, then More Info) and click the Software profile.

With this as background, on to the tests.

Apple Final Cut Pro tests

With Final Cut Pro, I tested with three projects. Briefly, the "Loose Strings" project was a single-camera widescreen DV shoot, and I rendered one song about 4 minutes long to the YouTube format using Final Cut Pro's Share option. I then created a QuickTime reference movie and produced the same file in Compressor with Qmaster enabled. The "Recital" project involved about 10 minutes of video shot in AVCHD at 1080i and rendered into H.264 format for Blu-ray and MPEG-2 for DVD using Final Cut Pro's Share option.

In 64-bit mode, Snow Leopard was faster than Leopard in all four trials, though the difference was slight in all tests except for the recital to MPEG-2 encoding, where Snow Leopard reduced encoding time by 27 percent. Overall, Snow Leopard produced an average 10 percent reduction in encoding time in all tests. In 32-bit mode, the results were less impressive as Snow Leopard was slower than Leopard in two of four tests—though on average, Snow Leopard reduced encoding times by 3 percent.

Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
© 2012 NewBay Media, LLC.